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Extraction Book

For Dental Practice Owners: 2 Bold Leadership and Execution Principles

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The following is an excerpt of my book, Extraction: The Surprising New Formula to Systemize, Scale and Sell Your Business. These are the insights I gained into the meaning of leadership and how I was able to successfully scale my business from 1 to 8 practices before selling my organization. Learning to change my attitude to leadership allowed me to build strong teams that supported a new vision that would eventually lead me to a successful scale and exit strategy.

Extraction for your Dental Practice

Below are two qualities that, in my opinion, leaders need to successfully execute on their visions, no matter what that vision may be or what values you hold as a leader.

Tools that Shape Visionary Leaders

Building effective leadership is the core resource of successful execution. I would like to share with you two of the foundational qualities of leadership required to unleash effective execution of one’s vision. But what is truly essential for execution? You need a strong vision and you need team buy-in. And before either of those, you need credibility. So, how do you establish vision, buy-in and credibility? You must first develop yourself.

I have always been a seeker of knowledge and an avid student of human motivation, both mine and others’. That searching for knowledge and understanding of how humans work has led me to incredible insights. I have discovered key leadership principles and characteristics by reading the works of experts and attending seminars as well as one-on-one coaching and mentoring sessions.

Extract Yourself from the Way It’s Always Been Done

There are two principles specifically that I want to address here through excerpts from my book. I hope these insights bring you greater clarity and awareness about your own gifts as a leader in your dental practice or organization. As an entrepreneur, you have the skill and gift of leadership already. After all, you’ve led your teams this far, haven’t you? Now it’s time to up your game and refine your leadership skills through gaining buy-in and establishing your credibility.

Principle #1: Leaders are Forward Thinkers

Effective leaders are forward thinkers who can see their own potential as well as that of their teams. They constantly seek to maximize the potential value creation of their customers as well as their organization’s ability to fulfill their customers’ needs. Great leaders can clearly see around corners. The future is as real to them as their current reality because effective leaders can clearly see, feel and be in their future vision. They absolutely believe it is achievable and this optimism gives them a situational awareness of possible future roadblocks and obstacles.

Principle #2: Master Your Own Integrity First

Powerful leaders uphold the highest level of integrity in themselves and in their work. This level of integrity is more than the virtue of being an honest person. This integrity in a leader is the ability to develop authenticity, vulnerability, immediate access to emotions and a belief system. These qualities engender trustworthiness in the leader by the organization’s team.

Subsequently, this level of trustworthiness felt by their teams translates and engenders credibility from their customers and vendors. This level of trust allows leaders to follow through on their visions for growth and risk. These leaders have the ethical courage to do what is right no matter what the cost, even if it means being disliked, or resulting in short-term revenue loss. Doing what one believes to be true, and right, is foundational to showing up with integrity and earning the trust of your teams.

Competent leaders are good at, and committed to, self-mastery. They are always experimenting with new ideas, allowing themselves to make mistakes and learn from them in order to improve on processes. As a clinical dentist, I was limited on experimenting outside of established clinical guidelines to preserve the health and safety of my patients, but operationally I was willing to experiment with ways that improved the experience of our customers and our teams.

We must continue to strive to find easier ways for our teams to deliver a better experience to our customers. We must be willing to experiment, try new things and get feedback. These steps are the raw material for us to course-correct and innovate, coming up with multiple pathways to get to our desired results and fulfill our visions.

Competent leadership also means providing the courage and giving permission to our teams to take their own risks, to make mistakes, to take ownership and transform their own feedback into growth opportunities. This is how we continuously become more competent and confident in our abilities to execute on new ideas and keep growing.

Conscious leaders create a culture that welcomes and embraces change and creates opportunities for innovation and progress without being confined by the dangerous trap of old habits. Conscious leadership consciously breaks an organization out of the mindset: we have always done it this way.

People follow the visionary more than they follow the vision

We see this phenomenon throughout history with both creative and innovative results as well as destructive and treacherous outcomes. During the early 1930’s, Hitler was considered a bold visionary for his prescription for the German people. Millions were blinded by that vision with devastating and catastrophic results. Contrast this to Gandhi’s vision for a free and democratic India which was the culmination of a lifetime of peaceful, non-violent protest.

Gandhi’s vision was taken up by millions, time and time again, and continues to influence people all around the world to this day. It is the visionary rather than the vision that attracts people over and over. You may not be fighting to free people from unfair systems of governance, but you are fighting for your business to survive and thrive whether you feel comfortable picking up that mantle or not. So how do you become an effective leader whose vision your people become passionate about?

Don’t Burst Through your Comfort Zone, Expand it

Effective leaders must learn to challenge and stretch themselves beyond their comfort zones and old habits, while being willing to try new ideas, technology, processes and skills. This gives their teams permission to follow this paradigm for growth. That is why it’s imperative for you, as a business owner, to learn to transform your mindset into an effective leader and successful investor. Learning to work on your business rather than in your business is a personal transformation first and foremost.

So how do you adopt an investor’s mindset for your own organization? It starts with how you see your business. When you started your business, did you give yourself a job, or did you make an investment? It all comes down to mindset.

Learning to Invoke Leadership Qualities in Your Dental Practice

In the rest of Chapter 6 I delve into 3 more qualities I used that turned my mindset and subsequently my company’s success around. I also redefine what it means to be a leader in the 21st century by unpacking the wisdom of the past. I hope you give it a read. Using these insights were invaluable to my success and I know they will be for you as well.

Put Bold Leadership into Practice

Bold leadership isn’t theoretical, it’s built through clarity, conviction, and consistent action. The two principles you explored here require more than motivation; they require a clear vision and a plan that guides your decisions when things get hard.

That’s why we created the Extraction GPS. This tool helps dental practice owners clarify their values, define where their practice is today, and map out a bold, intentional path forward. It turns leadership principles into a practical roadmap so you’re not just reacting to challenges, but leading your practice with purpose.

When your vision is clear and your goals are defined, leadership becomes less about guessing and more about alignment. Your team knows where you’re headed. You know what matters most. And progress becomes measurable.

Ready to lead with clarity and intention?

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The Extraction Formula: The #1 Tool for Dental Practice Success

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The Obstacle is the Path in Your Dental Practice  

If you’re a dental practice owner, have you read Extraction yet? Recently, I published my first book, Extraction: The Surprising New Formula to Systemize, Scale, and Sell Your Practice. The response from readers has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’ve made Bestseller status on Amazon in several categories! I’m proud of this achievement. It started as a simple enough idea. I had been working with my dear friend Sean Stephenson who was coaching me in my business. In fact, it was Sean who coined the title, Extraction.   

Extraction for your Dental Practice

His fundamental drive in life was to help others extract themselves from the prison of their own mindsets to achieve greater levels of personal freedom and fulfillment. Many times in my journey, I have found myself in my own self-imposed prison. For example, right after the pandemic, I injured my neck and hand and discovered that clinical dentistry was something I could no longer practice. I was at a loss; I was nervous about what my future may hold for me, and I was searching for new meaning.   

Sean’s life and mentorship reminded me that meaning lies in what we do in service to a greater cause. Of course, we can always amass more: more wealth, more success, more money, more stuff. But we aren’t going to find much meaning in any of that. To find true meaning, we must train our abilities and skills to contribute to our families, communities, and society because purpose comes from serving others. And that was the spark of an idea that eventually became my book.    

Why I Wrote Extraction  

My injury became a blessing in disguise. It forced me to take stock of myself, my career, and how I can continue contributing differently as an author and entrepreneur as much as I did as a clinical dentist. I had to forge a new path for myself, and that path would be rooted in a principle I have stuck to my entire career, the true measure of one’s success is creating value in the lives of others.   

I wrote Extraction mainly for Dental Entrepreneurs. I wanted to bring a set of strategies I used over two decades to build, scale, and finally exit a tremendously successful dental organization that continues to serve and thrive today. By laying out my strategies, mistakes, obstacles, and achievements, I can help other dental entrepreneurs avoid the same mistakes and challenges I faced.   

Breaking Free from Your Dental Practice  

There is another fundamental reason I wrote my book. While building my organization, I ran into a paradox. As I continued to build and scale my practice, I became increasingly enveloped with the day-to-day challenges of running a multi-practice organization. I needed to take a 10,000-foot view of my organization and where it was headed. I was, in fact, mired in the minutiae of daily operations. This needed to be more sustainable. I coined a term for this place I had landed in the trajectory of “success,” I call this place the dental entrepreneurial prison. I wrote about this concept in an earlier blog post.     

It is deeply frustrating for an entrepreneur to work tirelessly day after day for years to find that the success you’re gaining is only giving you a ton more work and less meaning and fulfillment. So, how do you avoid getting locked in a prison of your own making?

A New Formula for Success

The formula I’ve created and defined in Extraction is designed to help you avoid this paradox and many others as you build your practice and organization. The first step in this formula is to define your Point A. Where are you in your life as an entrepreneur? Do you know how to define it? And where is your organization in its lifecycle? Determining where you and your practice(s) are will allow you to map out a path for where you want to go and, importantly, how you want to get there.  

Defining the Roadmap, From Point A to Point B 

After you honestly and fully understand where you are in your practice, your Point A, we define your vision. Dreaming big is imperative to your overall dental practice strategy and growth. But ‘big’ means different things to different people. In the book, I walk you through the steps of defining a personal vision for yourself and your dental organization that works for you, not your competitors, fellow entrepreneurs, or even what your family wants. We figure out what you want for your life and your business. Vision is not a destination. It sets the direction of your growth.  

Next, we figure out how we will move toward your vision. And it is here where we ensure you stay focused on building your roadmap or strategic growth plan by assessing all the internal and external obstacles that stand in the way of realizing our vision. At this point, we’ve built your dream team to support you and implement your strategic plan. We also break down your company goals into yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and even daily steps so everyone is transparent and accountable. Finally, you create a template of actionable steps to keep you on track to meet your goals and, eventually, execute your vision.   

From Dentist to Dental Entrepreneur and Investor

Finally, we hone your skills as a leader. You invested time and money in dental school. But unfortunately, dental schools fail to teach us how to be a leader of successful teams. Dental schools also fail to teach us how to be an entrepreneur in a successful, scalable organization. That’s our job.

In my book, I lay out all of the values and principles that allowed me to become the leader I needed to be, not just for my organization or my teams, but for myself. I needed to find a way to break free from the dental entrepreneurial prison, and that meant becoming a leader that people trusted enough to carry out a vision that I laid out for them that they couldn’t quite see yet. They needed to trust me to hold that vision for them while they worked toward it. We did it, and you can too.   

Invest in Yourself, Not Just Your Dental Practice   

Avoiding the paradoxes of entrepreneurship is daunting while you’re building your practice and organization. But there are concrete steps you can take to avoid those traps; traps like stagnation in your business growth and the paradox of success. I wrote my book specifically outlining how to avoid those pitfalls or get out of them once you’re in.

But your business, practice, and organization will always have challenges and obstacles. The aim isn’t to remove all the obstacles. That’s an impossibility. The aim is to see those obstacles as the path to your success. Each obstacle becomes a lesson of growth. I hope I can assist you on your path and lighten your load as a dental entrepreneur.   

The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
~Marcus Aurelius

In fact, I didn’t just write a book to help the dental entrepreneur; I built a company too. Optimize Practice Alliance is dedicated to assisting the dental entrepreneur in building a solid organization and a lasting legacy. Our motto is our mission, keeping the future of dentistry in the hands of dentists. Our goal is empower dentists to become the masters of their own destiny, however that looks to each entrepreneur.

Turn the Extraction Formula into a Clear Plan

The Extraction Formula isn’t just about working harder or adding more tactics, it’s about leading with clarity, intention, and alignment. Real growth happens when you know where you’re going, why it matters, and how each decision moves you closer to that vision.

That’s why we created the Extraction GPS. This tool is designed specifically for dental entrepreneurs who want to translate the principles of the Extraction Formula into a practical, actionable plan. It helps you clarify your values, define where your practice is today, map out your long-term vision, and break that vision down into annual and quarterly priorities you can actually execute.

When your vision is clear, leadership becomes easier. Obstacles feel more manageable. And your team can align around something bigger than day-to-day tasks.

Ready to put the Extraction Formula to work in your practice?

Download Your Extraction GPS

Step 1 Clarify Your Dental Practice Vision: Assess Your Point A and Launch Your Legacy

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If you find that your dental practice has stagnated in any area: growth, teamwork, innovation, or even your own vision of what is possible, you will not be able to get out of that stagnation the same way you got into it.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

— Albert Einstein

How do you get out of that level of consciousness at the root of your current predicament? You must change your level of consciousness by uprooting the very ideas that created your current circumstances. As a leader, it takes tremendous courage to say, even to yourself, “Well, I got us into this. I must be the one to steer us out.”

Let me tell you a story. The following is an excerpt from my book, Extraction: The Surprising New Formula to Systemize, Scale and Sell Your Business.

Extraction for your Dental Practice

Within three months of owning my practice, and while working at two other practices as an associate, my office manager abruptly resigned from her position. I quickly realized that I had not just lost an office manager, but also our ability to bill and collect the money we earned. The administrative process for Medicaid claims is highly sensitive and tedious. It took months for me to be able to find, hire, and train a new office manager, during which time I felt like I was running out of oxygen and gasping for air to survive.

Cash for a business is like oxygen for the body. My cash flow was diminishing, and, at that time, I did not know how to accurately obtain data to diagnose the problem. Anxiety took over and I started having frequent panic attacks. Once again, my poverty mindset and my fear of overcoming destitution was at the forefront of my mind. I had finally opened my own practice with the opportunity to achieve the financial freedom I desired since I was a child.

And then overnight, this dream had quickly transformed to feel like a noose around my neck. I spent countless nights succumbing to the terror that I would not be able to live up to the many financial obligations that loomed over my head.

I realized that my only way out of my panic was to diagnose the problem, and to do that, I needed accurate data. Our practice was filled with manual charts and paper claims. I knew that I had to invest in digital systems so that I could gain control over the data which, in turn, would help me to diagnose and treat the cash flow disease of my practice accurately. At that moment, I was so grateful for the bank underwriter who had insisted that I get an additional working capital loan.

I invested in updating our practice management software and digitizing my whole practice. I also bargained with my cousin for IT and networking services in exchange for free lifetime dentistry. Eight months after my office manager had abandoned us, we finally started getting real data, and the truth was painful.

-Chapter 1: Choosing What Defines You, Extraction: The Surprising New Formula to Systemize, Scale and Sell Your Practice.

The Most Critical Lesson I Learned

I was in quite a pickle, but my stressed out mindset was not going to get my dental practice out of the situation it was in. I had to change my mindset; I had to change the actual operations in my practice in order for me to understand the data; and finally, I needed to ask for help.

These were not easy lessons or actions for me to take but they were necessary in order for me to understand my problem, diagnose it and then solve it. I had to change myself before I changed by business strategy.

How to Apply Point A to Your Dental Practice

Every meaningful journey starts with clarity about where you are today. Before you can set a compelling vision for your dental practice, you have to honestly assess your Point A: your current reality. Taking the time to step back and look at your practice from a higher vantage point creates awareness, perspective, and often, new solutions where obstacles once felt immovable.

Clarity comes from intention. It requires the right mindset, a clear look at your practice’s data, and a structured way to connect where you are today with where you want to go. That’s exactly why we created the Extraction GPS.

The Extraction GPS is a practical tool designed to help dental entrepreneurs clarify their values, define their current state, and map a clear path forward. It turns abstract ideas about vision and growth into something tangible you can work through, revisit, and use to guide decisions as your practice evolves.

At Optimize Practice Alliance, we believe the future of dentistry belongs with dentists and that future is built by leaders who take the time to define their direction with intention.

Ready to gain clarity on your Point A and chart a path forward?

Download Your Extraction GPS