Bite-sized dental wisdom in under 2 minutes.

I have been out of clinical dentistry for about three and a half years now.

Eric still has practices, so I am not totally removed from dental. I still hear what is going on, I still know the problems, and I still remember exactly why practice ownership is enough to give anyone gray hair.

But I am not in the day-to-day the way I used to be.

Most of my focus now is on building my own things.

And then recently, I started going on podcasts and talking more about our experience growing practices. What worked. What did not. What we would do differently. How we acquired, started, expanded, operated, and eventually sold.

And the weirdest thing started happening.

I got the itch.

The practice ownership itch.

Which makes no sense.

Because when you are in it, you spend a lot of time wondering why you ever thought owning a dental office was a good idea in the first place.

Then you step away from it, get a little distance, and suddenly your brain starts acting like, “You know what would be fun? Doing that again.”

But I think part of it is that experience changes the way you see the game.

The first time you own a practice, so much of it is figuring it out while you are already in the middle of it. You are making decisions before you fully understand the consequences. You are hiring people before you really know what good looks like. You are building systems while also seeing patients, managing a team, dealing with patients, watching the schedule, fixing problems, and pretending you are not constantly one class II filling away from losing your mind.

But once you have done it, you start to see the levers more clearly.

If I started another practice, I would not try to do everything. I would focus on the things I know move the needle.

I would get to five hundred reviews as fast as possible.

I would market emergency dentistry hard, because new patients with urgent problems are one of the fastest ways to get people in the door and build trust.

And I would pick one real differentiator. Not six.

Not clear aligners, implants, sedation, sleep, Botox, airway, and a coffee bar.

One.

Pick the thing you can actually get good at, build around it, and make sure people know you do it.

That is the difference experience gives you.

It does not make ownership easy. It just makes you better at knowing where to spend your energy.

And maybe that is why the itch comes back.

I haven't forgotten how hard it was, but I know what I would do differently.

-Dr. Alex

P.S. The right systems matter early.

You do not need a hundred complicated processes. You need the important things to happen the same way, every time, as your team and practice grow.

Milo gives your team clear checklists, ownership, and a way to see that the work is actually getting done.