Bite-sized dental wisdom in under 2 minutes.

I see this question come up a lot with new practice owners… who should I hire?

Do I hire someone experienced and pay more? Do I hire someone newer and train them? Do I take a chance on someone with the right personality but no dental background?

And honestly, my answer is not the same for every practice.

It depends what stage you are in.

When I first owned a practice, I needed experienced people around me because I did not have the experience yet.

I needed the front office person who had seen the problems before. The assistant who could keep the day moving. The treatment coordinator who had actually talked money with patients and did not act like a "no" was a personal attack.

At that stage, I was not just paying someone to do a job. I was paying for what they knew that I did not know yet.

Because when you are new, you do not always know what good looks like.

Then eventually, that changes.

You get better. You see more. You learn what matters. You build your own systems.

At that point, you can hire someone with less experience and train them because now you actually have something to train them into.

You have the process, the expectations, and now you know what good looks like.

That is a great stage to get to.

But I also think there is a stage after that. The stage where you know exactly what good looks like, and because of that, you are even more willing to pay for great people.

Because now you know the difference.

You know the difference between someone who has years of experience and someone who has one year of experience repeated ten times.

You know the difference between someone who says they can do the job and someone who actually makes the whole office better.

And you know that when the right person walks in, paying them well is not a waste.

Early on, I paid for experience because I needed help knowing what to do. Later, I could hire less experienced people and train them because I had built the system.

And now, if I were doing it again, I think I would be even faster to pay for the right person.

Because when someone is actually good, you feel it. They make things easier. They see the problem before it turns into a bigger problem. They raise the standard without you having to drag it there.

So I do not think the answer is always hire experienced or always train from scratch. The answer is knowing what you need in that stage of your practice.

If you do not know what good looks like yet, you probably need someone who does.

If you do know what good looks like, then you better have the system to train it.

And if you find someone great, pay them before someone else does.

-Dr. Alex

P.S. Hiring someone with less experience is a lot less risky when you actually have a clear way to train them.

Milo helps you turn the job into simple checklists so new team members know what to learn, what to do, and what good looks like without you explaining the same process ten different ways.