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Dental Practice Success in Uncertain Times: 3 Lessons from the Great Recession

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In 2008, I had a choice to make about my dental practice organization. The world was melting down, people were just beginning to lose their homes. Banks were beginning the process of foreclosing on thousands of homes in default. People were losing their jobs and our government was scratching its head wondering what to do. I made a decision to do something well outside my comfort zone at the time. That moment seemed to call for caution, preservation, reaction.
Not survive.
Not pause.
Scale.

Dental practice scaling

While most of the market was pulling back, I opened three additional practices and built the foundation of what would become the most profitable phase of my entire career.

This isn’t a story about luck or timing.
It’s about mindset. It’s about systems.
And it’s about making bold moves when others freeze.

If you’re feeling the pressure right now, if inflation, rising costs, or tightening margins are making you question your next move, I want you to know something:

You don’t have to retreat.
You can build in this environment.
You can grow right now.

Here’s how I did it—and how you can too.

Many People React. Entrepreneurs Prepare.

During the Great Recession, I watched good doctors crumble—not because they weren’t skilled or passionate, but because they were reactive. They:

  • Slashed marketing and growth budgets
  • Froze hiring
  • Put expansion plans on indefinite hold
  • Pulled back into survival mode

And I get it. That kind of fear response is human. But it’s not strategic.

I realized early on: if I wanted to build something that could survive any storm, I needed to stop reacting—and start leading. That mindset shift changed everything.

Step 1: I Built Systems That Didn’t Rely on Me

The first thing I did was take a hard look at my operations. The truth?
There were many areas where I was the bottleneck.

Too many decisions ran through me. Too much depended on me showing up and putting out fires. That’s a problem for any dental practice in any season—but in a downturn, it’s a business killer.

So I systemized everything I could:

  • Clinical and operational SOPs
  • Training paths for every team role
  • Metrics that told me whether my systems were working
  • Incentives that built trust, enthusiasm and loyalty

That shift created predictability.
And predictability creates profit.

I also learned some invaluable lessons with each dental practice I opened. I document these lessons in my book, Extraction: The Surprising New Formula to Systemize, Scale and Sell Your Business. It’s got some great exercises, tips, strategies and recommended books for you.

Lesson #1: Don’t be the bottleneck. Scaling or growing your dental practice means your role shifts from strictly practicing dentistry to becoming a leader, investor and CEO of your practice. That means becoming the path to success, not the obstacle in front of it. Learn to extract yourself, little by little, from the day-to-day to focus on the 10,000-foot view so you can lead.

Step 2: I Doubled Down on People

When you’re in a tough economy, it’s tempting to cut your team to save money. But I believe this:

The strength of your practice is a reflection of the strength of your people.

Even in the recession, I prioritized hiring and training A-players. I gave my team a clear vision, I treated them with respect, and I created a culture where everyone knew their role in the mission. Everybody on the right bus and in the right seats.

That kind of leadership doesn’t just retain people—it unlocks their potential.

Lesson #2: Great teams aren’t a luxury in a downturn—they’re your survival strategy. In hard times, cutting your team might save money—but investing in the right people builds a business that can weather anything.
When your team understands the mission, feels trusted, and is trained to lead, not just follow, they become your greatest asset in any economy.

Step 3: I Made Every Decision from Data

If you’re leading a business based on how you feel, you’ll ride the same roller coaster as the economy. But when you use data, you get clarity—and clarity breeds courage.

Before opening a new practice, I made sure:

  • My systems were replicable
  • My overhead was under control
  • My production-per-chair was profitable
  • My KPIs told me it was time to grow

No guesswork. No gambling. Just informed execution.

Lesson #3: Emotions are unpredictable. Data isn’t. In uncertain times, data-driven decisions replace guesswork with growth. When you know your numbers, you lead with confidence—not chaos. Clarity creates courage. KPIs create control. If you can’t measure it, don’t bet your business on it.

Hard Times Are Mirrors—Don’t be Afraid to Look into Them

If you’re anxious about the economy right now, let me tell you: you’re not alone. I’ve coached hundreds of doctors through this exact feeling.

And here’s what I always say:

Hard times are mirrors. They show you exactly what needs to be fixed, rethought, or leveled up.

So instead of asking, “How does my dental practice I survive this?”
Ask constructive questions designed to help you find answers:

  • “Where are my inefficiencies?”
  • “What systems are missing?”
  • “What does my team need from me right now?”
  • “Where can I get better?”

At Optimize Practice Alliance, this is what we do. We help doctors turn their anxiety into strategy.

Because economic downturns aren’t barriers—they’re filters. And those dental entrepreneurs who are prepared will rise.

Here’s What I Recommend Right Now

If you’re running a dental business in 2025 and feeling uncertain, you’re not alone. But don’t let that stop you from moving forward with your plan or dream. These are the same steps we guide our Optimize clients through—and they’re the same principles I used in 2008.

1. Audit Your Systems

What are you still doing manually that could be automated or delegated? Do you have SOPs that a new team member could follow without confusion?

2. Know Your KPIs Cold

To truly lead your dental practice through uncertainty, you need to know your numbers. Revenue per provider tells you how productive your team is. Overhead ratio shows how lean or bloated your expenses are. Patient retention reveals the strength of your relationships and systems. And case acceptance shows how well patients understand and commit to care. These aren’t just numbers—they’re signals. When you track the right ones, you lead with clarity, not guesswork.

3. Overcommunicate With Your Team

Fear thrives in silence. Let your team know the plan. Share the wins. Share the challenges. Build trust and they’ll follow you anywhere.

4. Invest in What Moves the Needle

Now is the time to double down on what works—whether that’s leadership training, marketing that actually brings in patients, or improving your patient education process.

5. Protect Your Mindset at All Costs

You can’t lead in fear. You can only lead in focus. I built my growth mindset during the worst of the economy—and it’s the one thing that’s never failed me.

If You Want Help, That’s What We’re Here For

I built Optimize Practice Alliance so other doctors wouldn’t have to figure this out the hard way like I did.

We help dental entrepreneurs:

  • Cut out inefficiencies
  • Build strong, self-led teams
  • Systemize their operations
  • Develop real growth plans
  • And eventually exit at top value

We’ve walked this road—and we walk it every day with clients across the country.

If you’re ready to build a recession-resistant practice that runs with confidence, not chaos, let’s talk.

Final Thought

When the economy gets shaky, your business doesn’t have to.
You can grow now.
You can lead now.
You can build your most profitable phase right now.

I did it in 2008.
And I promise you—you can do it now.

Let’s get to work.

Schedule a Consulting Call

Supercharge your Dental Practice Exit: Don’t Ignore the 4 Pillars of a Strong Exit Strategy

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As a dental entrepreneur, I know firsthand the years of dedication, long hours, and relentless passion that go into building a successful dental practice. But here’s the thing: while running the day-to-day operations is important, what’s equally crucial is planning for the day you’ll eventually step away from the business. You may not be thinking about retirement just yet, but having an exit strategy in place is key to preserving the legacy you’ve built, maximizing the value of your dental practice, and ensuring your financial future is secure. 

Exit your Dental Practice Successfully

By 2012, I had built my organization from 1 to 8 practices across 2 states. I was traveling between dental practices, overseeing a complex and wide-ranging organization and leadership team and quite frankly, I was burnt out, stressed out and looking for a way out. That is not the place of strength to be negotiating or navigating an exit from at all.  

I needed to take a step back, listen to myself and reassess my roles and my life. So, I did just that. I began to think seriously about exiting my organization, as hard as that was for me to imagine at the time. I regrouped, and after several months of consideration and feedback from others, I made the decision to exit.  

But that was only the beginning of another process, exiting. Exiting is a process and like most everything else I did as a dental entrepreneur, I learned how to do the process correctly through trial and error and going through my own journey with it. Let’s look at the steps you need to take for a healthy, successful and profitable exit from your dental practice.  

An exit strategy isn’t just about the moment you sell your practice. It’s about crafting a roadmap that ensures a smooth transition—one that protects everything you’ve worked so hard for. And the extraction process that I’ve written in regard to scaling applies to selling and exiting as well. First, let’s look at why you need to plan well in advance for your exit. 

The Advantages of a Solid Exit Strategy 

  • Maximizing Your Dental Practice’s Value 

If you’re going to sell your practice, you want to get the best possible value, right? A well-thought-out exit strategy allows you to identify areas where your dental practice can improve—whether it’s streamlining operations, boosting patient satisfaction, or enhancing your marketing efforts. These are all factors that can significantly increase the attractiveness of your practice to potential buyers. I have an interesting story about my marketing program at my exit. In the last two years, I did not have a marketing program. I had shut down all marketing because we had too many patients. My teams could not handle the patient retention we were seeing so I stopped spending money on marketing completely.  

Before that, I was spending about $100,000 a month to get us where we were. And as PE and other entities came in to review our financials they got spooked because we didn’t have any marketing. I said to them, look at our patient retention, look at our daily schedules and then tell me where we’re going to put the patients that come in from implementing a new marketing program. They didn’t have an answer for me. Our financials were strong and solid. Extracting my marketing program increased our valuation. And these outside entities started to realize and understand the value I had created with these decisions.

  • Financial Security for Life After Dentistry 

Selling your dental practice is a major financial event. It’s not just about getting a lump sum; it’s about ensuring that the sale aligns with your retirement plans or other financial goals. A strategic exit plan helps you map out how the proceeds from the sale will fit into your overall financial future, giving you peace of mind as you look forward to the next chapter of your life. This applies to not just selling your practice outright, but also to joining a DPO or DSO.  

  • A Seamless Transition 

Dentistry is all about relationships—those bonds you’ve formed with patients over years of care and trust. A well-constructed exit strategy ensures that these relationships, along with the reputation you’ve built, are preserved. It helps facilitate a smooth handover to the new owner, ensuring continuity in patient care and trust. You want to ensure that the hands you turn your patients over to are hands you trust too.  

  • Preserving Your Legacy and Brand 

Your practice isn’t just a business; it’s a reflection of your personal brand, values, and hard work. Having a thoughtful exit plan can make sure that the standards and reputation you’ve built continue to thrive long after you step away. 

The Necessities of an Exit Strategy – Your Foundation  

Now, let’s look at the foundational aspects of a strong exit strategy. These are areas you will need to spend time on, but I also recommend hiring professionals to execute these aspects of the business successfully.  

  • Understanding Your Dental Practice’s True Value 

First things first: you need to know what your dental practice is worth. This involves a thorough assessment, including your financial records, patient base, market reputation, and even intangible assets like goodwill. Understanding the true value of your practice will give you a strong starting point when negotiating a sale. One of the ways you can get started is by understanding and determining your organization’s EBITDA. My partner and the CEO of Optimize, Josh Gwinn, has written a great post on understanding this metric and how to get there.  

  • Legal and Financial Preparedness 

Ensuring your legal and financial documents are in order is critical. This means up-to-date financial statements, clear legal agreements, and full compliance with any industry regulations. It’s not the most exciting part of the process, but it’s essential to avoid any surprises down the road. 

  • Succession Planning 

Whether you’re passing the dental practice to a family member, selling to a partner, or bringing in a completely new owner, you need a succession plan. Identifying and preparing a suitable successor ensures that the practice continues to run smoothly once you’re no longer in charge. And ideally, this starts at least a couple years before your actual exit to prepare everyone involved in the process and set your expectations for your legacy.  

  • Understanding Tax Implications 

Taxes are unavoidable, and selling a practice comes with its own set of tax challenges. Consulting with a financial advisor or accountant early on can help you understand the tax implications of the sale and minimize your liabilities. 

Strategies for Effective Exit Planning 

I took 2 years to prepare my organization for my exit. And my organization looked vastly different after those two years than it did when I started. For one, I sold 3 of my practices and scaled down from 8 to 5. I needed to make that change for my sanity, but I also did it because it made the process of consolidation easier, and more attractive to buyers. I was able to increase my valuation by taking the steps to scale down and consolidate.  

The other thing I did was, I made my leadership team fully autonomous. They knew exactly what to do and how to do it, without me. I made myself essentially obsolete, another attractive feature to buyers and a much-needed mental relief for me. But those two actions took time, strategy and fore thought to execute. Nothing was left to chance in my preparation for what was to come next. So, here are some strategies for effective planning.  

  • Start Early 

If you take nothing else away from this post, remember this: start planning early. Ideally, you should begin exit planning years before you intend to step away. This gives you time to implement the necessary changes to enhance your dental practice’s value and ensures a smoother transition when the time comes. 

  • Build a Strong Management Team 

A reliable, competent management team adds enormous value to your practice. It not only reassures potential buyers but also makes the transition process easier when you do step back. Empowering your team to handle the day-to-day independently is a huge plus. 

  • Enhance Your Marketability 

Take the time to invest in modern equipment, upgrade your office environment, and embrace technology. Having a strong digital presence, solid reviews, and an updated office can make your practice far more appealing to prospective buyers.  

  • Explore Different Exit Options 

You’ve got options when it comes to how you exit. You could sell to a partner, merge with another practice, or bring in a new owner entirely. You may also opt to sell to a PE, join a DSO or a DPO. Each option has its pros and cons, so it’s important to weigh them based on your personal and financial goals. 

  • Engage Professional Advisors 

Don’t go through this process alone. Surround yourself with a team of experts—financial planners, accountants, lawyers, and brokers. They can guide you through the legal, financial, and market complexities that come with selling a dental practice, ensuring you get the best outcome. 

Build an Environment of Negotiating Strength 

Exit planning isn’t something you leave until the last minute. It requires foresight, strategic thinking, and a commitment to preserving the legacy you’ve worked so hard to build. The earlier you start, the better prepared you’ll be to maximize your practice’s value, ensure a smooth transition, and achieve your financial goals. Whether you’re aiming to retire, reduce your role, or pursue new ventures, a solid exit strategy is your foundation for future success.

When I exited my own practice for an 8-figure valuation, it was the result of careful planning and knowing my numbers inside and out. One of the most effective ways to strengthen your negotiating position is to track and understand your key performance indicators (KPIs). When you have a clear grasp of your financials and operational metrics, you can demonstrate the true value of your practice to any potential buyer.

That’s why we created the OPA KPI Tracker—a free, easy-to-use tool designed specifically for dental entrepreneurs. With the KPI Tracker, you’ll monitor the metrics that matter most for scaling, growing, and ultimately exiting your practice on your own terms.

Ready to lay the groundwork for a successful exit?
Download our free OPA KPI Tracker now and start building a practice—and a future—that’s ready for any opportunity.

Download Your KPI Tracker

How Do I Create Growth in my Dental Practice? The #1 Invaluable Tool for Mapping your Success 

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In your dental practice, do you have one over-arching goal that unifies and drives your organizational growth? If not, keep reading. You have a successful practice; your team is aligned with your success; your goal is to assist and propel the health and well-being of your patients. Is that enough?  

No.  

What is a ‘Vision’ for your Dental Practice?

As a dentist, your focus is, of course, on your patients and their health and healing. However, as a dental entrepreneur, responsible for, not just your patients, but the overall health and stability of your organization, you need to focus on the overarching goal of economic success to keep doing what you’re doing for your patients and your teams. And Unfortunately, it’s not enough to “get butts in seats” to drive that economic success.

As with many entrepreneurs, economic success entails an overall vision for your business, not just your practice. You need a vision that guides and aligns your business decisions, and that vision is different from the one you had for becoming a dentist.  

Working On your Dental Practice, Not Just In It

You are a dentist, but you are also a dental entrepreneur. You show up at the start of your day, get in the dentist’s chair and work in your practice. While you’re doing that, who is working on your business? Well, if you want to oversee your future and your legacy, you must be the one to show up and work on your business, not just in it. Meaning, you’ve got your overall vision as a dentist, but if you own your practice, you must have an overall vision for your business.  

How do I know this? Because I was once right where you are: a dentist with no clear idea of how to run a business. In fact, I learned the hard way how to run my business, but that’s a story for another post. Let’s dig into the importance of a vision for your business. The following is an excerpt from my book, Extraction: The Surprising New Formula to Systemize, Scale and Sell your Practice. In this excerpt, I describe how my vision for my first practice became a reality.

Extraction by Dr. Jack Bayramyan - Dental Practice

Why Do You Need a Vision for your Dental Practice?  

Excerpt: Chapter 3: Creating Your Vision

THE POWER OF VISION  

While I was an associate dentist in the early 2000s, holding onto the vision of owning my own patient-centered practice opened my mind to exploring opportunities for purchasing my first dental office. A year after successfully buying that office and establishing our practice, I envisioned how we could expand our business model to serve additional under-served communities.  

In 2005, as I started to explore possible communities, I had a flashback of my dental school days. I remembered my daily drive back from USC. There was a stop light across from MacArthur Park that would take me 15 to 20 minutes to cross due to the volume of pedestrian traffic.

As annoying as it was trying to get home to my family after a long day of school, this red light, forcing me to stay in one place and observe the public life around me, ended up being an opportunity to scope that exact location for our first start-up practice. The intersection of 6th and Alvarado was, and probably still is, one of the busiest intersections in L.A., serving a high number of residents with minimal access to transportation who must walk for their daily needs.  

I spent months scoping out that community. I had a vision of where I would like the practice to be. It had to be visible, accessible and welcoming to walk-in patients. Finally, after six months of searching with no results, I noticed an empty location. I walked into the building which had only a church sign on the front door and some chairs inside. I never saw anyone inside during the day nor did the building have a For Lease sign.  

The following day I went back with my dental assistant who could translate Spanish and spoke with some of the tenants trying to find out if the storefront was available for rent. They informed us that the place was occupied for nightly gatherings, and they gave us the prop- erty manager’s contact information.

If I could have the tenant agree to relocate to another location, the property manager would consider giving me a lease. I went back out for several nights with my dental assistant to catch them during their gathering and present an offer. The first night there was no one there. This is not a location you want to be past nightfall when the city turns from families running er- rands and shopping into a gang and drug epicenter.  

The second night, we had luck and were able to speak with the pastor who preached in the storefront regularly. We shared our vision with him of opening a dental practice for kids in the community. We told him how important it was to be in that location and how we needed to obtain permits and have visibility for walk-ins. The pastor agreed to relocate if we paid for their move.  

Once the location had finally been leased to us, we had to create a strategic plan of sourcing the contractor, drawing up plans, speaking with lenders, and understanding credentialing requirements from the state insurance office.  

As soon as the construction started, we needed to build a team as well as a marketing strategy to bring in new patients. We invested capital to hire and train staff at our existing location to ensure that we had a competent and experienced team when we opened our doors. I knew that we had only one chance to make an outstanding first impression with our patients. We also built a robust outreach patient education marketing strategy and hired a team made up of dental assistants who could educate and guide the parents in our community on the importance of establishing a dental home for their children.  

Finally, the opening day came, and we had to execute. It was the sweetest feeling to see the smiles and to feel the gratitude and appreciation from our partners and the children we were going to serve in our new community. I remember to this day, one of the moms telling my assistant that in all her life she had never felt so loved by any doctor.  

Within three months of opening, our practice was organically growing with new patients and financially profitable. This growth is my most memorable and rewarding experience of creation, from vision to execution. That first vision was the foundation of our ability to expand and scale that, to this day, has blessed us with the privilege and responsibility of serving close to a million under-served children across the country. The extraction process was at the heart of this experience. It started as a vivid clarity of vision for growth, expansion and value creation.  

End excerpt.

Creating Your Vision for your Dental Practice 

Every successful business grows with a clearly and consciously crafted vision. So, how do you create a vision for your business?

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to seek out and participate in masterminds, conferences, coaching and round tables that have given me access to talent and resources that propelled my success. One of my coaches was Cameron Herold. And his book, Vivid Vision: A Remarkable Tool for Aligning your Business Around a Shared Vision of the Future really defined for me what a vision aligned with my values could do for my business.

The work I did using Cameron’s Vivid Vision® process helped me craft a vision that was aligned with my core values; it wasn’t only about the growth of my business but how I wanted my future to be aligned with that vision and my values.

About the time I met Cameron Herold, I started attending a conference aimed at entrepreneurs looking to build, scale and protect their businesses and legacies. Dan Sullivan‘s Strategic Coach offers entrepreneurs the opportunities to find their voice, create stability within their organizations and build lasting success. Another incredible coach I worked with was Julia Waller. She along with her sister, wrote another book that helped me immensely during my vision creation process, Unique Ability 2.0 Discovery: Define Your Best Self.

The Next Best Tool for Mapping Growth in Your Dental Practice

Designing a sustainable vision rooted in your values is the foundation for lasting economic success and a legacy you can be proud of. If you’re ready to embark on this life-changing adventure, there’s one more essential tool you need in your toolkit: a strategic roadmap that brings your vision, values, and goals into sharp focus.

That’s why we created the Extraction GPS Template. Inspired by the strategies in our founder, Dr. Jack Bayramyan‘s book, this worksheet guides you step by step in defining your core values, assessing where your practice is now, setting your 3–5 year vision, mapping your marketing plan, and creating focused, achievable goals for the year and quarter ahead.

With the Extraction GPS template, you don’t just dream about growth, you build a clear, actionable path to reach it.

Ready to map your future and make your vision a reality?
Download your free Extraction GPS template now and start charting your course to sustainable success, one goal at a time.

DOWNLOAD YOUR EXTRACTION GPS TEMPLATE

For Dental Practice Owners: 3 Scary Mindsets that Stifle Growth 

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As a dentist, dental practice owner, entrepreneur and now the founder and president of OPS, I talk with other dentists all the time. More to the point, I to listen to dentists. And one thing I’ve come to realize is that much of what holds dentists back from growing and scaling is their own mindsets.

The Biggest Obstacle to Growth and Opportunity

In my experience, there is one type of mindset that destroys hope and possibility in professionals and entrepreneurs in every industry. I call it growth fear and it is a very real phenomenon. I want to address 3 limiting growth fear mindsets in particular in this post.  

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” 
~Dale Carnegie 

Fear is an effective action-killer. Once fear has its grip on you, you’ve stopped before you’ve even begun. It’s one of the most time-consuming and pointless wastes of energy. Yes, fear is a useful emotion not to be ignored. It alerts us to immediate and long-term danger whether physical or emotional. It can also teach us a lot about ourselves. We need to pay attention to fear when it arises.  

However, paying attention to it is not the usual focus we take in business. When fear arises in us or in our business dealings, we usually don’t immediately understand it, address it or remove the cause of it. When we feel fear in business we ignore it, push it aside or belittle ourselves for having it if we do acknowledge it at all.  

Why is that?

Fear is the First Step in a Challenging Situation

I think the answer is that we don’t recognize fear for what it is when it comes up while we’re working. Fear shows itself in other ways in our business lives: we push plans aside; we repudiate ideas from others as unattainable or far-fetched; or we conveniently forget or ignore valuable insights that can spur growth, risk or investment.

All these responses can be justified as “safe” or “down-to-earth” or “rational” choices. And sometimes they are. But sometimes, many times, these responses are not ‘rational’ but an unconscious reaction to the fear that arises in us when we think about the risk, the work, or the delegation it would take to achieve a goal that triggers fear in us.  

Let’s look at these three fundamental fears and how they affect our business growth and dental practice function.  

The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” 
~Nelson Mandela 

Growth Fear #1: Nothing Will Be in My Control in My Dental Practice

When you’re feeling out of control in your business that is a sign of fear or trepidation. It’s time to take a pause. Step back from your duties, your work and your busy day. It’s very easy to get into a groove, or more accurately, a rut in our businesses and get stuck. This experience has plagued every business owner at one time or another. You get stuck working in your business and forget or ignore working on your business.  

What’s the difference?  

Working in your business means you’re sitting in the chair looking into mouths day after day. This is a fine place to be until your dental practice is coming apart at the seams because you haven’t hired a new associate in months; you haven’t thought about raises for your team and they’re starting to revolt; appointments are dropping because you haven’t paid attention to training your staff on a recall program.

There is a part of you that knows action needs to be taken but you are not taking the action required because it means monetary investment, or stepping up and out of your dental chair which is where you’re most comfortable; or you rationalize that the time away from the chair will hurt your income and profit. But that’s where the thinking stops because you’re too afraid to dig into the feelings and discomfort that these situations bring up.  

The solution is to give yourself time and patience to learn to work, not just in your dental practice, but to work on your dental business. Sometimes, taking the leap from dentist to dental entrepreneur is scary and uncomfortable. But it is a necessary step for your success.  

Growth Fear #2: Growing My Dental Practice Means More Work for Me 

This is a big and often unconscious fear for dental practice owners. The thinking goes, “if I try to grow or scale my dental practice, I will just be giving myself more work.” So, they put that idea aside for “one day.”  

More work with growing your practice is a distinct possibility. However, that is not the only possibility. It is possible, preferable and optimal to grow your dental practice after having identified and delegated the goals and responsibilities for growth to your team. This step requires that you get agreement and buy-in from your team members. And asking them to see and agree to your vision and assist you in that attainment is scary. It means putting yourself, your dreams and your personal desires on display and asking people to agree with you and fight for your vision alongside you.  

That’s a big ask and it requires your vulnerability. So scary. I remember coaching a dentist on this very issue. And it took a while to uncover that this was actually the issue. We were working on ways to establish more revenue and profit for his practice. I offered up the idea of scaling his business and almost immediately started offering excuses as to why it wouldn’t work.  

We took a break from our coaching session for lunch where we both got a chance to breathe and relax. I asked him why he didn’t think scaling was an option for him and in all honesty, he said that it would mean more work for him while he was already feeling spread too thin in his current responsibilities. There it was. We got to the core of his fear – more work. I explained that this need not be the case and we went back into our coaching session focusing on solutions that ensured no added responsibilities to his workload. It turned out to be a very productive session for him.  

Growth Fear #3: Growing My Dental Practice Will Cost Me Big 

The final area where fear stealthily stifles growth is the thinking that growing your practice cuts into profit and revenue with no guarantee of ROI. You may have had thoughts of growing your practice in the past and the minute you have those thoughts you think, “welp, it’ll be too expensive to implement those changes. Never mind.” And you move on as quickly as you start thinking about it.  

On the face of it, that thinking is logical, obvious and safe. Yes, growing your practice does incur expense and require investment, but that is the initial short-term aspect of all growth. If you were to stop there then, of course, you would never see the ultimate results of your investment or work.  

But I challenge you to look at this fear in another way. Your fear of not seeing a return on your financial investment might very well be rooted in your lack of confidence in your or your team’s ability to see your actions through to the end.  

Why do I say that?  

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.“ 
~Marie Curie  

Because a financial investment in your dental practice is a bet on your abilities. Full stop. You’re betting that you’ve got the courage, the know-how and the endurance to build, test and grow your systems until they start yielding the results you want. So, what’s the real fear? The real fear here is you wondering if you’ve got what it takes. But once again, you can’t grow your practice alone or in a vacuum. It takes an entire team to bring your vision into reality.  

And the sooner you can be honest with yourself about the root causes of your fear the sooner you can address them and begin to take effective action in the direction of your choosing. And that is what real freedom is about, isn’t it? The ability to respond as you choose.

It’s Only the Entrepreneurial Unknown You Fear

In fact, all these fears are rooted in questioning yourself and your abilities. Why? Because, most likely you’ve never done this before! You leave dental school striving to be an expert in dentistry and then spend years perfecting your craft. Where is that same level of expertise, perfection and mastery for your business??  

Many dentists come by their business acumen through trial and error and many mistakes and missteps. It takes years of exhaustive efforts to build a successful dental practice. So, when you start to ask yourself bigger questions about growth, the fear leaps up and instantly quashes the hope and then camouflages itself as something else: non-interest, overwhelm, logic or practicality.  

Conquer Growth Roadblocks with Clarity, Not Fear

After exploring the mindset traps that quietly sabotage progress, it’s clear that lasting growth doesn’t come from wishful thinking or simply hoping things will get better. It comes from bringing clarity to your business—understanding what’s working, what’s not, and having the confidence to act on real data.

If you’re ready to stop letting uncertainty or fear dictate your next move, the fastest way forward is to measure what matters most in your practice. When you know your numbers, you can spot early warning signs, address challenges before they become costly, and empower your team to reach new levels of performance.

That’s why we developed the OPA KPI Tracker, a practical, user-friendly tool designed specifically for dental entrepreneurs. This is the very tool we use when we consult with our partner practices so they gain real insight into how the business of their practice is actually going. With it, you can:

  • Track your production, case acceptance, scheduling efficiency, and more, all in one place.
  • Identify the small tweaks that can make a big impact on your growth.
  • Turn unknowns into actionable next steps, so you always know where you stand.

Ready to move past fear and lead with clarity?
Download your free OPA KPI Tracker now and take the first step toward a more resilient, data-driven, and successful practice.

You don’t have to navigate this journey alone. With the right tools and a mindset focused on progress, you can transform uncertainty into opportunity, starting today. 

Download Your KPI Tracker

Follow 3 Principles to Build a Strong Dental Practice Culture: The Power of Mission, Values, and Norms 

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You have the power to create a world-class dental practice or dental organization. In this post I’m going to delve into three foundational principles that will allow you to build and run a premier dental organization. Our current economic environment is one filled with incredible opportunities for growth; as well as challenges in keeping talented, committed and passionate staff. To meet that challenge, we must also be mindful as business owners to provide the right conditions for our employees to stick around. Both aspects of running a successful dental practice are a lot to think about, balance and juggle.  

The 3 Drivers of Successful Dental Practice Culture 

So, how do you strike that balance between attacking opportunity and nurturing a thriving organizational culture? It starts with the basics: your mission, your values and your norms. These three foundational elements are the backbone of your decisions, your priority-setting and your business cadence. Without them, your organization runs the risk of being a rudderless ship foundering in the shallows. So, let’s look at each of these principles one by one, starting with your mission statement.  

Your Mission Statement Defines Culture in Your Dental Practice 

Your mission statement serves as the north star for your dental practice. It defines the purpose and direction of your business. This may seem a bit arbitrary for a dental practice, after all the mission is sort of built into your business structure: take care of people’s teeth. But a mission statement encompasses not just what you do but how your company approaches its work, the purpose of your practice’s existence and its overall objectives.  

When writing your mission statement, make it clear, simple and inspirational. Your statement should align your purpose and goal with your values. It should also be imbued with a sense of passion that inspires your team and rallies them around your goal and vision. A mission statement isn’t just for your patients to understand you, it’s for your teams to align themselves with what you want to accomplish.  

Values Set the Tone for Team Culture in your Dental Practice 

Values are the principles by which your actions are guided every day, and they are a reflection of your life and what you hold dear. Your company’s core values are the guiding principles that dictate how your employees and your organization operate. They are the moral compass of your business. One big advantage in defining your values and setting guiding principles is that it gives your employees an understanding of what you expect from them and what they can and should expect from you.  

Defining your company’s core values might be daunting if you don’t have a clear understanding of your own personal values. Harvard Business Review has a step-by-step guide to help you assess your personal values.  

Here are some elements to consider when defining your dental practice’s values:  

  • Identify the values that are most important to your organization (yourself). They could be honesty, innovation, customer-centricity, or any other principles you hold dear. 
  • Integrate your company values into your daily operations. This means that every decision, from hiring to product development, should align with these values. 
  • Communicate your values effectively to your team. Encourage them to embody these values in their work. Spend some time examining where, in your practice, you and your team can incorporate your practice values and make them known to your patients and prospects.  
  • Define your core values to give your teams the knowledge and confidence in knowing how you want business conducted on your behalf. This will instill your teams with confidence and allows your teams the freedom to act according to the roadmap you have given them.

Norms: The Everyday Behaviors That Build Trust, Communication and Cadence in your Dental Practice  

Norms are the behaviors that govern how your teams interact and work within your dental practice. Norms help set the tone for your practice culture. To establish effective norms: 

  • Create norms that promote inclusivity, respect, and collaboration. Encourage open communication and diversity of ideas. This norm allows your team to feel fully engaged and, well, included in the day-to-day execution of your mission.  
  • No sacred cows: Allows anyone on the team to call out behavior, patterns or ideas that aren’t working anymore and bring something new to the table. Practicing allowing everyone on your team to have a voice might take a minute to establish as a norm, but it allows for greater efficiency, communication and creativity.  
  • Consistency is key to all functions of running a smooth dental practice. So, making consistency a practice norm is key to team behavior and practice management.  
  • Adaptability is another norm that encourages creativity, problem-solving, open communication and efficiency. Be open to ideas to reevaluate and adapt systems, operations and functions as your practice grows and evolves. 

Gallup has a wonderful assessment to help you determine and define what norms are currently working in your practice’s team culture and what are not. Having a starting position of current norms allows you to keep what’s working, while building on that foundation to include what might be missing.  

The Synergy of Mission, Values, and Norms for Your Dental Practice Operations

When you combine a clear mission, well-defined values, and strong norms, you create a synergy that transforms your dental practice culture. Aligning your mission, values, and norms fosters a shared sense of purpose and passion among your team. Engagement stays high when employees understand and believe in what your practice stands for and what they’re working toward. This alignment fuels higher productivity, satisfaction, and a culture where everyone is motivated to contribute their best.

A strong, values-driven culture not only attracts and retains top talent, it also enhances your reputation in the community. Over time, this foundation makes your practice more resilient and adaptable, even when circumstances change.

Culture truly is your practice’s identity. It sets the tone for how you do business, how you care for your team, and how you serve your patients. Mission, values, and norms are the building blocks that shape a practice people want to work for and patients want to visit. Invest in nurturing these elements, and you’ll see your practice flourish.

If you’re ready to clarify your practice’s vision, values, and mission and chart a path to your “point B” we invite you to download our free Extraction GPS worksheet.

This step-by-step tool is designed to help dental entrepreneurs like you get clear on what matters most, set a bold vision for your future, and define the concrete goals that will get you there. Use it to bring your leadership team together, make confident decisions, and guide your practice toward long-term success.

Ready to set your destination and accelerate your journey?
Download our Extraction GPS worksheet today and take the first step toward building the dental practice and legacy you truly envision.

Download Our Extraction GPS Worksheet

Use These 6 Principles in your Dental Practice to Unleash Exponential Growth

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As a former dental practice owner who successfully scaled and exited my dental business, I wrote my book Extraction: The Surprising New Formula to Systemize, Scale and Sell Your Business specifically with the dental practice entrepreneur in mind. Why?  

I am a hard worker. I worked diligently for decades to build and scale my dental practice organization. But I am also an observer of the human condition, and I observed again and again how difficult it was for me to duplicate my success. With every new patient, every new team member, every new system or piece of technology we integrated we were faced with as many complications.  

Those complications wore out my teams, inundated our processes and overwhelmed each practice. And all these complications ended up stagnating our growth until we could dig ourselves out only to be met with another new patient and another several complications to our systems.  

That redundancy became a frustrating and predictable aspect of our growth. So, I set about working on a process to eliminate that stagnation from our business model lifecycle. As you can see in the chart below, a typical business lifecycle, pictured on the left, starts out with a vision and then moves into growth.

Once in growth, entrepreneurs and teams focus on the growth aspect of the business until everyone basically runs out of steam and the business starts to stagnate. Once a business has been in a state of stagnation for a while, there is a decline. That decline may lead to a complete burnout of the business or, if the entrepreneur is able to pivot and has a lot of resources, the business can recover from that decline.   

Lifecycle of your Dental Practice

Stagnation in Your Dental Practice Growth is Real – You Are Not Alone 

The question I wanted to answer was, is it possible to avoid or lessen that stagnation phase in order to avoid decline altogether? And after a lot of research, study and feedback from my teams, I can confidently say, that, yes, it is possible for a business to avoid falling into the deep crevasse of stagnation. There is a way to continue duplicating your success through scaling without experiencing crushing complications every time you add a new patient, team member or system to your scaling efforts. Ok, how?  

The Practice Optimization Process for Your Dental Practice 

I grew my organization from 1 dental practice to 8 in a very short time. At first, I enjoyed the process. It was a very exciting time, and I was learning so much. But as we kept growing things became more and more complex, stressful and overwhelming. I was spending less time in the dentist chair and more time putting out fires and managing chaos. Eventually, I burned out and I started to watch my efforts stagnate and my organization fall into some decline.  

All through this hectic time, I still tried to learn and understand and grow. I observed the process, took notes and tried to figure out a duplicate-able system for scaling that did not involve chaos management and getting stuck in stagnation.  

It took several more years of hindsight and reflection, but I was finally able to put my lessons into a sequence that I call the Practice Optimization Process. The Practice Optimization Process is a formula for staying out of stagnation while learning to pivot quickly as a leader to continue to grow and scale your business. There are 6 steps in this sequence:  

Define Point A

This step in the sequence allows you to assess where your practice or organization is right now and what mindset you have as a leader and dental practice entrepreneur. After all, if you or your practice is not ready or willing to scale or grow you need to be aware of that and understand why and what might be holding you back.  

Face Your Fears and Challenges 

You’ve assessed your Point A and more likely than not, have come away with an understanding that you’ve got some roadblocks and obstacles on the way to growth. Time to face those obstacles and understand them so you can remove them from the path. Many times, this means delving within your own mindset, beliefs and myths that you hold as a leader and an entrepreneur.

After all, our business often reflects our own limiting beliefs. But how do you remove those limiting beliefs? Well, along with reading my book, I’ve created a companion workbook that allows you to use the information in the book and the exercises in the workbook to uncover and Extract those limiting beliefs and old mindsets that are keeping you from growing your dental practice organization.   

Define Point B 

You’ve defined where you and your practice are; you’ve uncovered and extracted the obstacles to growth within yourself and your business. Now it’s time to create a vision for your new future. Through the work you’ve just done on your mindset you’ve literally changed the trajectory of your future. Now you must define it!  

Build Your Teams 

In defining your point B you created your Vivid Vision™ which aligns your practice around what you’ve defined as your vision, your point B. One of the first steps in alignment is building or rebuilding your team. You cannot grow and scale your dental practice all by yourself. You need a team that is going to own that vision as much as you do.

My book teaches you how to choose the right people for your organization. It also helps you decide whether people already within your organization are in the right positions or if they would be better suited to a different position. As Jim Collins likes to say, you gotta get the right people on the bus and the right butts in the right seats before you can drive anywhere.  

Create Your Strategic Plan 

You’ve defined your vision and you’ve gotten your dream team assembled. Now it’s time to define your strategic plan. Your strategic plan is your blueprint of execution. This is where you drill down and start to define real-world goals for your teams to execute. These are the goals that will actually move the needle of success in your dental practice.  

Moving from the Dentist’s Chair to the Investor Seat 

This last step in the sequence is solely focused on you, the business leader and investor in your organization. To lead your teams through your goals and strategic plan as well as the accompanying obstacles you will inevitably face, you need to have a growth mindset. And that starts with seeing yourself not only as a dentist, but as an investor in your practice. This step is where you learn to wear different hats as a leader.

Yes, you are a dentist first, but you also need to be nimble enough to know when to stop thinking like a dentist and start thinking like an investor and leader of an organization. There is a lot you don’t learn in dental school and this formula is where you’ll learn exactly what you need to know to grow, scale and even sell your business eventually.  

The Support You Need for Your Dental Practice

As you can see, this formula is a sequence. You need to take the steps in the correct order to receive the full benefit of this formula and ready your business and your mindset for growth. So, now it’s time for you to do some thinking. Are you ready for transformation? Are you ready for growth? Are you ready to liberate yourself from the limiting beliefs that have been stagnating your growth?  

Our experienced consultants are here to help. One of the most effective ways to quickly transform your business as well as your mindset is to schedule a complimentary consulting call with one of our Expert Advisor Consultants. In just 30 minutes, you will gain immediate clarity of your desired point B and begin developing your path to get there.

Click the button to secure your 30-minute consulting call!

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