Bite-sized dental wisdom in under 2 minutes.

This past weekend, Eric and I spoke at an event about increasing the value of your practice before you sell.

Nothing fluffy. No theory. Just what we actually did.

I sold my first practice in Newport Beach to a private dentist. Then Eric and I built multiple offices with the explicit goal of selling to a DSO. And we did. Successfully. The numbers worked. The exits happened. The proof exists.

And yet, while building the presentation, and even while speaking, I had this weird thought:

Did we actually do this on purpose… or did we just get lucky?

Which is ridiculous when you say it out loud.

We implemented systems. We cleaned up operations. We standardized processes. We focused on the things buyers actually care about. There is literal evidence that what we did worked.

But sitting there, explaining it to a room full of dentists, I still felt like an imposter.

That’s when it hit me: dentists are really good at giving themselves credit for clinical skill - and terrible at giving themselves credit for business skill.

If a crown seats perfectly, you don’t say, “Wow, I really lucked out today.”
You say, “I did a good prep.”

But when a practice grows, becomes more efficient, or sells for real money?
Suddenly it’s luck. Timing. The market. Anything but competence.

A lot of what we call “imposter syndrome” isn’t actually believing you’re a fraud. It’s being uncomfortable owning the fact that you’re good at something you didn’t formally train for.

No one handed us a roadmap for building sellable practices. We learned by doing. By messing things up. By fixing them. By repeating what worked. Those reps count - even if they don’t look as clean as a CE certificate.

Dentistry teaches you to respect skill when it’s obvious and technical. Business skill is quieter. It shows up in outcomes, not procedures. And because of that, people dismiss it.

So if you’ve ever looked at your own success and thought, “I don’t know… I just figured it out as I went,” here’s the truth:

That’s what building skill looks like.

Luck doesn’t repeat itself across multiple offices.
Systems do.
Decisions do.
Reps do.

If the results are there, you don’t need a better explanation - you just need to give yourself credit.

-Dr. Alex

P.S. Milo is the checklist app I built to get systems out of my head and into something my team can actually follow. It launches soon — join the waitlist for early access before everyone else + a bonus scorecard to see which systems you're missing.