Need Management Not Marketing to Grow Your Practice?

2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Should I focus on practice management instead of marketing to grow? Before you pick one, tell me what you actually mean by management. Standard operating procedures? A binder of courses? Because here's how I see it. Warren Buffett once studied 19 executives he admired and couldn't find a single shared trait, but he summed it up well: great leaders do the right thing, great managers do things the right way. As a dentist you have to do both. You need marketing that creates the right patients, and management that makes the result repeatable. But management starts with self-management, and self-management starts [...]

Need Management Not Marketing to Grow Your Practice?2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Why Delegating Your Weaknesses Grows Your Practice

2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Why does delegating my weaknesses make my dental practice stronger? Because trying to be good at everything is how a practice quietly stalls. Your future is only as good as your willingness to admit what you're not good at and then hand it off. I learned this the hard way. I'm no good at anything involving construction, and for years that stressed me out because I thought I should be able to do it. Once I understood it was just an operational trait hard wired into me, I felt liberated. I stopped fighting it and started nurturing what I'm actually strong [...]

Why Delegating Your Weaknesses Grows Your Practice2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Logging Adverse Events to Cut Failures in Half

2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Should dentists keep a log of cases that went wrong? Yes, and almost nobody does it, which is exactly why it is such an advantage. There is a neurosurgeon who logged every one of his surgeries over a ten year period, tracked adverse events, and sat down with his team to ask how each one could have been avoided. He cut those events by roughly half. Not to zero, because some things you cannot control, but half is enormous. Now ask yourself how many professionals actually keep that kind of log and then meet to make sure a specific failure never [...]

Logging Adverse Events to Cut Failures in Half2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Weekly Phone Numbers Every Dental Practice Should Track

2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

What weekly numbers should I track for new patient phone calls? Four, and you should know them cold every week. How many people called us this week. How many consults did those calls schedule. How many of those turned into started treatment. And have I followed up with everyone who needed it this month. Once you're rolling, those numbers stop being a mystery and start being predictable percentages. Know your call volume and you can forecast your consults. Know your consults and you can forecast your cases. That's not magic, it's just letting the math show up because you finally wrote [...]

Weekly Phone Numbers Every Dental Practice Should Track2026-06-18T00:00:00-04:00

Why Random Actions Hurt Your Dental Practice

2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why are random actions a problem in a dental practice? Random actions are the quiet killer in a practice, and most dentists never see it. Every time a procedure depends on someone stopping to think "do we do this one this way or that way," you have introduced variation, and variation breaks results. Take the patient application. The moment it becomes optional, your team has to decide each time, and now half your patients get one experience and half get another. Same with your triage steps and your financial visits. The fix is to make the right thing the standard thing, [...]

Why Random Actions Hurt Your Dental Practice2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why Dental Technology Costs Keep Rising, Not Falling

2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why does new dental technology keep getting more expensive instead of cheaper? Because you are buying it at the top of its price curve, not the bottom. Old technology gets cheap once it has been around long enough and everyone makes it. New technology is the opposite. The manufacturer is trying to recoup years of development cost, and they price it for a professional buyer who they know can charge for the results. Digital radiography will never cost what a film machine cost thirty years ago. The same goes for scanners, mills, and every breakthrough that follows. So every upgrade pushes [...]

Why Dental Technology Costs Keep Rising, Not Falling2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

How Macro Trends Are Sinking Average Dental Practices

2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why are big economic trends quietly killing average dental practices? Because no single trend looks fatal, but together they sink the ship. Frozen insurance maximums losing value. Carriers fighting to pay less. Equipment and staffing costs climbing. Younger patients needing almost nothing. Real household income flat for decades. Real dental spending soft once you remove inflation. Any one of those is survivable. Stack all six on one practice at the same time and the dentist who refuses to address marketing and selling is standing on a sinking ship, wondering why the water keeps rising. You will not find these laid out [...]

How Macro Trends Are Sinking Average Dental Practices2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

How Dental Productivity Gains Hid the Drop in Demand

2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Has dental productivity been hiding the decline in real demand? Yes, and that crutch is running out. Look at how practices stayed profitable through the early 2000s even as real income and the insurance pool shrank. The counterweight was raw productivity. If you have practiced since 1980 you have lived it. Dentists went from two-handed dentistry to four-handed, then six and even eight, with assistants stacked in a super operatory and high-speed protocols moving cases through fast. A modest operator gained maybe twenty percent. The gunners at the top doubled their output. That speed quietly offset every downward trend for a [...]

How Dental Productivity Gains Hid the Drop in Demand2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why Your Dental Practice Feels the Squeeze Now

2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Why is my dental practice feeling squeezed even though the industry keeps growing? You feel squeezed because the money behind your average patient has been shrinking for years. Disposable income is down, insurance maximums buy less than they used to, and the carriers fight you harder on every claim. Strip out inflation and dental spending has been on a negative trend since about 2002, dropping roughly eight percent a year on a real basis. The industry total looks fine because growth piled up at the very top. So the typical practice, sitting in the middle, gets hit from three sides at [...]

Why Your Dental Practice Feels the Squeeze Now2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

How Dental Productivity Gains Hid a Shrinking Market

2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

How did dentists keep doing well for so long despite shrinking patient budgets? The counterweight was productivity, plain and simple. If you have practiced since 1980 you have lived it. We went from two-handed dentistry to four-handed, and the best operators pushed to six or even eight hands working a super-operatory, moving fast with high speed handpieces and tight protocols. At a minimum that bought a 20 percent gain, and that was for the slow learners. The gunners at the top probably doubled their output. That speed quietly absorbed the falling spending and falling free insurance money for years. The problem [...]

How Dental Productivity Gains Hid a Shrinking Market2026-06-16T00:00:00-04:00
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James McAnally,
DDS,FAGD,FICOI,FMII
Founder, Big Case Marketing
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