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Supporting Dental Practices: The #1 Approach of Confident Leaders

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Leadership As a Tool for Growth

How seriously do you take the concept of leadership in your dental practice? In my organization, we follow the EOS structure for our company meetings, team building and overarching goals and processes. Gino Wickman has created a comprehensive system for every aspect of running a successful organization. It truly works for us, and it has been a successful and exciting experience so far.  

We Practice What We Preach

We just had our 2nd Quarter, day-long meeting last week when we got to assess our first quarter and look ahead, plan and set realistic goals for our 3rd quarter. We also got to dig into some core issues within the company that were holding us back from accomplishing key benchmarks. These issues have been resolved and won’t be the issues that hold us back moving forward. There will be new issues to deal with in the next quarter and we will work those out using our EOS tools, as well, I have no doubt.  

During these meetings with our entire team, there are some wonderful, awful, dumb, ground-breaking and irrelevant ideas that get thrown around. There’s a lot of non-judgmental brainstorming that goes on in learning to move the needle in a new company.

What Does Lending Leadership Mean for your Dental Practice?

One of the ideas that came to me in the lead up to our Q2 meeting, is an idea I labeled, ‘Lending Leadership.’ I fell in love with this idea and threw it out to my team. They loved it too, because, as I explained to them, this is, essentially, our guiding principle with OPS. We are an organization dedicated to holding space for companies and practices while they integrate the processes, systems and structural changes they need to scale their organizations.  

These transitional times are confusing, challenging, scary and overwhelming for companies. What myself and my partner, Josh Gwinn, are dedicated to is lending our leadership during these times so that teams feel supported, directed and educated during these crucial transitions.  

The Concept of Lending Leadership

Another area we lend our leadership is through the process of evaluating your organization including what your practice looks like without more work from you, the practice owner. This is a crucial step in the scaling process. As the lead dentist, CEO, or leader of your organization you need to begin the process of extracting yourself from your daily activities within the practice while transitioning to working on the business. This entails even changing your calendar to reflect your new role within the company.  

As leaders who’ve gone through this very transition, both Josh and I, lend our leadership to making this transition as smooth as possible. And much of this transition involves changing your mindset. It might seem trivial but learning to move from the dentist’s chair into the role of leader/investor is an important and highly effective step in scaling your practice.  

It is your vision, direction and leadership that will shepherd your teams through the expansion process. And while your team is looking to you for direction, guidance and clarity you have the advantage of looking to us for expertise, mentorship and comprehensive team structure. We fill in the gaps until your teams are ready and able to guide the process.  

The Importance of Leadership in your Dental Practice

Lending our leadership ensures that you gain the highest valuation for your organization. This is a mutually beneficial process and outcome, and the guiding principle is your vision. In fact, the very first step we take at Optimize when working with new partners is what we call, Vision Day. We sit down with you and your teams to, above all, listen to what your vision for your organization is. If you’re not sure what your vision is we help you figure that out in a team setting so everyone is involved. Transparency, communication, honesty and compassion are the values we use to guide us through the Vision Day process.  

What Leadership Means to Us

We walk the talk. Our goal at Optimize is for our partners to gain clarity of their vision, be ensured of the highest valuation for their organizations, and be ready with strong teams, communications and processes in place for the scaling operation. This ensures mutual success and smiles all around. And it all starts with your vision, not ours. We are there to assist, clarify and lend leadership to provide a smooth experience for everyone. That’s how we roll.  

Mastermind your dental practice

Another Entrepreneurial Strategy That Works

Confident leaders don’t lead by reaction, they lead with intention. One of the most effective strategies any dental entrepreneur can adopt is creating clarity around what they stand for, where they’re going, and how they’ll get there. Without that clarity, even strong leaders can feel stuck, scattered, or unsure of their next move.

That’s why we created the Extraction GPS. This tool helps you clarify your values, assess your current reality, and define a clear direction forward so your leadership is grounded, consistent, and purposeful. When you know your destination, lending leadership becomes easier because your guidance is anchored in something real and intentional.

Lending Leadership at Optimize Practice Alliance

At Optimize Practice Alliance, we believe confident leadership starts with alignment. Our mission is to give dental entrepreneurs the tools they need to lead decisively, support their teams effectively, and build practices that reflect their values and long-term vision.

The Extraction GPS is one of the core tools we use to help leaders move from uncertainty to confidence. By defining what matters most and mapping a clear path forward, you create the foundation for stronger culture, better decision-making, and sustainable growth.

Ready to lead with clarity and confidence?

Download Your Extraction GPS

The Power of Servant-Leadership in Your Dental Practice: #1 Secret to Cohesive Teams

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In my quest to understand how to be a better leader within my organization and move from dentist to investor in my dental practice, I discovered a piece of writing that became an invaluable tool of my leadership development. In his 1977 essay, The Servant As Leader, Robert K. Greenleaf coined the term servant-leadership. Servant-leadership as a philosophy that centers the organization and its leaders as servants to a greater community.

In his essay, Greenleaf describes the necessary qualities and characteristics of servant-leadership and how these qualities contribute to a healthier organization, community and society at large. He also details the skills necessary for effective leadership.

Using Servant-as-Leader Skills in Your Dental Practice

The skills such as awareness, empathy, the ability to listen, anticipation of obstacles are the foundational activities that resonated with me as being the type of leader embodying the values I also wanted to instill throughout my organization.

Improving leadership in your dental practice

Servant-Leadership Skills Vs. Traditional Leadership Qualities in a Dental Practice Setting

  • Servant-Leadership
  • Listens as a Practice
  • Practices Empathy
  • Leads with his/her values
  • Is Aware of Strengths & Weaknesses
  • Practices Inclusivity in Decision-Making
  • Measures Success through a holistic lens
  • Traditional Leadership
  • Speaks as a Practice
  • Leads through Control
  • Is not necessarily guided by personal values
  • Uses Leadership as a rank of value
  • Top-down Decision-Making
  • Measures Success only through Output

My Own Story of Learning to Lead

In my book, Extraction: The Surprising New Formula to Systemize, Scale and Sell Your Business, I go into the skills, principles and qualities I use to guide my leadership style. In fact, I dedicate an entire chapter to this called Leadership and Execution. But it was this pamphlet that really started it all for me, in how I look at leadership and the way I have molded my own path to leadership.

Applying Leadership Skills and Values in Your Dental Practice

This little pamphlet had a profound effect on me. Within its unassuming pages I found a path for instilling my personal values into my leadership style and using them to help me guide my practice in a way that felt most comfortable for me and that honored all voices within my organization. It’s a quick read and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

These are the same values, principles and skills that today guide Optimize Practice Alliance. We really are an organization that practices what it preaches and espouses as its values. If you would like to learn more about OPS, what we stand for and how we can help your organization, take a fast and free assessment and get in touch! We’d love to find out about you too!

Practicing Servant-Leadership in Real Time

One way to discover your values, brush up on your leadership skills and work out your challenges around leadership issues is to speak with other dentists who’ve been in your shoes. Our CEO, Josh Gwinn, runs a monthly mastermind exclusively for dentists.

Each month dentists come together to discuss their biggest issues and find solutions, celebrate each others’ wins and provide feedback and resources to overcome challenges and roadblocks in their practices. It’s an incredible opportunity for dentists to brainstorm together and create a community that works for them. It’s also in alignment with our motto,

We believe the future of dentistry belongs with dentists

Through the values that our founder and president, Dr. Jack Bayramyan, founded OPS on, we are dedicated to providing tools, solutions and long-term strategies to dentists no matter what stage of growth they find themselves. This includes bettering themselves in their mindsets and as leaders of their organizations. Now, you may be asking yourself, what is a mastermind?

Practicing Servant Leadership in Real Time

Servant leadership starts with clarity: clarity about your values, your purpose, and the kind of leader you want to be for your team and your patients. It’s difficult to serve others well if you haven’t first taken the time to define what truly matters and where you’re leading your organization.

That’s why we created the Extraction GPS. This tool helps dental entrepreneurs slow down long enough to clarify their values, assess where their practice is today, and define a clear direction forward. When your vision is rooted in service and intention, leadership decisions become more thoughtful, more consistent, and more impactful.

At Optimize Practice Alliance, we believe the future of dentistry belongs with dentists and that future is built by leaders who serve with purpose, humility, and clarity.

One of the Greatest Strategies of Servant Leaders

Great servant leaders don’t rely on instinct alone, they operate from alignment. They understand that values-driven leadership requires a clear roadmap, so their actions consistently reflect what they stand for.

The Extraction GPS was designed to help you translate servant leadership principles into action. By clearly defining your values, long-term vision, and priorities, you create a framework that supports your team, strengthens your culture, and guides your practice through growth and change with integrity.

When your direction is clear, service becomes sustainable. Your team knows what you stand for. Your decisions reinforce trust. And your leadership creates lasting impact.

Ready to lead with clarity and service at the center?

Download Your Extraction GPS

Unleashing your Unlimited Leadership Potential as a Dental Entrepreneur: 4 Lessons of Extreme Ownership

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How seriously do you take leadership as a dental entrepreneur? I went into the U.S. Navy straight out of high school. I spent 6 years in the Military and then ended up in optometry as a vision technician. I was a vision tech for about 3 weeks before being promoted to practice manager. I then spent about 6 years in that optical group managing 35 locations. I became a director of operations, opening de Novos on the East Coast before moving into dentistry in 2012 in my first role was as a VP of Operations for Great Expressions. I moved from vision tech to CEO within 10 years.  

Taking Extreme Ownership of My Own Future 

It was a fast rise, but I got one of my biggest lessons about leadership when I joined Hero Practice Services, a full-service pediatric dental group. The year prior to my joining, Hero had an EBITDA of $13 million. The CEO before me had taken the company’s value from $13 million to $6 million in 11 months. In addition to that, they had a turnover rate in providers of 70% for the previous 12 months. I walked into a dismal, disheartened team and company environment. So I did what I had trained to do as a leader in the Navy.  

I started cleaning out latrines with my soldiers. I put on scrubs and started taking out the trash, cleaning operatories and asking the teams how best I could support them. My actual question to my teams was, “how can I support you while you support the boss?” Some looked at me quizzically, asking, “aren’t you the boss?” And my response was always, “Our bosses are the 5 year-olds walking through our doors every day needing our services and care.”

To me, that is the definition of extreme ownership as a CEO.  I was willing to do any and all jobs to get us back on track and instill a sense of pride, ownership and stability in my teams, no matter how many practices I had to walk into.

Careless Leadership Leads to Care-less Teams 

It’s very easy to get caught up in labels, hierarchy, power, etc. and if you’re not careful, as a dental entrepreneur and leader in your dental practice you can inadvertently create a culture of those kinds of qualities and values. One of the aspects of my job at Optimize Practice Alliance is executive coaching our doctors to help them understand that it’s perfectly fine to be wrong, but it’s not fine to be wrong and blame other people or power-trip them, etc.  

Turning Extreme Ownership into Real-World Results 

Back at Hero, we went from about 40 practices to around 70 and grew our revenue from roughly $60 million to about $140 in a 28-month period. We more than doubled the valuation. We also expanded into 2.5% of the national Medicaid market and sustained that growth until about December 2021 when I left the company to help found OPA. So, what that tells me is we parlayed that cultural shift, always asking “Who’s the real boss?” into hard numbers and a solid increase in market share and company valuation.  

As a CEO, I am constantly seeking ways to enhance my leadership skills and drive our organizations toward sustained growth and innovation. When I read Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin I saw in that book the embodiment of my values as a leader and how I teach and coach those principles for our dental entrepreneurs. This book provides profound insights into leadership that are both transformative and practical for dental entrepreneurs. So, I want to share some of my insights here.  

President Harry S. Truman and his famous sign, The Buck Stops Here!

Understanding Extreme Ownership 

There are many great themes in this book, but the central tenet is the concept of extreme ownership, which posits that leaders must take absolute responsibility for everything in their domain. Harry Truman, the 33rd president of the United States, kept a sign on his desk that read, “The buck stops here.” For me, this quote encapsulates the essence of extreme ownership.

This principle is rooted in the experiences of Willink and Babin as Navy SEAL officers, where the stakes were, quite literally, life and death. By taking complete ownership, leaders can effectively guide their teams toward success while instilling a culture of accountability and resilience. And complete ownership for these leaders, means owning the good decisions (not the credit) as well as the bad ones. The buck stops here. Following are the themes I extracted and wanted to share you with you here.

Key Lessons for Leaders

  1. No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders: One of the most striking lessons from the book is the idea that team performance is a reflection of leadership quality. Willink and Babin recount how changing the leader of an under-performing team led to a dramatic turnaround. For dental entrepreneurs, this underscores the importance of developing strong leadership throughout their organization and not shying away from making necessary leadership changes when needed. 
  2. Decentralized Command: Effective delegation is critical. The book emphasizes the need for leaders to empower their subordinates to make decisions and take ownership of their roles. This decentralization not only fosters a sense of ownership at all levels but also ensures that decisions are made closer to the action, increasing agility and responsiveness. For dental entrepreneurs this is crucial for a well-running front office, buzzing operatories and happy hygienists.
  3. Prioritize and Execute: In high-pressure situations, the ability to identify the most critical tasks and focus resources on them is crucial. Willink and Babin’s approach to prioritization helps leaders manage multiple competing demands without losing sight of the primary objectives. For dental entrepreneurs, this means clearly defining priorities and ensuring that the entire organization is aligned with these goals. For instance, if you’re in the middle of scaling your organization while still working chairside, you need to prioritize and execute while your teams do the same. This is crucial to your scaling success.
  4. Simplicity: Complexity can be the enemy of execution. The book advocates for simplifying plans and communication to avoid misunderstandings and ensure clarity. In the business world, this translates to clear, concise strategies and communication that everyone in your dental organization can understand and rally behind. For a dental entrepreneur, simplicity not only translates to greater execution, it ensures safer and better patient outcomes.

Implementing Extreme Ownership as a Dental Entrepreneur 

Implementing the principles of extreme ownership requires a shift in mindset and culture. I’ve put together a short list of practical steps you can take to start integrating these lessons into your dental organization. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is a solid start with minor shifts in your thinking, processes and accountability as a dental entrepreneur:

  • Model Ownership: Demonstrate extreme ownership in your actions. Acknowledge mistakes openly, take responsibility for failures, and share credit for successes. 
  • Empower Your Leaders: Train your leadership team in these principles, ensuring they understand and embrace their roles as owners within their domains. 
  • Simplify Processes: Review and streamline your organization’s processes and communication channels to enhance clarity and efficiency. 
  • Encourage Open Communication: Foster an environment where feedback is welcomed, and information flows freely up and down the chain of command. 
  • Read the Book: This book is a quick read and the stories are fascinating. Take some time to read it and digest this invaluable information. It can’t hurt and it will most definitely have a profound impact on you as a leader and enhance your skills as a dental entrepreneur.

A Blueprint for Transforming your Dental Culture 

Extreme Ownership is more than yet another book on leadership; it is a blueprint for transforming organizational culture and guiding exceptional performance. As dental entrepreneurs, adopting these principles can help us build more resilient, accountable, and agile organizations. Whether you are navigating a turnaround in your practice, scaling for growth, or simply looking to refine your leadership approach, the lessons from Willink and Babin offer invaluable guidance. Embracing these principles will give you the tools to lead your organization to profound success and realize your vision. 

Support for the Dental Entrepreneur Starts with Clear Direction 

High-performing leaders move fast, but the best ones don’t move blindly. Unlimited leadership potential isn’t unlocked by speed alone; it’s unlocked by clarity of purpose, alignment around values, and a clear direction for where you’re taking your team.

That’s why we created the Extraction GPS. This tool helps dental entrepreneurs clarify what they stand for, define where their practice is today, and map out where they’re going, so execution is driven by intention, not chaos. When your vision is clear, your team can move faster, make better decisions, and execute with confidence.

Leadership becomes simpler when everyone knows the destination. Trust increases. Accountability strengthens. And momentum becomes sustainable.

Ready to lead with purpose, clarity, and conviction?

Download Your Extraction GPS

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?

Download Your Extraction GPS

When is The Right Time to Move from Dentist to Investor in Your Dental Practice?

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Are you ready to be an investor in your dental practice? This is a big question, but the answer is deceptively simple, and you don’t have to give up practicing dentistry to make the transition. However, there are several factors to plan for and implement to make this transition successful.

So, here’s the answer, the right time to transition from dentist to investor in your practice is when the revenue of your practice finally comes mainly from your team. Transitioning your mindset from clinician to investor is another story –  

How Do You Transition from Dentist to Investor in Your Dental Practice?  

How do you get your revenue to start coming from your team rather than yourself? You must build the foundation to scale your practice before you make that transition. There are several elements involved in this process:  

  • You need to onboard new doctor associates 
  • You need to train these new associates in the vision, processes, and culture of your dental practice 
  • You need to redesign your schedule to transition your time from mostly clinical hours to mostly administrative hours 

Once you’ve effectively implemented these strategies, then you will be ready to transition to investor. You can and should keep clinical hours, but those are minimal compared to the time you use each week for scaling out your business as an investor.  

Check out this short video on my process for transitioning from solely dentist to dentist-investor in my practice:  

Are You Ready to Become an Investor in Your Dental Practice?  

Transitioning from dentist to investor is one of the most important, and challenging, shifts in a dental entrepreneur’s career. While the opportunity is exciting, it only works when the right foundations are in place: strong teams, clinical duplication, and the ability to view your practice as an investment rather than a job.

At some point, many dentists realize they didn’t just build a business—they built themselves another chair to sit in. Reclaiming the entrepreneur role requires stepping back, gaining perspective, and intentionally designing the future you want your practice to support.

That’s why we created the Extraction GPS. This tool helps dental entrepreneurs clarify their values, assess their current reality, and define a clear path forward, so you can decide how (and when) to transition into the investor seat with confidence. It gives you the structure to align your vision, your role, and your growth strategy before making big moves.

At Optimize Practice Alliance, we believe the future of dentistry belongs with dentists, and that includes dentists who are ready to think, lead, and invest like owners.

Ready to step into the investor role with clarity and intention? 

Download Your Extraction GPS

Escaping the Dental Entrepreneurial Prison: A Personal Perspective from a Prison Escapee

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"Entrepreneurs can sometimes become trapped or imprisoned by the very systems, processes and teams that built their success."

~Dr. Jack Bayramyan, Extraction

As A Dental Practice Entrepreneur, Are You in Prison?

As a dental professional, I have experienced firsthand the challenges of building and managing a successful practice. But unfortunately, I have also witnessed the paradox of success, where the same systems, processes, and teams that once propelled your practice’s growth become obstacles to further progress. This phenomenon, which I call the “dental entrepreneurial prison,” inspired me to write my book,  Extraction: The Surprising New Formula to Systemize, Scale, and Sell Your Business, and to found Optimize Practice Services to help my fellow dentist entrepreneurs escape this trap and unlock their practices’ full potential.  

So how do you escape the prison you, yourself, built? I’ve got some thoughts about that… 

As A Dental Practice Owner, Do You Even Know You’re in Prison?  

As a dental practice grows and evolves, it is typical for the systems and processes that once facilitated its success to become outdated and hinder its progress. Unfortunately, many dentist entrepreneurs, me included, have found themselves trapped in a never-ending cycle of managing and maintaining the structures that initially brought them success. The dental entrepreneurial prison is a paradox where growth and transformation become increasingly complex and recognizing that you’re trapped is the first step to overcoming it.  

So how do you know when you’re beginning to see obstacles where there were once only opportunities? One of the most effective tools I use is a business lifecycle chart. This is not the traditional lifecycle of a business explanation understood in corporate circles. I’ve rewired this concept to fit the entrepreneurial needs of myself and other dentists figuring out how to grow their business models without the traditional dips in growth and revenue. Every business has a lifecycle, that is universally understood concept in business growth. You start out strong, on the upswing, then maybe you hit some stagnancy and have to reassess your systems and processes. Next, you go through some restructuring, which brings a downturn in growth until those new systems run smoothly and you’re on the upswing again. These evolutions are much more intricate than that, but there is a basic flow to every practice’s growth, stagnancy, decline, and renewal, almost like seasons in a year.  

All of this is very natural. The problem comes when you can’t see where your business is in its Lifecycle or where it’s heading. You’re essentially blind to obstacles and blind to the path to freedom.   

My journey to escape the dental entrepreneurial prison began with the concept of extraction. By identifying when and where to extract ourselves from outdated systems, processes, or teams, we can free up time and resources, allowing us to focus on expanding and improving our dental practices. This involves outsourcing specific tasks, hiring new personnel, and sometimes implementing new technologies to streamline operations and enhance patient care. So how do you identify and diagnose where our business is and where it’s going?  

Identifying Where Your Dental Practice Is in Its Lifecycle 

As I said, an essential aspect of embracing extraction is understanding the Lifecycle of your business. Recognizing the various stages of growth and transformation, from inception and launch to expansion and eventual maturity and transition, is the responsibility of every dental practice owner. By understanding these stages, we can better identify when and where to extract ourselves, allowing for a more efficient allocation of resources and increased focus on practice growth. 

Ok, how do you identify where your practice is in its Lifecycle? Every business faces issues almost daily, so how do you know if the current problems are quotidian or if they indicate systemic issues that need to be addressed? This is where you let yourself out of prison. By teaching yourself, as the dental practice entrepreneur, to work on your business rather than just in your business, you will have a greater understanding, control, and a more holistic view of your practice rather than just the view from the dentist’s chair.  

Caption: Lifecycle of a Business chart. Credit: Nida Zafar

Three Keys to Unlocking the Dental Entrepreneurial Prison 

There are three keys to help you figure out the obstacles your business faces and how to deal with them. These keys will allow you to take a 10,000-foot view of your practice and determine where it is in its Lifecycle. You can prescribe the proper remedy when you figure out where your business is. So, what are these keys that unlock your freedom?  

1. Measuring and Testing 

As the saying goes, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. I take measuring growth through KPIs, lead and lag measures and other instruments very seriously. It must be part of every entrepreneur’s scope of work. After all, your motivation as an entrepreneur and business owner is, in part, seeing the growth of your business. You can’t grow a business, just like you can’t grow a garden, in the dark.

As the owner of your practice, the literal buck stops with you. If you don’t know how well your business is doing, you won’t know where to improve, when to expand, or how to scale to keep growing. Therefore, you need to develop strategies around measuring and testing that allow you to see immediately how well your efforts are performing, where to put your investment dollars, and when to upgrade old technology or outdated systems. Many services allow you to keep track of this kind of data nowadays, and it is worth the investment to track how well your business is doing and see the trends. 

Every business has lead measures as well as lag measures. These indicators allow you to see what tools and strategies have been successful and which have not, and they also allow you to look back into the past and see what didn’t work so you can do things differently moving forward. Therefore, it behooves every business owner to invest their time in studying these measures and use the right tools to decipher these measurements correctly.  

2. Team Communication

The most important key to unlocking your prison is communication with your team. You may not know if the new software system you just upgraded to is helping or hindering workflow, but you know who does? The team that is using that software. You may not know if your patients like the new scheduling platform, but who communicates with your patients the most? Your team.  

Team communication is essential for you, the practice owner, to know where things are going right and where things are going wrong. Without good communication, you won’t know if something is not working until it may be too late. Fixing a problem with your software or new technology is much easier than restoring your reputation. A tech problem may take a few hours or days to fix. A reputation may take a lifetime for your business to improve.  

So, communicating with your team keeps you current on where to put your energy and focus on solving problems fast and getting ahead of issues before they become obstacles. There is probably no better key to removing obstacles and continuing growth than communication with your team.  

3. Documentation 

Documentation is, in a word, BORING. Amiright?? Who comes to work says, “I can’t wait to document every little thing I do today.” No one. But done it must be. Why?  

To avoid the pitfall of repetition, sloppiness and loose ends, you must document the way you do things. Nothing gets a business stuck in stagnation faster than a team doing the same thing over and over, in the same way, expecting different results. That’s the definition of insanity, and yet we see it in business every day. For example, we’ve all had the experience of calling our healthcare provider and waiting on hold while they try to “find your information” in their system. Things that technology promised would be difficult no more become obstacles to success because little issues are left to fester, stay undocumented and get overlooked, becoming a nuisance, at best, for your customers or patients.

One of the biggest reasons small issues don’t get resolved is that they get sidelined by more significant or pressing concerns facing the business. So, the way to overcome neglecting the small stuff is to document your processes. This documentation become a living depiction that your team can review when shoring up issues and cleaning up those very processes creating obstacles. Every business has issues, but if they aren’t communicated and documented, they fester and become obstacles.  

To truly get a 10,000-foot view of your business’s successful and not-so-successful strategies, document the following:  

  • What works 
  • How it works best 
  • What doesn’t work 

Documenting these three areas will allow you to develop standard operating procedures and successful strategies for dealing with obstacles as they arise or even avoid them altogether.  

This type of documentation is imperative to a smooth-running practice, especially if you plan to scale your operation. Scaling is so much about duplicating what works; documentation is how you repeatedly duplicate your success.    

Achieving Financial Freedom in Your Dental Practice 

To stay out of dental entrepreneurial prison, you need to know exactly where your business is in its Lifecycle. How do you figure that out? You need three keys: measuring, communication, and documentation. These keys will give you the insights to keep growing your business and stay out of prison. The bottom line is you need to keep working on your business, not just in your business, as a dental entrepreneur. It’s not enough to show up in the dentist’s chair every day in front of your patients. You must know the intimate details of your practice so you can keep growing it.  

Through my own experience and the experiences of countless other dentist entrepreneurs, I have learned that achieving financial freedom goes beyond merely accumulating wealth. It is about making conscious decisions regarding time allocation, resources, and energy, without being tied down by the day-to-day demands of running a dental practice. By extracting ourselves from the quotidian responsibilities of dentistry, we can free ourselves from the dental entrepreneurial prison, enabling us to enjoy the fruits of our labor and focus on future growth and expansion.   

Escaping the dental entrepreneurial prison has been a transformative experience for me, and I am passionate about helping other dentist entrepreneurs achieve the same freedom and growth. By understanding the Lifecycle of a dental practice, making conscious decisions to extract ourselves from outdated systems and processes, and embracing evolution and transformation, we can unlock the true potential of our practices and experience the freedom we initially sought as entrepreneurs. Remember, extraction is an ongoing process, and staying vigilant and adaptable will ensure continued success and growth in our dental practices. 

Escaping the Entrepreneurial Prison Starts with Clarity

One of the fastest ways I learned to escape the entrepreneurial prison was by replacing assumptions with facts. Feeling trapped often isn’t about lack of effort—it’s about lack of visibility. When everything lives in your head, the business owns you. When the right numbers are tracked, you regain control.

That’s why we created our KPI Tracker, a practical tool built specifically for dental entrepreneurs who want clarity, confidence, and freedom in their decision-making. By tracking the metrics that truly matter, you can identify bottlenecks, reduce overwhelm, and start building a practice that runs with intention instead of urgency.

When you know your numbers, mindset shifts naturally. Fear loses its grip. Decisions get easier. Leadership becomes proactive instead of reactive.

Ready to stop feeling trapped and start leading with clarity?

Download Your KPI Tracker