The Dental CEO Podcast

ChatGPT just rolled out ads for small businesses, and dentists are already testing it, often with no idea what they're doing. In this episode, Scott Leune sits down with Bill Donato, founder of DentalMarketing.com , to break down what's actually working in dental marketing right now: ChatGPT ads, Google Ads, AI-powered SEO, and a channel most dentists have written off as outdated: direct mail. Bil...

Last week's episode challenged the traditional path to retirement. This week, Scott Leune gets tactical: what should you actually be doing in dentistry, right now, at your specific age, to make that philosophy real? In Part 2 of this series, Scott walks through the exact practice models that align with the semi-retire-twice framework, breaking down what each decade of a dental career should look l...

What if the traditional retirement plan, work hard for 40 years and finally retire at 65, is actually the reason so many dentists end up burned out, broke on experiences, and full of regret? In Part 1 of this two-part series, Scott Leune revisits a post he wrote 16 years ago that challenged everything he'd been taught about building wealth and retiring. Instead of one big retirement at the end of...

Episode 80: There's a good chance you've never heard of DHP. While Schein, Patterson, Darby, and Benco dominate the conversation around dental equipment and supplies, DHP has quietly built a 35-plus-year, privately held, family-owned business that Scott says delivers strong pricing and personal service, without the brand recognition to match. Scott sits down with Dale Roberts, DHP's founder and CE...

Episode 79: In 2019, a 22-year-old flew from Dublin to Texas to take three of Scott's courses back-to-back, so eager to learn he came back a second time just to finish the one he missed. Eight years later, that same dentist has built Truly Dental into Europe's largest full arch implant group, 15 locations across Ireland and the UK, on pace to cross $100 million in annual revenue. Now he's setting...

Episode 78: Scott sits down again with Justin Warcup, a pediatric dentist in Dallas-Fort Worth, to break down the numbers behind pediatric airway dentistry and the system he built to scale it, called the BRĒTH Method. Cases run $4,000 to $9,000, case acceptance sits at 52%, and in just three months of focused marketing, Justin scaled from 4–5 cases a month to averaging $130K+ a month, increasing h...

Episode 77: Is there ever really a "right time" to start a practice? In this episode of the Dental CEO Podcast, Scott sits down with Dr. Stamatis Kouniaris and his wife Katarina, a practicing attorney, to talk about one of the boldest timing decisions a young family can make: launching a dental startup in Canada while raising three kids under five, including a newborn just one month old. Just a mo...

Scott Leune sits down to give young dentists the advice he wishes someone had given him. He breaks down the four numbers every associate should be tracking, why a high-income associateship matters more than a signing bonus, and why waiting to feel "ready" for ownership is usually the exact reason people never get there. It's a blunt, no-fluff take on why so many careers stall out in mediocrity, an...

Radiologic AI was just the beginning. In this episode, Scott sits down with Ophir Tanz, founder and CEO of Pearl, to unpack how AI has evolved from a single feature into an entire layer running underneath the modern dental practice, handling everything from CBCT analysis and ambient charting to claims, insurance verification, and scheduling. They get into where this is headed next: a world where A...

$4 million in debt. A business partner who walked away. That's the position Dr. Omar Virani was in, and it would have ended most people's dental careers right there. Instead, he turned it into a thriving two-location practice in Vancouver, Canada, one with 19 operatories, associates who actually want to work there, and the kind of balanced schedule most owners only dream about. In this episode, Om...

Virtual administrative teams are already helping thousands of dental practices handle insurance verification, billing, claims, and phones, and now AI copilots are layering on top of that support to speed up claim resubmissions, improve call conversion, and lift overall work quality without adding any burden to your onsite team. This episode breaks down how task-specific AI copilots rewrite denied-...

Why do some associate dentists produce five times more than others seeing the exact same number of patients? In this episode of The Dental CEO Podcast, Scott Leune breaks down the four numbers that actually drive associate production, exam volume, diagnostic percentage, treatment plan size, and case acceptance, and shares the national averages versus top-performer benchmarks for each. He walks thr...

In this solo episode of The Dental CEO Podcast, Scott Leune reads three real profit and loss statements line by line and shows you exactly where practice profit hides. Watch a "respectable" 1.8-million-dollar practice find roughly 160,000 dollars in EBITDA and nearly a million in sale value, and a two-practice owner uncover about 650,000 dollars a year in cash flow and 4.2 million in equity at sal...

A dentist got an unsolicited $9.8M offer to sell his practice — and on paper it looked incredible. So why is walking away the smarter move? Scott Leune breaks down the real offer line by line and runs the actual math, exposing the traps most dentists never see: the cash up front, the "rollover equity," the multi-year stay requirement that quietly erases years of owner profit, and the "hopium" of f...

After 33 years of marriage and 33 years practicing side by side in 700 square feet, Dr. Elisa Mello and Dr. Ramin Tabib could have coasted to the finish line. Instead, at 61, they bet on themselves again and moved into a 2,500 square foot space built around a brand they just trademarked: The Smile Code. Scott Leune sits down with the New York City couple to talk about holding the line on fee-for-s...

There is a lot of bad location advice in dentistry. A dentist goes on a podcast, says demographics do not matter because they opened in a weak market and made it work, and suddenly "build it and they'll come" sounds like a strategy. It is not. It is luck, and as Scott Leune puts it, a blind man can hit a home run, but that does not mean the rest of us should swing blindfolded. On this episode of t...

Two married dentists. One startup. 222 new patients in their first full month. On this episode of The Dental CEO Podcast, Dr. Scott Leune sits down with Drs. Alex Hill and Kristina Slavik of Hill Dental Studio to break down exactly how they built the demand, why they're already booked out two months, and what Scott says they need to do right now to handle the success before it crushes them.

In this episode of The Dental CEO Podcast, Scott Leune is joined by Bill Donato, Founder of DentalMarketing.com, to break down why your website is no longer the biggest driver of new patient calls. As patient search habits change, Google My Business, local search visibility, reviews, hyperlocal content, and real-time search queries are becoming more important than ever. Scott and Bill explain what...

A single Instagram post from Dr. Scott Leune sparked major conversation across the dental world, raising a question many dentists are thinking but few are saying out loud: is becoming a dentist still financially worth it? In this episode of The Dental CEO Podcast, Scott breaks down the post, the backlash, and the numbers behind the debate, including income, debt, delayed earning years, and why bus...

In this episode of The Dental CEO Podcast, Dr. Scott Leune breaks down how dentistry is moving toward a new practice model built around automation, simplified staffing, patient hosts, presentation stations, and more efficient systems. He explains why traditional front office roles may become less necessary, how clinical team members could take on a more complete patient experience role, and how ow...

PPO plans are putting intense financial pressure on private dental practices through low reimbursements, high write-offs, stagnant fees, and rising operating costs.  In this episode of The Dental CEO Podcast, Scott Leune sits down with Natalie Soda of PPO Profits to expose how shared networks and hidden fee schedules can force dentists to produce more while collecting less. They also discuss how p...

What does it actually look like to go straight from dental school into building your own practice? In this episode, Scott Leune sits down with Dr. Emily Magee just five weeks into opening her startup to walk through her journey from associate to owner. She shares how she made the decision to start early, secured financing, built out her office, and what the first few weeks of ownership really feel...

In this episode of The Dental CEO Podcast, Scott Leune sits down with Kathryn Gaysinski, founder of DeStyle Design, to break down what it really takes to design a modern dental practice. From material selection and layout to balancing cost, function, and aesthetics, they explore how smart design decisions directly impact patient experience and long-term profitability. If you are planning a startup...

In this episode of The Dental CEO Podcast, Dr. Scott Leune sits down with Dr. Kye Williams, founder of Dental House, to break down how he built a fee for service startup from scratch to over $3 million in annual collections in under three years. Kye shares the real drivers behind his success, from relentless marketing and phone conversion systems to delivering an elite patient experience and build...

Redo dentistry is one of the most overlooked, and expensive problems in private practice.  In this episode, Scott breaks down the uncomfortable reality most dentists face: when treatment fails, we absorb the cost, strain the patient relationship, and create unnecessary tension within the team, yet none of it is clearly tracked or accounted for. From failed implants and broken crowns to patients mo...