Dental Practice Heroes

By the time a problem shows up on your P&L, it’s been quietly building for months. In this episode, the DPH coaches share the numbers every practice should check weekly to catch problems while they’re still small. You’ll learn the four pillars that help you figure out what’s actually wrong, why a busy front desk can hide what’s slipping, and how to make your team part of the solution. Topics d...

Your dental practice can be profitable and still feel like it’s slowly breaking you. That’s the reality for many solo dentists sitting in the $1.2M to $1.7M range: the schedule is packed, the team is busy, and yet problems keep slipping through the cracks. Patients fall off the follow-up list, insurance details get missed, the front desk feels underwater, and you end up being the only person who c...

Bringing on an associate is supposed to buy back your time. So why do so many owners end up regretting the decision? Brian Hanks, dental accountant and author of How to Buy a Dental Practice , works with dentists at every stage of ownership and has noticed one blind spot that derails associateships. In this episode, he shares where many owners go wrong, the three numbers that signal your practice...

If you have been grinding to “improve the practice” but your days still feel the same, you are not alone and you are not lazy. We dig into a hard truth: you can spend an entire year fixing what is broken and still end up with almost the exact same dental practice, the same pressure, and the same dependence on you. The missing piece is not effort. It is the difference between problem solving and cr...

Being the most capable person in your dental practice can feel like a superpower, right up until it becomes the reason everything still depends on you. I’m Dr. Paul Etchison, and I see this pattern constantly with dental practice owners: we’re great at hiring, interviewing, running meetings, resolving conflict, smoothing over upset patients, and handling the sensitive admin work, so we keep doing...

You can have a solid team, good new patient flow, and real culture momentum and still feel weirdly stuck. That’s the trap we dig into today: the belief that you should wait until you feel 100% ready before making a big move in your dental practice, like dropping from four clinical days to three. I share a recent coaching conversation with a practice owner who has all the ingredients to cut a day r...

Your practice is finally in a good place. The schedule is full, the money is good, and you actually like your team. This episode is about what happens when this comfort turns into complacency. The DPH coaches explain why thinking "things are good" can be dangerous, the difference between healthy comfort and complacency, and how to tell if you're building the practice you actually wa...

That uncomfortable moment when you roll out a new system and your team goes quiet isn’t about the system at all. It’s about what they think it means.  We’re talking about one of the most common breakdowns in dental practice leadership: we introduce training, new workflows, or higher standards with good intentions, and our team hears an accusation. I share a real example from my own practice after...

"They're lazy." "They don't care." "This person is the problem." You probably said something like this the last time you got annoyed at the office. In this episode, the DPH coaches break down what to do the next time someone on your team drops the ball. You'll learn the difference between being decisive and being judgmental, when to act immediately or t...

You can do everything “right” and still feel stuck: work harder, save more, invest earlier, chase a retirement number… then wake up the next day and realize nothing changed. That moment is what we’re unpacking, especially for dentists who are high achievers, practice owners, and the kind of people who won’t be happy staring at the ocean for 30 years. We walk through the core problem with tradition...

Your team does the right things when you're in the building. Turn your back and... maybe not. Dr. Gina Dorfman has spent over 20 years building practices around culture, and knows exactly what makes a team follow through without being reminded. She explains what has to come first, the test candidates don't know they're taking, and what to do about a strong performer who's dragg...

If your leadership meeting turns up “no problems,” we think you should be nervous. Silence can feel like health, but it often signals something else: people are checked out, nobody is looking closely, or your team doesn’t feel safe enough to tell the truth. We unpack why great dental practices don’t win by eliminating problems, they win by getting brutally good at seeing problems early, talking ab...

Whatever is holding your practice back is probably not the thing you worked on this week. Dr. George Hariri, co-founder of Shared Practices and author of Dental Moneyball , went from one practice to nearly 50 and stopped practicing dentistry entirely — and the practice he left behind is performing better now than when he was in it. In this episode, he walks through where you should be spending you...

That split second after a patient asks “Can’t you just fill it?” can quietly decide the whole case. If you hesitate, even with good intentions, you can accidentally turn your best clinical recommendation into an “upgrade” and make the compromised option feel like the default. We dig into why that happens and how to communicate treatment plans with calm confidence, so your patients feel informed in...

Cost, timing, pain, insurance. These objections don't mean a patient is saying "no." In this episode, the DPH coaches share how they handle the most common patient objections and turn them into a "yes." You'll learn how to present treatment plans big and small — with confidence, and without being salesy or putting patients on the defensive. Topics discussed: (00:00) I...

Your front desk can look busy all day and still leak production, profit, and patience. When phones, check-ins, insurance questions, and balance collections are treated like one giant job, “urgency” wins every time. The ringing phone gets answered, the insurance fire gets put out, and the real growth work quietly disappears: filling tomorrow’s hole, following up on that $10,000 treatment plan, and...

We break down why the same operational problems keep resurfacing even after everyone “agrees” in a meeting. We share a simple leadership framework that turns talk into implementation so our dental practice keeps improving without constant reminders.  • the hidden cost of repeated meetings and drifting systems  • why agreement feels good but fails without a system  • a real crown charting conflict...

Every dentist wants an assistant who anticipates their needs without being asked. Almost nobody does what it takes to get there. Kevin Henry, dental journalist and founder of Dental Assistant Nation, has spent 21 years advocating for dental assistants. In this episode, he shares what makes them disengage, what a good day actually looks like for them, and how to train them the right way. Topics dis...

We describe the moment every practice owner knows: you block CEO time to build better systems, then lose it to nonstop interruptions and tiny fires. We share how protecting leadership time, setting clear availability rules, and focusing on KPIs turns you from the bottleneck into the builder of a practice that runs without you.  • why CEO time disappears faster than clinical time  • protecting lead...

Eight out of ten employees show up disengaged. The other two are doing all the work in your practice. In this episode, Dr. David Maloley explains what's really driving attrition and why a paycheck doesn't cut it anymore. You'll find out which outside forces are quietly commoditizing your practice, the burnout triggers already built in, and how to create an employee experience that h...

Hire another associate, open a second location, drop insurance — or maybe change nothing at all? The truth is, just because your practice can grow doesn't mean it should. In this episode, the DPH coaches will help you figure out what kind of practice actually fits the life you want. You'll hear the mistake that almost buried one of them, the steps you should take before scaling, and the...

You know the moment: you’re having the same conversation again, trying to stay calm, trying to protect psychological safety, but quietly wondering why the message still isn’t landing. When a team member keeps missing a checklist step, showing up late, skipping a pre-collect, or sending patients up front with the wrong codes, it stops feeling like a one-off mistake and starts feeling like a culture...

"I just need to get more patients into the office." It's something almost every owner tells themselves, but it's rarely what their practice needs. In this episode, you'll learn the five levers that decide how much your practice actually produces. The DPH coaches share their own experiences of freezing in front of patients, getting honest feedback from their teams, and coac...

Your hygienist spends more time with your patients than you do. That makes them one of the biggest case acceptance drivers you have. This episode shows you how to unlock that potential with the right systems, language, and a true doctor-hygienist partnership. Hygiene consultant Janet Hagerman breaks down how to train your team to talk about treatment, the meeting you should be having every month,...

If you walked into your dental practice right now and asked one random team member what they’re actively trying to get better at, would they have a real answer or a long pause? That moment tells you almost everything about your culture, your leadership, and why “good people” sometimes slowly turn into disengaged people. We believe most team members don’t drift toward excellence on their own, they...