The Savvy Dentist

Most patients have no way of judging the quality of your dentistry, so dental practice owners get judged on everything around it instead. In this episode, Dr Jesse Green sits down with Dan Monheit, Chief CX Thinker at Thinkerbell, to work through the psychology behind every decision your patients make, and the small, deliberate changes that make your practice the one they choose and return to. If...

The four stages of dental practice growth are far more predictable than most owners realise, and so are the problems waiting inside each one. In this episode, Dr Jesse Green works through what it takes to grow a dental practice at every stage, from startup to growth to scaling up to preparing for exit. You will learn why a startup practice without retention systems is a leaky bucket you can never...

Social media keeps declaring word of mouth marketing slow and inefficient. In this episode, Dr Jesse Green makes the opposite case, and lays out the four step ESAR framework for patient referrals in your dental practice: the same system behind several multi-seven figure practices he helped grow with zero advertising spend. He also explains how external marketing adds new patients while referral ma...

AI tools are arriving faster than the rules that govern them, and most practice owners are switching them on without knowing where their obligations begin and end. In this episode, Dr Jesse Green sits down with Zac Herps, Managing Director of Hillhouse Legal Partners, to work through what AI in dental practice actually exposes you to, from the moment a tool generates its very first clinical note....

One dental practice worked through four receptionists in a few years and every single time, they blamed the receptionist or blamed the hire. Dr Jesse Green traces the problem back to its real source: the dental practice hiring process. He makes the case that getting it right lifts the calibre of applicants, keeps good team members longer, and protects the productivity that constant turnover quietl...

Dr Jesse Green is joined by Clayton Newell from Henry Schein One to unpack how AI can help your dental practice today, not in five years' time. You will hear which low value tasks to hand over first, why freeing your front desk from the calendar and the phone changes the patient experience, and how to tell the difference between technology that earns its keep and technology that just looks impress...

There is one delegation habit that quietly caps the growth of a dental practice, and it is not the one you would expect. In this episode, Dr Jesse Green unpacks the difference between delegating a task and delegating an outcome, and why the second one is where the leverage lives. He also explains how answering a question with a question builds a team that problem solves without you. You will see w...

Are the 2026 tax changes about to undo years of work in your practice? Dr Jesse Green and Brendan Campbell go through what the changes actually mean for a practice owner, and the answer is calmer than the headlines suggest. You will find out which assets are grandfathered and need no action at all, how far away the real deadlines sit, where changing the way your practice is owned could get more mo...

Are you the bottleneck in your dental practice? If every decision in your practice still comes back to you, this episode breaks down exactly why. Dr Jesse Green unpacks the three layers of leadership, primary, secondary and tertiary, and shows how skipping any one of them quietly turns you into the bottleneck for every problem your team faces. You will learn how to set the standard as the practice...

In this episode, Dr Jesse Green sits down with returning guest Michael Filosi to unpack the seven deadly sins of dental practice ownership: the recurring mistakes that quietly cap growth, enterprise value, and exit outcomes for practice owners. Jesse and Michael cover the fundamentals of high standards and self leadership, the numbers every practice owner should be able to read on the fly, the str...

Most practice owners obsess over new patient acquisition while their single most valuable growth asset sits quietly in the patient database. In this episode, Dr Jesse Green unpacks the dental patient reactivation campaign, a low cost, high yield system for winning back inactive patients that consistently returns 15 to 19% of a lapsed database to the chair. We unpack the story of a practice with 12...

In this episode, Dr Jesse Green sits down with psychologist turned entrepreneur Ali Hill, co-founder of Pragmatic Thinking and host of the Stand Out Life podcast. Ali unpacks the difference between the obligations that come with your position as a business owner and the ones you have simply inherited from social programming or people pleasing, and why untangling the two is the real key to protecti...

Patients rarely say yes to treatment on logic alone. Jesse breaks down why case acceptance language for dentists needs to speak to emotion first, using a "fireside chat" to uncover what is really motivating a patient before the exam even begins. He then introduces the want, need, logic framework, a technique that links a patient's emotional driver to the clinical need you have identified, always c...

What happens when a 46-year-old walks into a company where the average age is 23, and has to earn the respect of every person in the room? In this episode, Jesse sits down with Stephen Scheeler, the former inaugural CEO of Facebook ANZ and now CEO and MD of Omniscient, a company using AI to map the human brain. Stephen's career has zigged and zagged through startups, Silicon Valley, McKinsey and b...

What if the patients you're losing every month are costing you more than the ones you're spending thousands trying to attract? In this episode, Jesse flips the script on practice growth, arguing that dental practice patient retention, not marketing, is the real lever most practice owners are ignoring. Jesse introduces the "leaky bucket" problem: new patients pouring in the front door while existin...

What if the biggest growth opportunity in your dental practice isn't more new patients - it's the ones who are quietly slipping away? In this episode of The Savvy Dentist Podcast, Jesse makes a compelling case that patient retention isn't a marketing strategy, it's a wealth strategy. And the numbers, as Jesse lays them out, are genuinely confronting. Most practice owners are so focused on filling...

What happens to your dental practice when life throws you a curveball? Not a minor inconvenience - a genuine crisis. Health problems, family emergencies, the kind of stuff that stops you in your tracks. For most practice owners, that's the moment they discover whether their business is a life raft or a dead weight. And the difference, as Jesse shares in this episode, comes down to what you built b...

Most dental practice owners are exceptional clinicians. They've invested years and significant money mastering their craft, but when it comes to the business side of the practice? That can be a very different story. In this episode of the Savvy Dentist Podcast, Jesse Green makes the case that running a successful practice isn't about finding the easy button - it's about doing the hard work to mast...

In this episode, I chat with Verne Harnish. Verne is the founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs' Organisation (EO), with over 11,000 members worldwide. He is also the founder and CEO of Gazelles, a global executive education and coaching company with over 180 partners on six continents. Verne has spent the past three decades helping companies scale up. In today’s episode, we chat about: The 4...

You could be doing everything right - attracting new patients, retaining your existing ones, investing in your team - and still be quietly bleeding your practice dry. How? By failing to manage capacity. In this episode, Jesse Green unpacks one of the most overlooked principles in dental practice growth: use it or lose it. It sounds simple, but the implications for dental leadership are significant...

What's lurking just beneath the surface of your dental practice right now? You might not be able to see it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there - just waiting for the moment you step on it. Jesse Green calls these your practice landmines, and every practice owner has them, whether they know it or not. In this episode, Jesse unpacks a practical, three-step dental leadership framework for getting s...

What if the worst moment in your practice could become your most powerful marketing tool? Most dentists pour energy into attracting new patients, but Jesse Green makes a compelling case that the real loyalty-building gold is already sitting inside your four walls - and it shows up every time something goes wrong. In this episode, Jesse unpacks the Recovery Paradox: the counterintuitive truth that...

There's someone on your team right now you know you need to talk to. You've been putting it off, maybe you're worried they'll get emotional, maybe you think they'll quit, or maybe you just don't know how to say it without the whole thing blowing up. Here's the truth about dental leadership: the necessary conversation you keep avoiding is the one that's quietly running your practice. In this episod...

What if the biggest problem in your practice isn't your marketing, your systems, or even your team - but the way you're communicating with them? In this episode, Jesse Green cuts straight to the chase: communication breakdown is not a people problem. It's a system problem. And that means it's fixable. If you've ever felt frustrated that things aren't being done the way you envisioned, or that you'...

Are you the kind of dental leader who hands over the reins - or do you find yourself hovering, checking, and quietly correcting your team's every move? In this episode, Jesse unpacks why micromanagement quietly destroys trust, and what to do instead. Drawing on one of history's most famous negotiating phrases, Ronald Reagan's "trust but verify", Jesse explains how the right systems create the acco...