Leonard is the founder and owner of ProABC, a nationwide provider of dental and medical practice solutions. He attended college at the University of South Alabama in Mobile where he received his degree in financial accounting. While in school, he completed an internship with JCPenney during which he competed in a company contest and placed 1st in district and regional and 2nd nationally. In response to this achievement, Leonard was offered a job with JCPenney straight out of college. He started off as an area manager in the accounting center in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was then promoted and transferred to the auditing department at one of their regional offices in Orange County, California, where he served as a senior auditor.
After staying in this position for several years, Leonard decided to move back to his home town of Metairie in the New Orleans area. He started working for a company called Orthodontics Center of America (OCA). There, he learned about consulting for health care practitioners and how to develop, market and manage medical and dental practices.
OCA was a publicly traded company, worth over $1 billion, but due to some financial issues, the company went under. Despite this occurrence, Leonard knew he had found his calling and decided to start his own health care practitioner consulting business. He started American Business Consulting, now officially called ProABC, in 2005. Today, he works with over 100 medical and dental offices across the United States.
“I found my calling,” Leonard said. “When I first started working with OCA, I quickly felt like I knew what was going on and why it was going on, and I was able to contribute to what the company was trying to do. I don’t know the professional way to say it, but I got it. I got the concept. It made sense to me, and it gave me an opportunity to help people. I thoroughly enjoy helping others, and that is what I built my business on.”
Services
ProABC offers a variety of services for medical and dental practices, working with a client base that is 95% dental, primarily including orthodontists but also general dentists, pediatric dentists, oral surgeons, periodontists, prosthodontists and endodontists. Their main service is partnering with doctors who want to go into business for themselves and assisting them with all the business aspects of owning a practice.
“When doctors go into business for themselves, they become business owners,” Leonard said. “So, we basically do everything for them, outside of actually seeing the patient.”
ProABC handles everything from financing and office leasing to hiring, firing and training the practice’s staff. They are also responsible for coming up with the initial business plan, budget and timeline to present to lenders in order for the doctor to get a loan. Leonard even obtained his real estate license to improve his ability to find clients the best office space available. In addition to setting up a business plan, they also established a marketing plan so when the practice opens, they have a client base ready to be served. ProABC stays partnered with the practice even after they open so they can assure the business is being maintained properly and complying with things like OSHA and HIPAA compliance.
ProABC also assists doctors in expanding to multiple locations through a program called Dental Services Organization (DSO). This allows doctors who own their own practice to open more practices and be able to work at each location.
In addition, ProABC offers a service called permanent placement, which helps doctors that own DSOs find associate or junior doctors who can see patients at the different locations. And the final service they offer is called dental transition. Here, they assist doctors planning to retire in finding another doctor to purchase their practice, typically a recent graduate or younger doctor looking to go into business for themselves.
Next Steps
Leonard has been able to continue growing ProABC and helping others since the beginning, and he hopes to continue that pattern in the future.
“ProABC will ultimately get to a point where it owns its own practices and the doctors will be employees of the practices that we own,” Leonard said. “Right now, we work for the doctor, so when the lender loans the money to the doctor, they are in control. If I go to the doctor and say, ‘hey I want to spend $5,000 on marketing and the doctor says, ‘well I prefer to spend $5,000 on a flat screen tv’, I have no control over that decision. And really that is what hurts our relationship and the success of their practice.”
In addition to owning and running their own practices, Leonard also hopes to have franchise opportunities for ProABC, so people can own the different locations of the ProABC-run practices. They are taking steps toward making this a reality and are in the process of purchasing two dental offices in the New Orleans area.
“I am a business man,” Leonard said. “And helping people in a line of business is what I enjoy doing. ProABC allows me that opportunity, and I plan to keep taking advantage of that opportunity as long as I can.”
