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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

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

How Dental Practices Can Increase Their EBITDA and Why You Should Care: 1 Way to Scale

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My Views on EBIDTA  

I’m of the firm belief that using EBIDTA to measure the growth of your dental practice is an essential measurement for its health and success. You never want to overlook the amount of debt you’re taking on and how that is impacting your business. And you don’t want to use EBIDTA as your only measurement of growth. But it is an effective tool if you use it to increase your cost conserving measures and pay attention to your expenses and investments.   

In the short video below, I discuss the importance of increasing your EBIDTA and two methods for increasing it. Not everyone uses this method of measurement in their practice, and I think that is a mistake. If you use it strategically to do monthly deep dives into your must-haves and nice-to-haves, you can get a very good idea of how effective your cost-cutting measures are month over month.  

What is EBIDTA? 

So, what is EBIDTA?  Basically, it’s a way to measure your practice’s overall financial performance by stripping out interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization –  

Use EBITDA in your Dental Practice

Check out this article on Medium for a more broad context and understanding of EBITDA and how it generally works in business.

Strip out all these other factors and you will have a basic view of your dental practice’s profitability. In my mind, this is an important measurement because it helps you see gauge which cost-cutting measures you take are working. Also, when you strip out all the other numbers, you can focus on the essentials: your operating profitability and your cash flow.  

This is by no means the only way you should measure the success and profitability of your dental practice. You still need to take into account the other factors, but this is another great tool for your entrepreneurial toolbox.  

Increase EBITDA in Your Dental Practice

Why Should Dental Practices Increase Their EBIDTA Margin?  

First, what does increasing your EBIDTA margin mean? Sounds complicated but it simply means lowering your operating expenses in relation to your total revenue. The margin is the percentage of expenses to revenue. So, increasing your monthly EBIDTA margin by 10% means you’re lowering operating expenses or increasing your topline revenue by 10% of your revenue. 

It’s incredibly important for dental practices to be mindful of their operating costs in relation to their revenue. There will be times when your investments far exceed your revenue, but this is the exception rather than the rule. Buying a new piece of digital dental equipment that will increase the value of your offerings, or building out a new software system are essential to practices staying relevant and efficient, but these expenses should be taken in moderation at strategic times.  

Two Methods for Increasing EBIDTA in Your Dental Practice 

When I work with dental entrepreneurs, I like to show them two ways of increasing EBIDTA. These two methods are customized for dental practices and the unique challenges they face in an industry with quite large expenses and investments, especially at the outset of a business venture.  

Learn and Earn –

  • See the advantage of learning while on the job; learning a new piece of equipment; learning a new dental technique; as an investment. By learning while you earn, you continue to develop your skills as a dentist and entrepreneur while increasing the value of your dental practice to the community you serve. The more value you provide raises your production, which attracts more patients, and increases revenue.

Deep-Dive Accounting –

  • On a monthly basis, make sure you take a deep dive into your expenses. Pay close attention to your must-haves, the essentials of running your practice on a daily basis. You cannot run your dental practice without them. But also make sure you pay attention to your “nice-to-haves” and see where you can cut these expenses. You don’t need them. Pay attention to your vendor pricing. I’ve seen prices go up without discussion, get paid, and negatively impact a practice’s valuation without the dentist even knowing it happened. They will enhance your dental practice, but they are not essential to daily operations. The more you manage these expenses the more you increase your EBIDTA margin.  

These two methods increase your operating profit and your EBIDTA margin and that is an attractive measure for you as a dental entrepreneur and anyone looking to invest in your company.  

Turning EBITDA Insight into Action 

Understanding EBITDA is only powerful if you can actively influence it. Increasing EBITDA isn’t about chasing one big change—it’s about consistently improving the operational drivers underneath it: scheduling efficiency, case acceptance, patient retention, provider productivity, and cost control.

That’s why we created the Optimize KPI Tracker for dental entrepreneurs. This tool helps you monitor the metrics that directly impact EBITDA, so you can identify trends early, address inefficiencies, and make smarter decisions with confidence. When you know what’s driving your numbers, you’re no longer guessing, you’re leading strategically.

Ready to take control of your practice’s profitability and long-term value?

Download Your KPI Tracker

AI and Your Dental Practice: 6 Actionable & Achievable Applications

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Is your dental practice ready for the future? I recently attended the Abundance360 Summit hosted by Peter Diamandis. Abundance360 is an annual event where “visionary entrepreneurs, investors, and executives meet to solve the world’s biggest challenges.” It’s a yearly mastermind with community-led mini-masterminds, monthly workshops, and year-round coaching designed to support entrepreneurs to challenge their mindsets and expand their comfort zones constantly.  

This year’s theme for the event was about learning to leverage new technologies, specifically AI, in your business. The summit provocatively stated, “In the next ten years, we’ll experience more progress than in the last 100 years.” There is so much new technology, sensors, AI, robotics, 3D printing, synthetic biology, blockchain, etc., that it can be highly intimidating and challenging to know what to implement in your dental practice, much less how.  

New Technologies and Your Dental Practice 

Abundance360 wants to inform, instruct and guide entrepreneurs on how and where to use these technologies so business owners feel empowered to use them rather than be so intimidated they walk away. Doesn’t it feel like we’ve already been moving at light speed in the first half of the 21st century? How can we go any faster? And if we, as entrepreneurs, are not ready, we will be left behind. So, I want to use this post to enlighten you about new and emerging technologies and how they might fit into your practice. My goal is to inform and prepare you, the dental entrepreneur, so you feel excited, rather than overwhelmed, by what is coming. 

One of the recurring themes of the conference was to show businesses that fail to incorporate AI within the next 5 to 10 years would be left behind or eliminated. While the conference covered a broad range of sectors, I was most interested in how AI applied to dental practices and the dental industry. In this blog post, I’ll explore the potential ways AI can be integrated into dental procedures and the benefits they will bring to dental entrepreneurs. Let’s dig in.  

AI in your dental practice

Six Areas of Emerging Technologies Applied to Dental Care 

So much new technology is being designed, created, and innovated that figuring out where to start feels challenging. Below are six areas of emerging technology that I’ve curated for this post that are simple to investigate and implement in your practice.  

Of course, you will face some challenges, there will be a learning curve, and you may even experience push-back from your teams and even your patients. Still, taking all of this in stride and creating a new mindset of embracing challenges, these new tools will enhance rather than hinder your practice.  

AI Diagnostic Support in Your Dental Practice 

  • One of the most immediate applications of AI in dentistry is its ability to enhance diagnostic accuracy. AI-powered tools can analyze X-rays and dental images, quickly identifying issues the human eye could miss. With a more accurate and timely diagnosis, you can provide more targeted and better treatment plans, ultimately improving patient outcomes. 

Dental Patient Engagement and Communication 

  • Your dental practice can leverage AI chatbots and virtual assistants to enhance patient communication and response. By handling appointment scheduling and reminders, AI can streamline administrative processes and free your staff to focus on more critical tasks. Furthermore, AI-powered virtual assistants can provide personalized oral health tips, answer FAQs and check in with patients on their health plans fostering deeper patient engagement and promoting preventative care. 

Treatment Planning and Customization for Dental Practices 

  • Advanced AI algorithms aid you in developing personalized treatment plans by analyzing various factors such as a patient’s medical history, current known conditions, and personal preferences. So, then you can create tailored treatment plans that cater to your patient’s unique needs. This way, you use AI to consider many factors rather than yourself, trying to remember and write down every patient’s specific condition, requirements, preferences, etc.  

Robotic-Assisted Dentistry 

  • Although still in its infancy, robotic-assisted dentistry holds tremendous potential for the future. AI-powered robots can assist dental professionals in intricate procedures with increased precision, reduced fatigue, and shortened procedure time. As technology advances, we can expect to see more complex procedures being carried out with the help of AI-driven robotics.  

Dental Practice Management and Efficiency 

  • AI has the potential to revolutionize your practice management by automating repetitive tasks and optimizing resource allocation. From inventory management to billing and insurance claim processing, AI can identify patterns and trends that lead to cost-saving opportunities and more efficient operations. We see these applications already in companies like Amazon and industries like shipping logistics. And that same type of application can be implemented in your dental practice to streamline specific tasks and processes.  

Continuing Education and Skill Development within the Dental Industry 

  • Finally, using AI-driven educational tools, you can stay updated with the latest industry advancements and best practices. AI can also help you identify knowledge gaps and recommend targeted learning materials, ensuring you remain at the forefront of your field. How incredible is that? An AI tool will automatically give you reminders, strategies, and tools to keep you competitive and informed about new knowledge and technology; that is a game-changer.    

A Brave New World for Dental Entrepreneurs—Grounded in What Matters

Integrating AI into your dental practice opens powerful opportunities for optimization and growth. From improving patient outcomes to streamlining administrative tasks, the potential is real—and accelerating fast. Dentistry is no exception to this shift, and adopting the right technologies can absolutely strengthen your practice’s long-term relevance and competitiveness.

But with innovation moving this quickly, it’s normal to feel overwhelmed. Where do you start? Which tools actually make sense for your practice? And how do you know whether a new technology is helping—or just adding complexity?

The most effective way to approach AI is to ground innovation in clear performance metrics. That’s why we created our KPI Tracker, to help dental entrepreneurs measure what truly matters before, during, and after adopting new tools. When you know your numbers, you can confidently test new technologies, evaluate impact, and scale what works—without guesswork.

Start small. Choose one or two innovations that align with your goals. Track the results. Let your data guide your decisions.

Ready to innovate with clarity instead of overwhelm?

Download Your KPI Tracker

#1 Rule of Successful Dental Practice Owners: Measure What Matters 

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Do you measure what truly matters in your dental practice? Nearly every conversation I have with a fellow dentist-entrepreneur circles around how to know your investment and time is working, ‘how do you know that you’re actually growing your dental practice?’ 

You Can’t Improve What you Do Not Measure

Common sense tells us that in order to keep improving you must keep examining the results of what you’re doing. What is the point of doing a tremendous amount of work unless you’re going to review it to see what has been effective and what has been a waste of time? 

“In God we trust, all others bring data.”

-W. Edwards Deming

Reading a slew of reviews about a business who consistently makes incredible hamburgers but their fries are always soggy is literally reading the lagging indicators of a business that refuses to accept feedback and examine its protocols to address what is working and what is not. Reviews are one way to gain insight into what’s working in your business and what’s not working. They are also a look back into the near past: one person’s recent experience at that one hamburger joint. Make sense?

Here’s What to Measure in your Dental Practice

So, how do you measure and what do you measure? Two vitally important questions every business needs to ask and answer constantly and consistently.  

In the case of dental patient treatment plan acceptance, patient nurturing and dental patient experience, not all actions are created equal. Some of our actions have a greater impact on our environment than others and it’s a good idea to know which ones have a greater impact and which ones have a weaker impact.  

Lead Measure Vs. Lag Measure

First, let’s define some terms. Lead measures or lead indicators help you predict which actions might successful and which might not, in other words, what to keep doing to keep getting the same successful results.  

A lag measure or lag indicator, measures your wildly successful goal with results that have already passed like profit, revenue, and patient satisfaction. They are a little harder to gauge because the results are correlated to actions taken in the past.  

In my book Extraction: The Surprising New Formula to Systemize, Scale and Sell Your Business, I breakdown different forms of measurement and the importance measuring growth and goal achievement play in your leadership role. Let’s look at three measurable areas of your practice here.  

Dental Practice Revenue Growth

  • Leading Indicator: The leading indicator here is the Number of Qualified Patient Leads. By measuring the number of qualified leads generated, your business can predict future sales growth. In a dental practice, your qualified leads are patients who call for an appointment—for a service you can provide with a payer you accept. If the number of qualified leads is increasing, it’s likely that sales growth will follow. If your qualified leads are decreasing this is an area that you want to pay attention to with your team to decide why they are decreasing and what can be done to stop and reverse the trend, essentially get ahead of the ‘problem’ before it becomes one.  
  • Lagging Indicator: Dental Practice Production or Revenue. Production or revenue is a lagging indicator because it shows the results of past sales efforts. As we know, production in your dental practice doesn’t happen if the patient doesn’t show up, accept the treatment plan, and ultimately pay for the dental care you delivered. After sales have been made, revenue is generated, but this data is historical and cannot be used to predict future sales growth. It can help you look back and evaluate what you and/or your team did to increase revenue or the reverse: review what you did that possibly decreased revenue.  

Safety in Your Dental Practice

  • Leading Indicator: Number of Safety Training Hours. By measuring the number of safety training hours completed by employees, including HIPAA and OSHA trainings, a business can predict the likelihood of workplace accidents. There is a documented correlation of safety in the workplace to awareness of rules, laws, regulations and best practices. If the number of safety training hours is increasing, it’s likely that the number of accidents will decrease in the future. 
  • Lagging Indicator: Number of Workplace Accidents. Workplace accidents are a lagging indicator because they represent past events that have already occurred. By the time an accident is recorded, it’s too late to prevent it from happening. But it’s not too late to review protocols, training hours and best practices to ensure accidents decrease and awareness of safety protocols are top of mind for your employees.  

Managing Employee Turnover in Your Dental Practice

  • Leading Indicator: Employee Engagement. By measuring your employee engagement through surveys, anonymous feedback systems, communications and strong morale engagement, your business can predict your future turnover rates. If your employee engagement is low, it’s likely that turnover rates will increase in the future. 
  • Lagging Indicator: Employee Turnover Rate. Your employee turnover rate is a lagging indicator because it shows the results of your past employee retention efforts. After employees have left, turnover rates can be calculated, but this data is historical and cannot be used to predict future turnover rates. However, if your turnover rate is high, you can take a look at your employee engagement protocols to see what is lacking and where you can improve employee engagement.  
What Type of Growth is Expected in My Dental Practice?

The Measurement of Growth is A Measure of Leadership

These are just a few examples of how using and measuring your leading and lagging indicators can improve so many areas of your dental practice. The key takeaway is that leading indicators can be used to predict future outcomes, while lagging indicators show the results of past actions. By tracking both leading and lagging indicators, you can better understand how your actions, decisions and the actions of your teams affect performance so you can make more informed decisions about future strategy. 

The role of a leader is not just to delegate, guide and grow, it is also to measure so you can continue to improve on what has come before. If you’re working with a strategic plan in order to scale your practice, how will you know when to buy your second practice? Is it simply when you’ve socked away enough money or is it when your key performance indicators show that, not only are you financially ready to buy but it’s also the right economic environment to buy?  

Mastering Dental Practice Entrepreneurship

Successful dental practice owners don’t grow by guesswork, they grow by measuring what truly matters. If you’re ready to assess the real health of your practice and make confident, data-driven decisions, the next step is putting the right metrics in front of you.

That’s why we created our KPI Tracker, built specifically for dental entrepreneurs. This tool helps you monitor the key indicators that drive growth, profitability, and sustainability, so you can spot trends early, identify opportunities, and lead your team with clarity.

If you’re ready to stop relying on assumptions and start leading with insight, this tracker gives you a simple, actionable way to stay focused on what moves the needle.

Ready to measure what matters most?

Download Your KPI Tracker

How to Scale Your Dental Practice Successfully: 5 Essential Building Blocks

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Read this checklist before you start growing your dental practice. When successfully scaling a dental practice, the key is to focus on the patient experience and the business operations. You can successfully scale your dental practice by creating efficiencies, streamlining processes, and enhancing patient experience and team alignment. Let’s look at five ways you can lay the foundational groundwork that will allow you to scale your business successfully.

Dental practice scaling and exit strategies

Develop A Strategic Plan for Your Dental Practice

The first step to scaling your dental practice is to create a strategic plan. Start by considering the current state of your practice, your current capabilities, and your future goals. Then, develop a plan to take you from where you are to where you want to go. One simple way to create your plan is to decide what goals you want to achieve over the next 3 years in terms of scaling your practice.

Next, and this is the fun part, work backwards to figure out what steps you need to take leading up to that 3-year completion. Determine what steps you need to take and goals you need to set in each year. Break those years down into monthly goals and then break those goals down into weekly goals and daily tasks to accomplish the weekly and monthly goals. Working backwards allows you to create a plan that you can chunk down with steps that you can create with your team and get everyone on board and excited about this growth phase.

Automate Your Dental Practice Systems

The next step is to look for ways to automate processes and create efficiencies. Automation can streamline tasks, decrease administrative costs and free up time for both staff and patients. For example, by automating appointment scheduling, billing and follow-up communications you can lighten the load of your team members so they can focus on ‘bigger rocks’ like the daily tasks needed to achieve that weekly and monthly goal chart bringing you closer to your 3-year scaling achievement.

Create and Refine an Excellent Dental Patient Experience

Creating a comfortable patient atmosphere is essential for a successful dental practice. Make sure your office is clean, comfortable and inviting. Patients should feel relaxed and at ease when they enter the practice, so provide comfortable seating and decor that reflects the practice’s values and mission. Offer convenient and flexible appointment availability. Patients want to be able to schedule appointments that fit their schedules. Offering flexible hours and options for online scheduling makes it easier for patients to set up appointments that work for them.

Also, utilize technology. Technology can be a great way to enhance the patient experience. Implementing an electronic health records app and offering other digital tools makes it easier for patients to access their records and schedule appointments much more effortlessly. You can also use digital tools to inform patients about their treatment and follow-up reminders. These automations add ease and control for your patients and streamline activity and effort for your team members.

Invest in a Marketing Strategy

Marketing is an essential component of scaling a dental practice. As a dental entrepreneur, focusing solely on providing the best possible services to your patients can be tempting. While this is undoubtedly important, you must also investing in marketing to help scale your practice. Here’s why: Marketing helps you reach more people. When you invest in marketing you increase your visibility in the local community. In addition, a robust online presence can help you establish yourself as a reliable and trustworthy practice.

Additionally, marketing can help you get the word out about new services, promotions, and other offerings that may attract new patients. Marketing also helps you build relationships with your existing patients and create new relationships with prospective patients. By creating content tailored to your target audience’s needs and interests, you can build a reputation of trust and loyalty in and among your community, both online and offline. Finally, investing in marketing can help you generate more recurring revenue over time.

Build Team Alignment within Your Clinical and Support Teams

Your scaling plan is only as strong as the team you’ve selected to implement and execute your strategic plan. You need a strong team capable of trusting your leadership through some rough waters. If you’ve got a team that can trust and execute in the tough times, that makes the more fluid times easier to navigate. I speak a lot about teams so I won’t go into too much detail here but team alignment and team strength is a fundamental requisite of any scaling plan.

These five essential and foundational activities: developing a Strategic Plan, automating where you can, refining patient experience, investing in offline and online marketing strategies, and building an aligned team all lay the groundwork for eventually scaling your organization successfully.

Once these systems and strategies are in place they are designed to free you and your teams up to focus on the new tasks and goals in your Strategic Plan that will allow you to scale and grow.


Scaling a business is a monumental task. These strategies will free you p to focus on your overall strategic plan. Once these strategies are implemented you, your teams and your whole organization will be more nimble and resilient to meet the challenges of scaling and growing your company. This is what it means to work ON your business rather than simply showing up to the dentist’s chair every day.

You are the leader of your organization and every leader needs a strategic plan.

Scaling Your Dental Practice Starts with Clarity, Not Speed

Scaling a dental practice isn’t just about growth, it’s about readiness. Many practices want to scale, but far fewer have the clarity, alignment, and structure required to do it sustainably. Without a clear understanding of where you are today and where you’re going, growth can create more stress than success.

Before you take the next step, it’s critical to define your Point A, clarify your long-term vision, and ensure your goals, team, and systems are aligned to support expansion. That’s exactly why we created the Extraction GPS.

The Extraction GPS is a practical planning tool designed to help dental practice owners assess their current reality, clarify their values and direction, and map a clear path forward. It gives you a framework to decide if, when, and how to scale, so growth is intentional, not reactive.

Thinking about scaling your dental practice?

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