Bite-sized dental wisdom in under 2 minutes.

I think every successful dental practice owner needs to be a little delusional.

Actually, a lot delusional.

I mean, think about it. Who graduates from dental school with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, decides to borrow another million or two, and thinks, Yeah, I can totally run a business.

Someone who's at least a little delusional.

And honestly, you need that kind of confidence to take the leap.

But that same confidence can also convince you to keep a terrible employee, ignore declining production, or spend another ten grand on a marketing campaign that hasn't brought in a single patient.

At some point, you have to ask yourself whether you're being ambitious or just refusing to admit something isn't working.

Because there's a big difference between believing in something when you have no proof it'll work and continuing to believe in it when you have proof that it isn't.

You need enough delusion to believe you can buy a struggling practice and turn it around. You can open a startup with zero patients and somehow fill the schedule. You can compete with established offices that have been around for 20 years.

You're betting on yourself with very little evidence that any of it will work.

And if you waited until every risk was eliminated, you'd probably stay an associate forever. Which, to be fair, isn't a bad thing.

But if ownership is what you want, eventually you have to stop analyzing every possible outcome and actually take the risk.

Now let's say you open that startup.

You're convinced you're going to build a $3 million practice. You can picture the full schedule, the amazing team, the patients referring their friends and family.

Meanwhile, you have six patients scheduled for next Tuesday.

You still need to believe you'll get there.

But you also need to look at that schedule and figure out what the hell you're going to do about it.

Is your marketing actually bringing in patients? Are new patients converting? Are you spending money on things that aren't producing results?

You can't keep telling yourself everything is going great when your numbers are telling you otherwise.

And sometimes reality means admitting that the thing you were so confident about isn't working.

Maybe it's the employee you were convinced would eventually improve, the expensive equipment you thought would pay for itself, or the marketing company that's been promising results for six months.

Another month. Another conversation. Another few thousand dollars. Surely it'll work this time.

Sound familiar?

The longer you've invested in something, the harder it becomes to admit you might have made the wrong decision.

But at some point, you have to stop defending the decision you made and start evaluating the results you're getting.

And this is something you have to do over and over again as a practice owner.

You can't rely on delusion to make every decision, but you also can't let reality talk you out of every opportunity.

Sometimes, you need both in the same decision.

Let's say you're considering opening a second location.

The delusional side believes you can replicate what you've built: hire another team, fill another schedule, and build something even bigger.

The realistic side needs to look at your cash flow, leadership, systems, and whether there's enough demand to support it.

If the numbers don't support it, maybe you need to change your timeline or your approach.

But you can't let every obstacle convince you to abandon the idea altogether.

That's the balancing act.

You need enough confidence to pursue an opportunity before you know whether it'll work, and enough common sense to adjust your plans when the results aren't what you expected.

And that applies to just about every major decision you make as an owner.

If you're only realistic, you'll find a perfectly logical reason to never take the risk.

If you're only delusional, you'll keep making decisions based on what you hope is happening instead of what's actually happening.

One keeps you from starting. The other keeps you from succeeding.

And I think the best practice owners know when to use each.

Be delusional enough to believe you can build something great, and realistic enough to figure out how to actually make it happen.

-Dr. Alex

P.S. This is part of why I built Milo. In a dental office, it is easy to assume the weekly tasks are getting done, the follow-up is happening, and everyone knows what they are responsible for ... until you find out they are not.

Milo gives you a way to actually see what is getting done, what is not, and what needs attention while there is still time to do something about it.