“The work that fills the first weeks of ownership isn’t dramatic. It’s small, dumb, invisible, and endless. It’s proving, to one indifferent server after another, that the thing you bought is real.”

On Saturday I emailed myself the word “Test.” Then I sent it again. Then twice more. Four emails, Father’s Day weekend, the whole world at a barbecue — and the entire content of each one was: “Test.”

I signed them, too. “Owner.”

Here’s why a grown man spends his Saturday emailing himself a single word: my practice’s email address didn’t exist yet. Not “wasn’t working.” Didn’t exist. Every time I sent something to it, a server somewhere wrote back, fast and unbothered — Address not found. The domain couldn’t be found. I bought a company. I have “Owner” in my signature. And the machines had never heard of us.

Nobody tells you about this part of the day you “arrive.” The title is instant — the wire clears, the papers sign, you’re the owner before lunch. The existence is the part that isn’t. The email, the phone tree, the autopay, the login that lets the new owner into his own systems — none of it comes with the keys. You build it yourself, one bounced message at a time, while the confirmation emails keep cheerfully informing you that you cannot be found.

Same afternoon, I was in a slow-motion fistfight with the cable company. A reference number. “Do not change the subject line.” “Please reply with scanned documentation.” I finally just enrolled in autopay and wrote back, basically, I think this is handled? — which might be the most honest sentence I’ve written all month. I think this is handled. I have no idea if this is handled.

I want to make that sound like a war story. It isn’t. Nobody yelled. Nothing broke that a Saturday couldn’t fix. And that’s almost the whole point — the work that actually fills the first weeks of ownership isn’t dramatic. It’s small, dumb, invisible, and endless. It’s proving, to one indifferent server after another, that the thing you bought is real.

By mid-afternoon, one of them went through. I sent “Test.” It landed. No fireworks — I just sat there looking at it. A message that said nothing, to an address that finally existed, from a guy the internet had spent all day refusing to believe in.

“Owner.”

— Dr. Besmer

“You don’t inherit a practice as a finished thing. You inherit its bones. And some of the bones are old.”

“Computers should be in Monday. When’s the earliest we can start the transition? Expected cost?”

I sent that at 7:48 in the morning, before coffee, to my IT guy. Reading it back, it might be the most owner sentence I’ve ever written. Three questions, zero patience, a man who wants the thing done yesterday and is pretending to be calm about it.

Here’s what nobody tells you about buying a practice: you don’t inherit a finished thing. You inherit its bones. And some of the bones are old. The computers running my front desk are old enough that the operating system stopped getting security updates years ago — the kind of machines you look at the way you look at a house you just bought and already know you’re gutting. Functional. Standing. Doomed.

So Monday, new ones arrive. And the first real act of owning this place isn’t some grand vision off a podcast. It’s the careful, boring, expensive work of moving a whole practice onto new hardware, one machine at a time.

I asked the obvious question. What’s it going to cost?

The answer — and I respect the honesty — was basically: I don’t know. Hourly. Each computer takes one to three hours depending on how much has to move and how many programs go back on, and the first one always takes the longest, because the first one is where you find out what’s actually broken.

“Transition” is a clean word for a messy thing. It means: take everything the practice has always run on and move it, login by login, onto new machines — without breaking the small detail where patients show up Monday and expect their charts to exist. No flip of a switch. No big reveal. Box by box, password by password, hoping the software’s support line picks up.

And here’s the part I keep turning over. I’m spending this week standing up the old system on the new computers — and I already know that within a few weeks I’m going to replace that software too. You rebuild the current engine just so you can keep driving while you build the better one. That sounds insane when I say it out loud. It isn’t. It’s the only way to change anything in a business that doesn’t get to close for a single day.

I used to think running a company was the big decisions. Vision. Strategy. The stuff that sounds good when you say it to other people. Some days, sure. Most days it’s a 7:48am email to a guy asking how soon he can start and how much it’ll run me — and being okay with “I don’t know, we’ll see.”

The computers come Monday. We’ll find out how long the first one takes.

— Dr. Besmer

Here’s how I found out. When you buy a practice, the buyer pays a fee — part of “facilitating the transaction.” Fine. I had wire instructions in my inbox the day we signed. A wire costs about thirty dollars. An ACH is free. So I sent the ACH. On accident. Well — honestly, not an accident. I wanted to save thirty dollars.

Turns out ACH versus wire matters. They can be different routing numbers at the same bank, and if you send an ACH where a wire belongs, it doesn’t arrive — it bounces. And we signed on a Friday. ACH and wires don’t even travel over weekends, to my knowledge. So by Wednesday, the person on the other end of that fee was very aware he didn’t have his money — and made sure I stayed aware of it too.

I called my bank. I called his bank. And at night I ran the math nobody asked me to run: worst case, what actually happens here? Does the deal unwind? Does somebody have to call the seller — a man I genuinely like — and tell him it’s all coming back? Do I stop being a practice owner in week one over a thirty-dollar shortcut? Reading that back: I was letting this guy live rent-free in my head. The money was never in danger. Just slow. Like me.

Thursday I wired it. Properly this time. The bank called between patients to verify — “I’m a dentist and today is relatively busy, do you know roughly what time?” is a real sentence I sent a treasury department — and by that afternoon the fee was paid in full, confirmation number and all. The bounced ACH came back the same day. Even.

And then, money in hand, he sent me one more text. The most ridiculous text I have ever received. I’m not going to tell you what it said — partly out of discipline, mostly because I deleted it on sight.

Blocked the number too.

A $30 choice turned into a five-figure scare, a week of phone calls, and the difference between an ACH and a wire, learned permanently.

It’s over with.

— Dr. Besmer

I didn’t expect to learn that on a Sunday, sorting mail. Some of it forwarded from an apartment I’d already moved out of. Some of it sent to the office. All of it asking the same quiet question: is this real, or is this a scam? You start reading the envelope before you open it.

Dental school taught me the tooth. It did not teach me this: you hire someone, then you “report” the hire. Then a W-4 and an I-9. Then you report the hire again — to a different agency. Then you keep the files on hand in case anyone ever asks. None of it is hard, exactly. It’s just a bucket I didn’t know existed two weeks ago.

That’s the thing I actually figured out yesterday. There are all these buckets — legal, operational, dental, clinical, the money one — and right now every single one is fuzzy. I can see just enough. That used to scare me. It doesn’t anymore, and here’s why: the job isn’t to make all the buckets clear at once. The job is to make sure one thing gets a little clearer every day. That’s it. One thing. So that the next time you reach into that bucket, it costs you a little less.

So that was the day. I pulled up the trial version of the practice-management software I want to switch us to, just to put my hands on it — the conversion isn’t going to do itself. Finished the call script. Stacked the recall papers, ready to go. Parked the direct mail — not because it doesn’t matter, but because not everything gets to be today’s problem.

Then I went and lifted.

I train at night now, on purpose. It means every task for the day is already dead before I pick up the bar. I’m going to skip a lot of those sessions in the months ahead. That’s the trade. You do what you have to do.

Teeth are the easy part. The rest is just buckets — getting clear, one day at a time.

Tuck and roll.

— Dr. Besmer

It’s Saturday morning, I own a dental practice, and I’m staring at a brand-new business bank account that’s telling me I may have just paid for the same insurance policy three times. So I do what every confident new business owner does. I email the agent and ask, basically, “um — is this right?”

That’s the day. That was the whole day.

I keep expecting ownership to feel like ownership — like I’d sit at a desk and decide things. Instead, my first real Saturday as the owner, I wasn’t a boss. I was a customer. A confused, slightly panicked customer of about ten companies at once, none of whom know who I am yet.

I emailed the company that makes the software my whole practice runs on — software I now own — to ask them to transfer the license and, while they’re at it, teach me how to use it. Read that back. I bought the thing. I can’t turn it on.

I emailed the internet company about putting the account in my name and got a polite correction: what I need isn’t a “name change,” it’s an “account takeover.” Great. Takeover. Add it to the pile of words that just mean “another form.”

The bank giving me a business card emailed to say they need more before they’ll finish. One mailer company sent a quote. A second sent a different quote. A third emailed me personally, which felt nice until I realized that now I have to read all three.

And then — this is the one that actually made me laugh out loud — somewhere in the middle of all of it, Amazon emailed to ask if my “Boujee Trends Tartar Scraper” had met my expectations.

It did, Amazon. Thank you for checking in. At least somebody’s following up with me.

Here’s what nobody warns you about. You spend years dreaming about being the owner — the one in charge, the one who calls the shots. Then you close, and for about the first week “the owner” is just the newest, least-informed customer in every system that keeps the place alive. You’re not commanding anything. You’re on hold. You’re clicking “forgot password.” You’re typing “is this right?” to people who have done this a thousand times and are very kindly not laughing at you.

I booked a brunch that night at a place called The Library. First non-work thing I’d done in longer than I want to admit. Sat down. Thought about the three charges the entire time.

But here’s the trade, and it’s the whole reason I did this. I would rather be the confused customer of my own company than the most confident employee of someone else’s. The three charges are a problem. They’re my problem now. That’s the part I wanted.

Monday, the phones start. Let them.

— Dr. Besmer

“The skill isn’t doing more. It’s remembering which thing actually matters right now.”

I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like when it hits you.

I was driving to meet a friend for coffee in the morning, smiling like an idiot, because at that same hour the next day I’d be signing the papers that make me own a dental practice. And I caught myself thinking: shouldn’t this feel like arriving? Like the top of something? It doesn’t. It feels like the starting gun.

Then I went home, and the day actually started.

I read the closing statement line by line until the numbers stopped lying to me. I stood up the system to call back every patient who’s overdue — thousands of names, sorted by who’s been waiting longest. I got the letter that introduces me to those patients blessed by the man who built this place over twenty years. I finished wiring the practice’s email so it doesn’t land in spam. I sorted the team’s paperwork, the signage, the mailers, the phone number that has to be on all of it. A dozen unglamorous things that don’t have names.

And underneath all of it, the part nobody warns you about: my business checking account went negative two days in a row. I had money in it. I paid for something — an insurance bill I could’ve sworn I’d already paid — and it went red. I wired more in. Red again. Not a ribbon-cutting. Just you, refilling a leaking bucket one transfer at a time while you do everything else.

The ideas never stop either. You finish one thing and three more appear — do I write it down? do it now? switch tasks? — and the real skill isn’t doing more, it’s remembering which one actually matters right now. I’m not good at that yet. I’m honest enough to say it. I haven’t really rested in weeks. (I’d make coffee, but a pour-over takes too long, so I grab a roommate’s energy drink and go. I want it strong enough to show up on a drug test, and I don’t have the time to make it.) My morning routine isn’t a routine. It’s just: work.

Here’s the idea that finally made sense of all of it. I thought owning this would mean getting ahead. It doesn’t. Owning it means defending yourself against a thousand different enemies — the red account, the card reader that won’t transfer, the form you forgot, the patient you haven’t called yet — and making it out alive, taking them down one by one.

And yesterday I took down a hundred of them. There are still nine hundred. That’s the job.

The strange part? I love it.

Today I sign. Then I get right back to work.

I can’t wait.

— Dr. Besmer

“You can put together a genuinely good day and still feel like you’re drowning — because the list never gets shorter, it just changes.”

I had a 7:30 a.m. meeting yesterday and could not have told you what day it was.

Not the date. The day. Tuesday? Wednesday? I sat there with my coffee doing the math backward from “closing is Friday,” counting on my fingers like a kid. (Wednesday. Took me till lunch to be sure.)

Here’s what makes that embarrassing: I’d actually had a good day. A great one, on paper. I got the bank’s last loan condition pushed to after closing, so it can’t blow up Friday. I stood up payroll from scratch for a team I haven’t even legally hired yet. I set up the password vault that finally gets every practice login out of my head and my notes app. I wrote the rules for how my AI tools are allowed to touch the business — and where they’re not. Read that back and it sounds like a man who has it together.

I did not feel like that man.

I felt like the guy who almost scrolled past a calendar notification telling him the day before had been his parents’ immigration day — the day they became citizens, the whole reason a kid like me gets to stress about buying a business at all. I was so deep in a card reader that won’t transfer and a payroll system I’ve never touched that I nearly missed it.

That’s the part nobody warns you about. It isn’t that the work is hard. It’s that you can put together a genuinely good day and still feel like you’re drowning — because the list never gets shorter, it just changes. You finish four things and five show up. The scoreboard and the gut stop agreeing, and the gut is louder.

So you learn not to fully trust the gut. Yesterday it said “you’re in over your head.” The record said “you moved the close, built payroll, and locked down your security in a single day.” Both were true. The skill is knowing which one to act on.

Underneath all of it, the same thing I keep telling anyone who’ll listen about day one: the goal isn’t production. It’s getting people in the chair and giving them something they’ve never had at a dental office. Not “case acceptance” — the story. Why they’re really here. What the “no” two years ago actually cost them. Sometimes the most useful thing I’ll do for someone has nothing to do with a tooth.

I’m still in over my head. I also did more than I felt. Both true.

It’s fun. It’s fun right until it isn’t — and that’s exactly when you find out what you’re made of. Last night the choice was rest or show up.

You can either go or quit.

I’m choosing to go.

— Dr. Besmer

Within days, strangers were screenshotting her face, leaving fake one-star reviews, and running an organized campaign to report her to the Illinois dental board and strip her license.

She took the video down. Then she decided the fear was the problem — not her.

This is the oral surgeon your dental school didn’t warn you about. And if you’re about to sign your first contract, you need to hear how she thinks.

Erin Sheffield didn’t grow up wanting to be a dentist. She’d never seen or met a woman dentist. She wanted to be a marine biologist — to pilot the deep-sea submarines off Monterey. Then she fainted watching a wisdom-tooth extraction video in a pre-dental class, hit her head, had a seizure, and spent 15 years with a wrecked credit score over a single $1,100 ambulance bill that got lost in the mail.

Today she’s an oral & maxillofacial surgeon in small-town Quincy, Illinois — booked out six months, in a multi-specialty group she joined as a package deal with her ENT husband (“I’m not coming unless you have a spot for my wife”). She was the only woman in her entire residency. And she’s built a following by saying the quiet parts out loud.

Why should you care? Because the same pressure she refuses to give in to — adding a $500 bone graft to every wisdom tooth to “line our pockets” — is the exact pressure that’s going to be baked into your first associate contract. She sees it from the chair. You’re about to sign it.

1. “A bone graft is always elective.”

She means it literally — there’s no medically necessary reason, your jaw won’t fall off. Yet patients get told it’s $500 per site, $2,000 for four wisdom teeth, and that the surgeon won’t do the extraction without it. Her word for that: holding patients hostage to line our pockets.

2. The $11,000 cavitation.

Patients will pay five figures to “leach the chemicals out of their body,” she says — but won’t pay $4,000 for a front implant they’ll use every day for life. Her take: “cavitation” isn’t even a real diagnosis, and most of it is a scam.

3. “80% of antibiotics in dentistry aren’t needed.”

She’s researched it. Most prescriptions are fear-based — covering the dentist, not the patient. And a single dose can give someone C. diff, which can put them in the hospital or worse. The thing we prescribe to avoid a lawsuit can be the thing that causes one.

4. The two-cent check.

She took Medicaid when she started — patients rode the Amtrak five hours each way from Chicago to see the only oral surgeon in Illinois taking the plan. Then she got a check for two cents for an exam. That was the last straw. Now she donates select cases through the Dental Lifeline Network instead.

5. “I have to say it three times.”

In residency she’d introduce herself, do the full consent, glove up — and the patient would still ask when the doctor was coming in. Her male colleague says “Hey, I’m Bob” once and gets “Hey doc, what’s up?” One abusive patient refused to come to the OR “as long as that nurse won’t.” She was the surgeon.

6. The line no one says to the men.

In her intern year: “You better not get pregnant, Sheffield.” She was the only woman in the room — and somehow the one expected to mold herself into a shape that was never built for her.

7. “Make your own table.”

Her answer to women getting the 8 a.m. Saturday lecture slot in an empty room while the main stage runs the popular talk: build your own — but also show up at the big table, because nothing changes if you don’t.

LISTEN

YouTube: [link] · Apple Podcasts: [link] · Spotify: [link]

Here’s why this episode hits different if you’re an associate. Dr. Sheffield won’t add a graft she doesn’t believe in — even when the money says she should. That’s integrity. But notice where the pressure comes from. When your paycheck is tied to production, adding the graft, the scan, the upsell stops feeling optional. That pull doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s written into your contract.

Most associates sign their first contract the way you’d hand $50,000 to a broker who never explains the deal. You trust the person across the table. You skim it. You sign. Two years later you find out your comp formula quietly favors the practice, your non-compete is wider than you realized, and there’s a production threshold you never even checked. Nobody was in your corner reading the fine print.

So we built the thing we wish we’d had. It’s called 48-Hour Contract Clarity. Two dentists — not lawyers — read your contract line by line. You get a plain-English summary, a custom negotiation playbook, a one-page breakdown of how your comp actually works, and a strategy call to walk through all of it. Forty-eight hours from contract to clarity. And if we don’t find at least three things worth negotiating, you don’t pay. Period.

Before you sign anything, send it to us: theeducatedassociate.com or DM @the_educated_associate on Instagram. One contract reviewed right now pays for itself for the next three years.

CONNECT

Dr. Erin Sheffield: @drerinsheffield · The Doctor Is All In (doctorisallin.com) · Resting Stitch Face podcast (with Dr. Sarah Harding)

The Educated Associate: @the_educated_associate · @dr.besmer · theeducatedassociate.substack.com

Share this with one classmate or colleague. That’s how we grow. That’s how we reach more dentists before they sign the wrong contract.

• Calling patients for exams and hygiene.

• Seeing if there is outstanding on patients that are already scheduled.

• Seeing if hygiene patients need periodic or comprehensive exams.

• The patients were there, but forgotten.

Now the technology. Windows 7. Intel Core i3. If that means anything to you, you can imagine what I was dealing with. At the end of the day, my goal for day 1 was 1. get patients through the door, 2. give them a world class experience, 3. complete treatment, 4. get paid. That’s it. I didn’t care how. Cash, check, credit, IOU. My only goal for month 1 was pay the staff and keep the lights on. I didn’t care how sexy the technology was. I could have done everything with analog impressions and air turbine handpieces if I had to.

The broker sent me numbers that looked great. The practice was declining 5-15% year over year but supposedly it was a “great practice.” Let me make one thing clear. The selling dentist is an A1 human being. It’s not him. It’s the broker who was twisting words and acting like this practice was something it wasn’t. I’m happy I bought it. The selling dentist is now a dear friend of mine. I wish him nothing but success and happiness, he deserves it. But when the broker was pushing me and lying to me about what was going on in the practice, that’s unacceptable to me.

$300k in A/R written off. It’s a fee for service practice. How would you like an extra $300k in your pocket? That would’ve been nice. Well that’s what I got. I know. It shocks me, too.

Now the treatment plans. The Treatment Plan Detailed Report had thousands of rows. Each row a piece of dentistry that was diagnosed, presented to the patient, and never started. Some of them years old. The previous owner had done the work of telling people what they needed. He just stopped following up.

This isn’t an indictment of him. It’s what happens when one dentist runs the whole show without systems. There’s no time. You diagnose. You present. You hope the patient says yes. If they don’t, you move on to the next chair. Six minutes to chart, walk to the next operatory, do it again. The follow-up doesn’t happen because nobody’s job is the follow-up.

I added it up. Six figures of presented treatment, sitting on a shelf. Not all of it will convert. Some patients moved away. Some got the work done elsewhere. Some changed their mind about the crown or the implant or the night guard. Maybe a quarter of it is reachable with a phone call. That math is still six figures.

Each of those numbers changed something I was about to do.

The aged A/R meant I didn’t have to inflate my offer. I could pay closer to the appraised value of the building and still come out ahead on Year 1. The math made the deal cheaper, not more expensive.

The treatment plan backlog meant Day 1 had a focus. Not new-patient marketing. Not Google ads. Not even hygiene recall, though that’s close behind. The first thing my front desk will do every morning is open the Treatment Plan Detailed Report and start dialing patients with presented treatment that never started. Cheapest revenue I’ll ever earn.

The procedure mix meant FFS-only was the right call for Year 1. If one code is driving most of the revenue, you don’t want a PPO contract negotiating it down 35% the day you take over. You want fee schedules you set, on patients you’ve built relationships with. PPO credentialing can wait until Year 2, when I actually know what this practice does.

If you’re an associate looking at a practice, here’s what I’d tell you.

The broker will hand you a packet. Open every PDF. Then ask for the ones that aren’t in the packet:

• Account Aging

• Recall List

• Treatment Plan Detailed Report

• Production Summary

• ADA Procedure Mix

• Monthly Collection Reconciliation (3 years if you can get it)

If the broker won’t send them, the seller will if you ask nicely. If the seller won’t, walk away. A practice that won’t show you its own reports is hiding something.

Then compare the reports to each other. Production vs collections — is there a gap? Recall list vs schedule — are the active patients actually active? Treatment plan pipeline vs production — is the practice harvesting what it diagnoses? Procedure mix vs the marketing — is the practice doing what the broker says it’s doing?

This isn’t financial analysis. It’s just looking. Most buyers don’t look. That’s the whole game.

The selling dentist was a good owner. He built something real over decades. Patients still come because of who he is.

What I bought wasn’t the version of the practice the broker described. It wasn’t the slick brochure with the high gross production number. It was a practice with thousands of patients on paper, six figures of presented treatment sitting unworked, $300K in receivables nobody had chased, and a Windows 7 computer in the back. A practice that had been quietly running on goodwill while the systems aged out.

That’s what I bought. That’s what I’m building from.

— Dr. Besmer

If you’re a dentist thinking about ownership, the dailies are out now and the next long-form lands next Tuesday. Subscribe.

“Every other phase had a next move. Waiting doesn’t.”

I was supposed to own a dental practice yesterday. I don’t.

Reading that back, I’m being a tad dramatic. It didn’t die. It didn’t blow up. It slipped. One document wasn’t ready in time, and a closing that was supposed to happen on a Friday is now happening “soon.” That’s the whole reason. Soon.

So here I am. Saturday morning. The deal is basically done and my name is on nothing.

That’s the part nobody warns you about. Everybody talks about the diligence, the financing, the negotiation — the hard parts. And those are hard. But every one of them came with a move attached. Diligence? You dig. Negotiation? You push. Financing? You chase. There was always a next thing to do, and I’m good at the next thing. Give me a next thing and I’m fine.

Waiting doesn’t have a next thing.

I can see the practice I’m about to own. I’ve run the first day in my head a hundred times. And right now I can’t touch any of it. No keys. No login. Nothing with my name on it. A buyer with a finished plan and zero authority — all I can do is wait for other people to send other people pieces of paper.

If you’ve ever waited on something you couldn’t speed up, you already know this feeling. The closest thing I can compare it to — stay with me — is online dating. I did plenty of it, back in the day. You match with someone you actually like, you send the message, and then... nothing. You wait. You check your phone. You put it down. You check it again. No control. Total suspense. And when the text finally lands, it isn’t the end of the waiting — it’s just the next round of it. That’s this week. When’s the lender going to email? When’s the lawyer going to say we’re clear? Then the message comes and it’s “we’re working on it.” Great. More waiting.

I’ll be honest about the other thing, too. I feel young for this. Mentally young. I’ve got this picture in my head of what a doctor is supposed to be — how he’s supposed to look, how he’s supposed to carry himself. Some of that is my Soviet parents talking. My grandmother actually offered to trade cars with me. She drives a newer Hyundai. She thinks it’s embarrassing for a dentist to pull up in a 2013 Toyota Corolla. Respectfully, Babushka — my car is a unit. I love my car.

You see where I’m going with this. I feel out of place. Too young, not serious enough, driving the wrong car to be the guy buying the practice. And I’m doing it anyway.

So that’s the waiting. No move to make, no phone to check that changes anything. Just the suspense, the quiet, and the occasional “we’re working on it.”

The date will come. It always comes. And when it does — when there’s finally a next thing to do — I think the waiting is going to look like the easy part.

— Dr. Besmer

Side Note: Dr. Besmer here. Going through a practice acquisition. Hoping to be putting out more content now that I’m in the middle of it. Follow along!

Subscribe now

The man wanted a replacement all-on-six in the upper jaw. He’d already sued three previous dentists.

Fin took the case anyway.

He tried a new technique. He used a different lab. Three attempts later, he refunded the man’s £30,000 — about $30K USD — and stared at his career.

He called his wife.

She told him to see a clinical psychologist.

And that one conversation rebuilt everything.

—

Dr. Finlay Sutton has been practicing prosthodontics in Lancaster, England, for over 25 years. He’s a specialist. His complete dentures cost $17,000 — upper and lower, no implants. He books out 12 months in advance. His patients pay him in three installments before they ever leave with their teeth.

None of that was supposed to happen.

Fin qualified at 23 and hated dentistry for the first six years. He bounced through Carlisle and Edinburgh, doing general practice work that was — in his own words — “just awful.” He called his dad once after a patient walked back into his clinic ten minutes after a fitting, screaming: “What have you done? Call yourself a dentist?” The patient’s name was Mrs. Kennedy. Fin still remembers it 25 years later.

That was the bottom. The top is what we sat down to talk about on the show.

If you’re a dental student wondering whether dentistry will be worth it — if you’re an associate two years in, watching every Instagram influencer do all-on-X and wondering if you missed the boat — Fin’s 25-year arc is exactly the conversation you need.

Here’s what came out of it.

—

1. THE $17,000 DENTURE (AND THE NICHE NOBODY WILL TOUCH)

30% of Fin’s caseload is patients who want new high-quality dentures and will pay $17K for them. 30% are failed all-on-X revisions — patients who’ve had two or three rounds of implants that didn’t work, sometimes zygomatic, and need someone to give them function back. 20% are bisphosphonate patients who can’t have surgery at all. That’s 80% of his caseload coming from a market most dentists treat as bread-and-butter ($1,500 dentures, low margin, complain about them in the lounge).

His own quote: “No one does it really. It’s a niche. But it’s a massive niche.”

2. THE 60/20/20 CASH FLOW STRUCTURE

Every patient pays 60% at visit one. 20% partway through treatment. 20% before the teeth are fit.

Fin doesn’t chase receivables. He doesn’t carry balances. He pays his lab and his staff every month out of cash already collected, not promises pending. He says it plainly on the show: “I’m always cash rich.”

If you’re acquiring a practice, taking on overhead, or building a fee-for-service model — this is the structural lesson worth the full episode.

3. THE CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST CONVERSATION THAT REBUILT A CAREER

After the $30K refund, Fin sat across from a clinical psychologist.

He didn’t get told to work harder. He didn’t get told to lower his fees or take a CE course. He got asked one question: what do you love doing?

Fin said: I love doing removable.

The answer was: just do it.

Fin weaned himself off fixed work over the following year. Within five years he was the UK’s most-watched lecturer in traditional removable prosthodontics. Revenue went up. Stress went down. He started teaching internationally.

The lesson in one line: most dentists chase a niche because it pays. Fin chased a niche because he loved it. The pay followed.

4. FIVE YEARS SOBER (AND THE MORNING ROUTINE THAT REPLACED THE WINE)

At 49, Fin stopped drinking.

Five years sober now. The morning routine he built in place of alcohol is engineered to walk into the clinic centered: AeroPress coffee, a Paul McKenna self-hypnosis track, a gratitude journal, a “where am I winning today” reflection, a Robin Sharma eulogy exercise, an ideal-day visualization. Three workouts a week. Quarter past six in the morning.

He talks about it on the show because two other guests in the same month independently mentioned the eulogy exercise — write your own eulogy, then work backwards from the person you want to be remembered as. Fin started this five years ago. He says it’s the single highest-leverage thing he does as a dentist.

5. THE 43 EXTRA DAYS THAT GENERATED £250,000

Fin learned a Scandinavian system for removable partial dentures in 2011. It cut his adjustments and reviews by 50%. He calculated the math: the time saved gave him 43 extra clinical days per year. At his fee structure, that’s a quarter-million pounds in additional annual revenue — without working any harder, just by switching systems.

The takeaway isn’t “use Scandinavian RPDs.” The takeaway is: every practice has a version of this hidden in plain sight. A protocol that’s 50% more efficient than the one you were taught. The dentist who finds theirs wins.

6. THE 20-YEAR APPRENTICESHIP NOBODY TELLS YOU ABOUT

Fin met his lab technician Rowan in 1999. They’ve been working together for 27 years. They car-share to work. They case-plan in the driver’s seat. Fin’s master’s professor told him straight: “You’re rubbish at the beginning.” Fin says that was a gift. Most dentists never get told the truth about where they stand.

If you’re five years out and frustrated that you’re not where the lecturers are — congratulations, you’re on year five of a 20-year arc. The frustration is part of the system, not a defect.

7. “BE BRAVE. TREAT PEOPLE RIGHT.”

Fin’s philosophy distilled in six lines:

“Be brave, treat people right. And I promise success and money and freedom and joy will come your way.”

Twenty-five years of prosthodontics in one sentence. The full closing is on the episode. It’s the part you’ll replay.

—

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:

→ YouTube: Link

→ Apple Podcasts: Link

→ Spotify: Link

—

BEFORE YOU SIGN A CONTRACT — A NOTE

Fin refunded $30,000 because he didn’t have the protections in place to walk away cleanly. Three dentists before him got hit by the same patient for similar amounts. None of them knew until after.

Your associate contract is the same setup.

We see them every week. The non-compete that follows you 30 miles. The production threshold that gets re-set every quarter so you never hit the bonus. The termination clause that says you owe 90 days notice but they owe you nothing. The buy-in math that doesn’t math. The retention clauses that quietly turn your signing bonus into a multi-year prison sentence.

You don’t see any of this until something goes wrong. By then, you’ve already signed.

Here’s what we do.

We’re two dentists. Not lawyers. Dentists who have signed these contracts ourselves, watched friends get burned by them, and decided to do something about it.

Send us your contract. Within 48 hours you get back:

→ A line-by-line analysis of every clause

→ A plain-English summary you can actually understand

→ A custom negotiation playbook — what to push back on, how to phrase it, when to walk

→ A compensation one-pager — what you’re actually being offered vs. market

→ A 1-on-1 strategy call to walk through it

→ 30 days of follow-up access

→ Our “First 90 Days” survival guide as a bonus

If we don’t find at least three things worth negotiating, you don’t pay.

Submit at theeducatedassociate.com — or DM @the_educated_associate on Instagram.

Forty-eight hours from contract to clarity.

—

CONNECT

Fin’s website: finlaysutton.co.uk

Fin on YouTube: search “Finlay Sutton” — ~1,000 hours of free traditional removable CE

The show:

→ @the_educated_associate on Instagram

→ @dr.besmer on Instagram (Alex personal)

→ theeducatedassociate.substack.com — newsletter

—

Share this with one classmate or colleague.

That’s how we grow. That’s how we reach more dentists before they sign the wrong contract.

“I just couldn’t be the boss of 35 offices and I hated my life. I really collapsed because of it.”

This is the man who built Shared Practices — the #1 rated dental podcast in America, 763+ episodes, 3 million downloads. The co-founder of a 35-office dental group. The dentist every other dentist Googles when they’re thinking about practice ownership.

And he just told us he walked away from all of it.

**7 THINGS YOU’LL TAKE AWAY FROM THIS EPISODE:**

1. The 4 dental practices you should NEVER buy as your first practice.

Richard walks through the four traps that make a practice acquisition impossible to escape: the 3-op trap, the high-fixed-cost market trap, the fee-for-service-saturated practice trap, and the “tapped out” practice trap. One of his examples was a $1.7 million practice that was already done — nothing left to grow, nothing left to extract. You’d pay top dollar and walk in to a ceiling.

2. The “magic wand” practice every young dentist should be hunting for.

Seven to eight ops. A bursting-at-the-seams single-doctor practice with about 10 days of hygiene. Room to expand next door. Richard breaks down why six ops is the worst number in dentistry, why the 1-to-2-doctor jump is the hardest transition, and why patient ethnicity ties (yes, really) can sink a practice purchase faster than any spreadsheet.

3. Why “one large practice” out-earns a 35-office DSO — and why Richard now tells dentists not to build one.

He built the DSO. He ran it. He walked away. And his new advice, paid for in years of his life: if you’re entrepreneurially driven, build one excellent three-to-four-doctor practice that prints a million dollars in EBITDA without you picking up the handpiece. Then go invest in your family. “Don’t build a freaking DSO.”

4. The bipolar II diagnosis that explained the last decade of his life.

Richard publicly named, for what we believe is the first time on a podcast, his bipolar II diagnosis from a couple years ago. He talks about the depression, the hypomanic moments where he made huge bets that “in retrospect were a little crazy,” and how the diagnosis reshaped how he understands his own collapse. He also tells the story of his grandmother — bipolar her entire life, talked to the radio, tried to baptize his aunt in the tub, had hallucinations.

5. What 55 burned-out dentist-fathers taught him about success.

Richard’s pivot from DSO CEO to coach is built around a hard observation: dentists who hit financial success often arrive emptier than when they started. Overweight. Disconnected from their wives. Coping with addictions and doom-scrolling. The Next Level Fathers group runs daily accountability calls because, as Richard put it, “people pay me to yell at them.”

6. The Army PT test he failed — and why it matters.

Richard wasn’t an athlete. He married his wife as a skinny nerd. A co-resident saw a photo of his wedding day and said out loud: “Wow, she really did marry you for love.” He failed PT tests. He hired a personal trainer just so he wouldn’t look like an idiot in front of his friends. His fitness journey didn’t start at strong — it started at zero. That’s why his coaching works.

7. “Don’t build a freaking DSO.”

If you take one line from this episode, that’s it.

---

🎧 LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:

→ YouTube: Click Here

→ Apple Podcasts: Click Here

→ Spotify: Click Here

---

STUCK ON A CONTRACT? WE’LL READ IT IN 48 HOURS.

Here’s the part nobody tells you in dental school. The contract you sign as an associate is the most expensive decision of your first five years out.

Non-competes that lock you out of the only city your family lives in. Compensation structures buried in the fine print costing you $40K a year you don’t see. Termination clauses that fire you in 30 days but lock you up for two years. Production thresholds you’d have to break your wrist to hit.

Richard spent 20 minutes of this episode breaking down the four ways an associate buys the wrong practice. The same four traps exist in the contract you’re about to sign — except contracts are worse, because you can’t sell out of a non-compete.

We do contract reviews ourselves. Two dentists. Not lawyers. Dentists. Because the people reading your contract should look like the people who wrote yours.

48-Hour Contract Clarity includes:

• Line-by-line analysis

• Plain-English summary

• Custom negotiation playbook

• Compensation one-pager

• Strategy call

Our guarantee: If we don’t find at least 3 things worth negotiating, you don’t pay.

→ Submit your contract: theeducatedassociate.com

→ Or DM us: @the_educated_associate on Instagram

---

CONNECT:

Dr. Richard Low: @dr.richard.low on Instagram | nextlevelfathers.com

The Educated Associate: @the_educated_associate

Dr. Alex Besmer: @dr.besmer

---

ONE FAVOR BEFORE YOU GO:

Share this with one classmate or colleague. That’s how we grow. That’s how we reach more dentists before they sign the wrong contract.

See you next week.

— Alex & Tony

ON THE PREVIOUS EPISODE:

When Dr. Mark Pugliese told a patient with generalized 6mm bleeding pockets that he couldn’t keep seeing them if they refused the scaling and root planing, his staff was shocked.

Six months later, the same staff was thanking him. Because the patients they had spent years dreading? Replaced. By patients who showed up, paid, said yes, and didn’t argue about radiographs.

If you have not listened to Part 1, you missed the path: Boston University dental grad, ASDA national trustee, Aspen Dental associate in rural Maine, then practice owner at 29 in Concord, New Hampshire. This is Part 2. The one where Mark stops talking about how he got the practice and tells you exactly what year one of running it actually looked like.

DR. MARK PUGLIESE’S STANDARD

Mark inherited a practice built across 70 years of family dentistry. Two generations. Same town. The previous owner was beloved. He was also old school. So old school that the office still placed amalgams as the default posterior restoration. Hygienists had never seen an AAP perio staging chart. There was no caller ID on the phones. Emergencies were scheduled a week out. And the philosophy was simple: keep every patient happy, no matter what they refused.

Mark walked in with a different standard. He typed up a written perio protocol from scratch. He held weekly staff meetings to roll out changes one at a time, sometimes backpedaling on one that did not work. He hired a hygienist straight out of school he did not technically need yet — because she would learn his way, not the old way. He fired a 13-year veteran assistant who could not place the right anesthetic on the tray. And he started having the hardest conversation in dentistry: “If you do not want the standard of care, I am sorry, I cannot continue to see you.”

Twelve months in, the metrics tell the story. 90% patient acceptance. 50% treatment plan acceptance. Zero voluntary turnover. One full year of compounding small decisions. Here is what he actually did.

7 TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:

1. The New Patient Experience Is the Whole Game

Mark spent a week at Aspen headquarters in his first six months, role playing new patient interactions. He calls it the most valuable thing he got from his entire DSO career. The system: do not talk dentistry for the first five minutes. Ask about the jersey. Ask why they switched dentists. Ask what they are actually looking for. By the time you look in their mouth, the patient already trusts you. That trust is what closes cases. Not the x-ray.

2. Photos Beat X-Rays at the Close

Mark put an intraoral camera in every operatory the day he took over. When he sees a fracture line, he photographs it and shows the patient on the screen. His script: “It might last 10 years. It might break tonight. Do it on your terms, because it always breaks at the worst time.” Patients see what you see. The case closes itself.

3. A $17 Book Saved Him $50,000 in Sleep

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Mark read it, took notes, and revisits them every few months. The result: zero voluntary employee turnover in his entire first year of ownership. His framing: if you can motivate people for free — the way he did running ASDA and his college fraternity — motivating people you are paying becomes easy. Wipe down rooms. Help with sterilization. Lead by doing. Most dentists lean on “I am paying you to do this, so do it.” That is how you lose your team in 18 months.

4. Hire for Teachability, Not Experience

Hot take: Mark prefers brand new dental assistants over 13-year veterans. The veteran he inherited could not get a consistent x-ray and set out the wrong anesthetics every time. New hires learn HIS systems, follow HIS protocols, and cost less. Same with his hygienist hire — fresh out of school, full time before the demand fully justified it. He bet on teachability and won.

5. Dismiss the Patients Your Team Dreads

When Mark stopped seeing patients who refused SRPs against standard of care, his staff was initially uncomfortable. Six months in, they were relieved. Those were the same patients showing up late, denying radiographs, and arguing every filling. Less liability. Less headache. More chair time for patients who actually wanted treatment. The math is brutal and obvious: a patient who fights you on a $300 SRP is going to fight you on a $1,800 crown.

6. Patient Acceptance > Treatment Plan Acceptance

Mark tracks both numbers in Practice by Numbers. His patient acceptance rate is 90%. His treatment plan acceptance — the dollar percentage — is around 50%. He cares far more about the first number. His reasoning: patients are not buying your treatment plan. They are buying YOU. If they buy into you, the crown gets done eventually. Maybe not today. But when that tooth breaks in six months, you are the one they call. Not a different office.

7. The Arrival Fallacy Will Eat You Alive

Mark’s first three months of ownership: 7 AM arrivals, 8 PM departures, gray hairs, no gym, no hobbies. His fiancee carried the relationship while he transferred utilities, talked to lawyers, and figured out a DBA. He calls it a “season.” The wrong move would have been waiting for the day everything is fixed. There is no such day. There is only the next thing to improve. Owners who chase “things will be better when I get there” never enjoy any of it. Owners who enjoy the journey end up doing this for 30 years.

LISTEN:

[YouTube link]

[Apple Podcasts link]

[Spotify link]

CONTRACT REVIEW:

Mark prepared for ownership for two years. He talked to brokers. He toured practices he was not going to buy. He built a relationship with a banker before he needed one. By the time he signed, he knew exactly what he was buying.

Most associates do not get that runway. They get a contract dropped on their desk, a 48-hour pressure window, and a promise that “this is our standard agreement, everyone signs it.” We have read enough of those “standard agreements” to know what is actually in them. Termination clauses that let the office fire you for any reason with 30 days’ notice while you owe them 90. Non-competes that swallow your entire metro area. Production thresholds set so high you would need to be booked solid for 10 hours a day to ever see a bonus check.

We are not lawyers. We are two practicing dentists who read associate contracts every single week. We know what to negotiate, what to walk away from, and what is actually enforceable. If you are about to sign — or you already signed and something feels off — send it over. We will read it. Dentist to dentist.

Submit: theeducatedassociate.com

Or DM: @the_educated_associate on Instagram

CONNECT:

Guest: Dr. Mark Pugliese (@pugliese_dmd) | Wall Street Dental Group (@wallstreetdentalgroup) — Concord, NH

Podcast: @the_educated_associate

Alex: @dr.besmer

Newsletter: theeducatedassociate.substack.com

SHARE:

Share this with one classmate or colleague. That’s how we grow. That’s how we reach more dentists before they sign the wrong contract.

Four months out of dental school, the dentist above him quit. Then the backup dentist got pulled to another office. And suddenly Mark Pugliese — a brand new grad at an Aspen Dental in rural Maine — was running the entire practice solo, 3-4 days a week.

Most people would call that a disaster. Mark calls it the best training he ever got.

Two years later, his banker called him about a practice hitting the market. A 39-year family office. The seller had been trying to sell for three years and turned down every buyer. After one meeting with Mark, he blocked all other tours and offers.

This is Part 1 of our conversation — how Mark went from BU dental student to ASDA Trustee to Aspen associate to practice owner. If you’re a dental student or new associate wondering whether corporate is worth it, whether ownership is realistic, or how to actually find a practice worth buying — this one’s for you.

Dr. Mark Pugliese

Mark Pugliese is the kind of guy who showed up to his first ASDA conference as a D1 because he saw a free trip to Chicago and figured “why not?” By D4, he was a national trustee. He attended every single ASDA national conference during dental school. His nickname? ASDA Mark. With a heart emoji.

He graduated from BU, applied to over 50 jobs (heard back from 5), and chose Aspen Dental in Biddeford, Maine — not for the brand, but for the volume. Rural Maine. Massive dentist shortage. The kind of place where you see dentures, implants, surgical extractions, and overdentures every single day.

The floor/ceiling framework he uses to explain DSOs is one of the most clear-headed takes we’ve ever heard on this podcast: corporate probably has a lower ceiling of how great the experience can be, but a higher floor. You’re going to get volume no matter what. And for a new grad who wants to own someday, that volume is everything.

7 TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:

1. The DSO Floor/Ceiling Framework

Corporate dentistry has a higher floor (guaranteed volume, built-in systems, training structure) but a lower ceiling (less autonomy, less customization, capped upside). For a new grad who wants to own eventually, the floor matters more than the ceiling. You need reps. Aspen gave Mark thousands of them.

2. The 50-Job Shotgun Method

Mark applied to over 50 jobs during dental school as a weekly routine. Heard back from 5. His criteria weren’t salary-first — they were “what sets me up to run my own practice one day?” That reframe changes everything about how you evaluate your first job.

3. The Trial-by-Fire Mentorship Model

Everyone wants a mentor. Almost nobody gets one. Mark’s “mentor” quit after one month. But running a busy office solo — with the safety net of someone else’s overhead — turned out to be the highest-leverage education possible. He learned the business dials (callback frequency, confirmation policies, same-day starts) by turning them himself.

4. Build Your Acquisition Team Before You Need It

Mark spent two years touring practices, talking to bankers, and building relationships with brokers — even for practices he already planned to reject. When the right one appeared, his banker called him before it went public. His broker already knew his criteria. His team found the practice. Not a listing site.

5. Howard Farran’s Rule: “Buy the Biggest, Baddest Practice You Can Afford”

Mark filtered that into two criteria: (1) Can I get a loan for it? and (2) Can I grow it? Most practices he saw were either geographically limited, physically too small, or so outdated that a startup made more sense. The practice he bought checked both boxes — and had been in one family for 70+ years.

6. Due Diligence Is Overrated (Sort Of)

Mark did what most buyers do: checked equipment, looked at charts, reviewed x-rays. Then discovered that half the treatment plans in the system were duplicates (hygienists re-clicking completed crowns). And every supply in the office was expired ($15K to replace). His lesson: if the cash flow metrics are strong, the small stuff is noise.

7. The Premium Pricing Play — While Accepting Insurance

Mark accepts Northeast Delta but uses an Added Value Service Agreement to charge premium rates for prosthodontic work. His lab (Desjardins) costs 10x what Aspen’s did. He explains the value to every patient in the chair before they ever see a number at the front desk. One returned crown in an entire year. That’s the sell.

LISTEN:

[YouTube link]

[Apple Podcasts link]

[Spotify link]

CONTRACT REVIEW:

Here’s something Mark didn’t have when he signed his Aspen contract: two dentists who actually read associate agreements for a living. Not lawyers. Dentists. We’ve reviewed enough contracts to know exactly where the traps hide — production thresholds that look generous until you do the math, non-competes that sound scary but aren’t enforceable, and termination clauses that let them fire you for basically anything with 30 days’ notice.

If you’re about to sign a contract — or already signed one and have that pit in your stomach — send it over. We’ll read it. We’ll tell you what we’d negotiate. Dentist to dentist.

Submit: theeducatedassociate.com

Or DM: @the_educated_associate on Instagram

CONNECT:

Guest: Dr. Mark Pugliese (@pugliese_dmd) | Wall Street Dental Group (@wallstreetdentalgroup) — Concord, NH

Podcast: @the_educated_associate

Alex: @dr.besmer

Newsletter: theeducatedassociate.substack.com

SHARE:

Share this with one classmate or colleague. That’s how we grow. That’s how we reach more dentists before they sign the wrong contract.

Nothing to do with the stock market. Nothing to do with buying a practice too early. Nothing to do with your salary.

According to Dr. Jimmy Turner, it’s simpler than all of that.

“You keep a third. The lawyer gets a third. They get a third.”

He’s talking about divorce.

And that’s the opening line of our newest episode. It only gets more honest from there.

Here’s what you need to know about Jimmy Turner:

He’s a practicing anesthesiologist. Host of Money Meets Medicine — 300+ episodes, millions of downloads. And at 40 years old, he has a net worth north of $2 million.

He also almost didn’t make it.

Ranked 103 out of 119 in his first year of medical school. Dyslexic. ADHD. No doctors in his family. Found out about the licensing exams AFTER he enrolled.

He started a blog, wrote 1,500 words three times a week for two straight years with no AI, no editor, and a reading disability. Built that into a course. Then a coaching business that did $700K in a year. Then he shut the coaching business down because it chained him to Zoom calls all day.

“I would rather have a simpler business that makes less money and frees up my time than have the super complicated multimillion dollar business that doesn’t allow me to take a break.”

He sat down with us and we asked him everything.

Here’s what you’ll walk away with after this episode:

1. The framing study that changes everything about case acceptance.

Researchers told one group of patients they had a “90% chance of survival.” 85% said yes to surgery. They told the other group “10% chance of death” — same number. Only 50% said yes. Jimmy explains exactly how to use this with a $2,000 crown, a treatment plan, or any conversation where a patient is on the fence. You will use this the next day you’re in clinic.

2. The $2M net worth playbook from someone who has never once budgeted.

No spreadsheets. No tracking every dollar. He assigns “jobs” to his money first — savings, investments, kids’ college — and spends the rest without guilt. If you’ve tried budgeting and hated it, this is the approach that actually sticks.

3. The 10-second business idea test.

“What’s easy for you but seems really hard for other people?” That’s his filter. If you’ve been thinking about a side hustle but can’t figure out what to build, this one question will narrow it down instantly.

4. Why “sales is sleazy” is the belief that’s costing you money.

Jimmy reframes it: you’re not selling. You’re helping someone understand their pain point and showing them how to get from A to B. The key is asking what their concern is FIRST, then using their words — not yours — to frame the solution. This is the difference between the associate who does $400K and the one who does $800K.

5. The disability insurance mistake that can permanently ruin you.

Jimmy got denied as a fourth-year med student. Didn’t think it was a big deal. Turns out that denial made him permanently uninsurable for guaranteed standard issue coverage. He now runs a disability insurance business specifically because agents kept doing this to his audience. If you’re a dental student or resident, listen to the 31:27 mark before you do anything else.

6. His marriage hot take that will divide the comments.

Ask his three kids who daddy loves the most. They’ll all say his wife. He says that’s the foundation of their marriage. When your spouse knows they’re your #1 priority — and you know you’re theirs — it creates something unshakable. Whether you agree or not, the reasoning is worth 5 minutes of your time.

7. The 3 things you need to flourish (and none of them are your career).

Purpose. Connection. Identity. Jimmy says if any of those are tied to your job, you’re one disability, one layoff, or one bad year away from an existential crisis. He watches it happen to doctors constantly. This section alone is worth the full hour.

LISTEN NOW:

[YouTube link]

[Apple Podcasts link]

[Spotify link]

———

ABOUT TO SIGN A DENTAL CONTRACT?

Here’s what nobody tells you: most associate contracts are written by the practice owner’s attorney. That attorney’s job is to protect THEM. Not you. Every clause — the non-compete, the termination window, the production threshold, the benefits structure — is designed to limit your leverage.

The problem is, you don’t know what’s normal and what’s not. Because dental school never taught you how to read a contract.

That’s where we come in.

We’re not lawyers. We’re dentists who have read hundreds of associate contracts and know exactly what’s missing, what’s unfair, and what language is quietly costing you tens of thousands of dollars.

Submit your contract at theeducatedassociate.com

Or DM us @the_educated_associate on Instagram.

We built this because nobody did it for us. Now we do it for you.

———

CONNECT WITH DR. JIMMY TURNER:

Instagram: @moneymeetsmedicine

Email: jimmy@moneymeetsmedicine.com

Website: moneymeetsmedicine.com

CONNECT WITH US:

Instagram: @the_educated_associate | @dr.besmer

Website: theeducatedassociate.com

Newsletter: theeducatedassociate.substack.com

If this episode helped you, share it with one classmate or colleague. That’s how we grow. That’s how we reach more dentists before they sign the wrong contract.

That’s this episode.

Gabriel Rocha, MS is a Cognitive Performance Specialist who is embedded with fighter pilot squadrons in the United States Air Force’s pilot training pipeline. He’s also a mental performance coach for professional athletes, bodybuilders, and business owners through his private practice. He holds an MS from California Baptist University and is currently pursuing his MBA at the University of Arkansas.

We brought him on because we believe dentistry is a high-performance profession — and nobody treats it that way. We walk into the operatory every day, make irreversible decisions under pressure, manage anxious patients, absorb mistakes in real time, and then walk 90 seconds down the hallway to do it all over again with the next patient. Fighter pilots and elite athletes have entire coaching staffs helping them manage that kind of stress. Dentists? We just white-knuckle it.

Until now.

What We Cover

This conversation went places we didn’t expect. Tony took three pages of sticky notes. Alex had chills. Here’s a preview:

When a procedure goes sideways and you’re freaking out inside:

Gabriel walks us through ANC (Aviate, Navigate, Communicate) — the fighter pilot protocol for when things go non-standard mid-flight. We then build the dental version of it in real time. Tony shares his own mid-procedure reset strategy (“sometimes the best medicine is time”) and Gabriel validates it with how he coaches athletes to create physical separation from the moment.

When one bad case ruins your whole day:

Gabriel explains negativity bias and why we let a single data point — one bad filling, one failed extraction — overwrite everything else we’ve accomplished. He uses an analogy from bodybuilding prep (one bad weigh-in doesn’t mean you’re not losing fat) that every dentist will immediately understand.

When you can’t leave work at the door:

This is where it gets personal. Gabriel introduces the concept of role vs. identity — the idea that “dentist” is a hat you wear, not who you are. He argues that the acute attention to detail that makes you excellent chairside is actively hurting your relationships at home if you can’t shut it off. He then gives a practical framework for making the switch.

When you’re building a career and a life at the same time:

Gabriel introduces the idea of “Kobe Bryant seasons” — periods where you go all-in on one thing — and argues that the key isn’t just telling your spouse it’s happening, but checking back in with them regularly. Tony’s reaction to this might be the most real moment we’ve ever had on the podcast.

When you’re chasing excellence but don’t know how to sustain it:

Gabriel breaks down two principles: stay curious (view challenges as data, not threats to your competency) and win the margins (once the big movers are in place, the 1% details are what separate good from great). He also makes a case that sleep, nutrition, and recovery aren’t nice-to-haves — they’re foundational to your clinical performance.

The Line That Hit Hardest

There are a lot of quotable moments in this episode, but the one we keep coming back to:

“You are not your productivity. You are all of these other things. Your identity is your values, your morals. Your role is ‘I’m going to be a dentist right now. I’m going to be a father right now. I’m going to be a husband, a brother.’”

If that doesn’t land for you as a young dentist grinding through debt, imposter syndrome, and 14-patient days — re-read it.

Timestamps

0:00 — Cold open: “You are not your productivity”

0:27 — Episode intro

2:26 — Gabriel’s origin story: “I wanted to be a fighter pilot”

6:07 — When your dream career doesn’t happen — how to deal

10:52 — “I was promised a bill of goods” — when reality doesn’t match

17:09 — “Utterly dedicated, utterly detached” — the mindset framework

21:08 — How to stay calm when a procedure goes wrong

23:02 — ANC: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate

27:47 — “Sometimes the best medicine is time”

29:55 — Why stepping away is strength, not weakness

35:47 — One bad filling is one data point, not your identity

40:20 — How to set a high standard without destroying yourself

43:37 — Role vs. identity — how to leave work at the door

49:05 — Sustaining excellence over a 30+ year career

54:56 — “Kobe Bryant seasons” — how to communicate with your partner

1:01:25 — Staying curious and winning the margins

1:11:42 — Sleep, nutrition, recovery: the foundation dentists ignore

1:17:53 — Where to find Gabriel + closing thoughts

Key Takeaways

1. When something goes wrong mid-procedure, redirect your self-talk from self-evaluation (“what are they going to think of me?”) to the task itself (“what’s the first thing I need to control right now?”). Gabriel calls this the ANC framework: Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.

2. You have the luxury of stepping away. Fighter pilots can’t pause the cockpit. You can. “Sometimes the best medicine is time” is a complete sentence. Take the X-ray. Step out. Reset. Come back with a better plan.

3. One bad outcome is one data point — not a verdict on your competency. The negativity bias in your brain is a survival mechanism from when we were dodging predators. It’s not a useful tool for evaluating your career after a tough Tuesday.

4. Separate your identity from your role. “Dentist” is a hat you wear. It’s not who you are. When you get home, take it off. The traits that make you excellent in the operatory (acute attention to detail, perfectionism, hypervigilance) will erode your relationships if you bring them to the dinner table.

5. Be utterly dedicated to the process, utterly detached from the outcome. Control what you can. Do the work. But stop attaching your self-worth to results you don’t fully control.

6. If you’re about to enter a “Kobe Bryant season” — practice acquisition, board exams, a big CE push — tell the people who matter most. Name where you’ll fall short. And then actually check back in with them. That’s the part most high performers skip.

7. Don’t underestimate the compound effect of doing little things well for a long period of time. Sleep, nutrition, exercise, and presence in your relationships aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re the foundation that makes your clinical performance possible.

Connect with Gabriel

Instagram: @rocha_sportpsych

Email: grochaempc@gmail.com

Gabriel works with athletes, business owners, and high performers of all kinds. If anything in this episode resonated, reach out to him directly. He’s the real deal.

Support the Show

If you got something out of this episode, here’s how to help:

• Subscribe to this Substack (it’s free, and it’s how we keep making episodes like this)

• Leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — it genuinely helps new listeners find us

• Send this episode to one friend who needs to hear it

• Follow us on Instagram: @the_educated_associate

• Follow Gabriel and show him some love: @rocha_sportpsych

See you soon.

— Alex & Tony

We sat down with Dr. Howard Farran - the founder of Dentaltown, host of 1,700+ episodes of Dentistry Uncensored, and one of the 32 Most Influential People in Dentistry - for a nearly 3-hour, completely unfiltered conversation at Dentaltown HQ in Phoenix, Arizona.

Howard has been practicing for 37+ years, built the largest online dental community in history (250,000+ dentists from 172 countries), and has spent decades mentoring young dentists through the exact struggles you face today.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why $500K in student loans is actually a luxury most of the world would kill for

• How AI is about to burn every dental business model to the ground (and why that is a good thing)

• The real math behind DSOs, roll-ups, and why most multi-location buyers end up in the graveyard

• Why dentists are too smart for their own good and how intelligence creates paralysis

• Howard’s “showtime baby” philosophy for introverted dentists

• The one-chair Singapore model that outeearns most American multi-op practices

• Why you should take Delta Dental’s CEO to lunch instead of complaining online

• Contract red flags, non-compete realities by state, and the 4-minute contract disaster

• How to use AI as your personal dental practice consultant right now

• Why COVID proved you only need a toothache to make bank

Whether you are a pre-dent dreaming about the white coat, a D4 about to graduate, or an associate five years in wondering when it gets better - this episode is required listening.

Follow The Educated Associate: @the_educated_associate (Instagram)

Follow us personally: @dr.besmer (Dr. Alex Besmer) on all platforms

Follow Howard: @howardfarran on Instagram | Dentaltown.com

1. Your staff can process refunds to their own credit card. Monthly refund reports are non-negotiable.

2. When buying a practice, look for the “timid dentist” who refers everything out. That’s where your growth lives.

3. Dental school doesn’t teach business ops. Your staff can’t teach it either. You have to own it.

4. The sooner you own your practice, the better. You’ll wish you did it sooner.

Listen now on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

We sat down with Dr. Steven Lu — better known as @dentistrywithsteven — and what we expected to be a conversation about social media and attitude turned into one of the most raw, honest discussions we’ve had on this podcast.

Steven is a general dentist doing pediatric dentistry in a Medicaid office in central California. On paper, that’s everything dental school tells you to avoid: Medicaid reimbursement, pediatric patients, no ownership, no specialty residency.

In reality, he’s thriving.

But it didn’t start that way. Steven’s first associateship was in a fee-for-service office where the standard was impossibly high. He voluntarily reduced his own pay to show commitment. His boss made it retroactive — meaning everything he’d already been paid was now “overpayment.” His next paycheck was $0. He drove home, pulled over, and cried.

He almost quit dentistry.

Instead, he stayed late after work, practiced crown preps on weekends, took post-op X-rays on everything, and relearned dentistry under the harshest conditions. When he eventually moved to a Medicaid pediatric office — a setting he’d sworn he’d never work in — all of that training compounded. He replaced two pediatric dentists by himself. He started consulting specialists. He started earning more than some practice owners.

What struck us most wasn’t the career arc. It was the mindset behind it: the 3 AM alarm to take a shift he’d never done before, the decision to provide value before asking for anything in return, the belief that every difficult patient, every F2-behavior kid, every open margin was an opportunity.

Steven said something during this episode that stuck with both of us:

“Success becomes inevitable. There’s too many reps for you to fail.”

Whether you’re a D1 wondering what your career will look like, a new associate feeling crushed by a tough boss, or a dentist who’s been telling yourself that Medicaid work can’t be high quality — listen to this one.

It’s the conversation we wish we’d had in dental school.

🎧 Press play above or find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow Dr. Steven Lu: @dentistrywithsteven

Follow The Educated Associate: @the_educated_associate

Email us: theeducatedassociate@gmail.com

Follow Dr. Alex Besmer: @dr.b3sm3r