Dental Practice Heroes

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 right now, yet keeps postponin...

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 want.

Topics discussed:

00:00 Introduction

01:59 Why goo...

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 we dr...

"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 take a pause and get curious, and how to address problems without putting anyone o...

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 tradit...

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 dragging the team down. Plus, hear her message to any woman w...

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 about them cl...

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 your time as CEO and the growth le...

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 instead...

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) Introduction

(01:51) Why even obvious treatment gets turned down

...

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 building systems ...

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 discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:52) Wh...

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 leadership time like pr...

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 holds your practice together.

Topics discussed:

(00:00...

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 honest questions that reveal whether a b...

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 problem. That’s ...

"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 coaching associates who want a raise.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Int...

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, and the five steps to the perfect ha...