Just Two Minutes: Player or Owner?

Bite-sized dental wisdom in under 2 minutes.

This question messed with me for a long time.

Do you want to be the person who makes the shot at the end of the game — the one everyone cheers for when it goes right?

Or do you want to be sitting in the owner’s box… because you own the team?

When I was practicing, I told myself I wanted to be the owner.
But if I’m being honest, I was still acting like the player.

I liked being needed. I liked being the one who could fix things quickly. I liked being the smartest person in the room when something went sideways. It felt productive. It felt valuable.

But here’s the part no one likes to admit:

The more valuable you are to the day-to-day, the less valuable your business actually is.

And that tension shows up most clearly when you start thinking about hiring.

Every December, when you look back at the year and think about January, hiring feels like the answer. You’re tired. You’re stretched. You know something has to change.

So you hire in one of two extremes.

Either you try to hire someone exactly like you — the mythical unicorn who’s going to think like you, care like you, anticipate everything, and magically handle all the stuff you don’t want to do.

That person doesn’t exist.

Or you hire a “helper.” Someone who can take things off your plate, but only if you tell them what to do, check their work, and answer questions constantly.

And now you’ve created a brand-new job for yourself.

It’s called management.

What finally clicked for me is that hiring based on ideas is backwards. “I think I need help with X” or “I have a good idea, so I should hire for it” sounds logical, but it usually just adds complexity.

The shift that matters is moving from idea generation to constraint identification.

Instead of asking, “What do I want to add next year?” the better question is, “What am I personally the bottleneck for right now?”

What can’t move forward unless you touch it?
Where does everything slow down because it routes through you?
What breaks when you’re gone?

That’s your constraint.

And the right hire isn’t someone like you or someone to just help you. It’s someone who removes that constraint so the business can move without you making the shot every time.

That’s the difference between being the player and being the owner.

So as you wrap up this year and look at January, don’t just set goals based on how you feel. Audit what actually happened. Look at where you were the limiter. Then decide what changes next — not everything, just the thing that gets you out of the game and into the owner’s box.

-Dr. Alex

P.S. When you’ve fixed your systems and now the business survives without you.