Daily Dental Podcast

In this episode, Dr. Killeen explores a lesson from Strauss Zelnick: fortunes are built through focus and preserved through diversification. Building success requires committing deeply to one thing and doing it exceptionally well, while protecting that success means spreading risk once you have something valuable to preserve. For dental practice owners, that means knowing which stage you are in. If you are still building your practice, focus on your patients, team, and systems rather than chasing every new opportunity. If you have already built something successful, it may be time to think about protecting your wealth and reducing your reliance on a single source of income. The key is knowing when to focus and when to diversify.

Dr. Killeen explores how AI is changing the way we earn success. In the past, people could predict which skills would be valuable, master them, and rely on them for years. Today, the pace of change makes that approach less reliable, putting a greater premium on curiosity, adaptability, and the ability to learn quickly. For dentists, clinical expertise remains essential, but long-term success also depends on staying open to new technology, techniques, and ways of running a practice. Dr. Killeen challenges you to step outside your comfort zone and become a beginner again in one area of your life or business. The greatest advantage may not be knowing the most, but being willing to keep learning.

Today, Dr. Killeen explores a learning strategy rooted in an idea from the Roman philosopher Seneca: we learn more deeply when we prepare to teach something to someone else. Research on the Protégé Effect suggests that knowing you will need to explain a concept can push you to study harder, organize your thoughts, and develop a better understanding. Whether you are learning a new clinical procedure or a business concept, choose someone to teach before you begin. Explain what you have learned in simple terms, identify the gaps in your understanding, and go back to fill them. It's not just to take in more information, but to understand it well enough to teach it.

Dr. Killeen explores how to get more out of AI by treating it as a thinking partner rather than just a tool for proofreading and polishing. By challenging its answers, asking for evidence, and pushing back on its recommendations, you can use AI to identify gaps in your thinking and make better decisions. He applies this approach to building a dental practice operations manual, a task many owners put off because it feels overwhelming. Instead of accepting generic answers, work with AI to develop each section, question your current processes, and challenge its suggestions. The goal is not just to create a manual, but to build better systems while keeping your own judgment at the center.

Dr. Killeen explores how practice owners can recognize the blind spots in their leadership and business. He shares two ways to gain a fresh perspective: reading books by leaders outside dentistry and practicing gratitude. Both can help you see your practice differently and recognize things you might otherwise miss. Reading exposes you to new ways of thinking, while gratitude reminds you of the people and contributions that make your practice successful. Try one of these approaches this week and look for what you might be overlooking.

Dr. Killeen shares lessons from Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog, the story of Nike’s early years and how the company managed to grow while constantly struggling with cash. He explains why dental practices can face the same problem: record production does not always mean a healthy bank account. New hires, equipment, and additional operatories all require cash before the financial return arrives. The key is to manage cash flow separately from revenue. We're challenging practice owners to look beyond production numbers and calculate their financial runway, or how long the practice could cover its expenses with the cash available. Before investing in the next big thing, make sure your business has enough cash to keep moving forward.

Dr. Killeen explores how a practice owner's energy affects everything from team morale to decision-making and daily operations. When you're exhausted, overwhelmed, and running on empty, it becomes harder to lead well, have difficult conversations, and make the decisions your practice needs. Taking care of yourself is not a distraction from running your business. It is part of the job. Dr. Killeen explains why sleep, exercise, time away from the office, and real days off are essential to being an effective leader. His challenge is simple: schedule one full day in the next 30 days with no patients, office visits, or emails, and protect it like any other important appointment.

Today, Dr. Killeen challenges the common assumption that accepting Medicaid is never worth it for a dental practice. Drawing on his own experience as a Nebraska Medicaid provider, he explains how lower fees can still work within the right business model, especially when a practice is equipped to meet demand that other offices may not be serving. Medicaid is not the right fit for every practice, and success requires the right scheduling, staffing, and systems. Rather than relying on assumptions, this encourages practice owners to look at their actual margins and local demand to determine whether Medicaid makes sense for their business.

In this episode, Dr. Killeen discusses what to do when a DSO or private equity group approaches you about buying your dental practice. His advice is to take the call, not necessarily because you want to sell, but because an unsolicited offer can give you valuable insight into what the market thinks your practice is worth. Before that conversation, know your ideal selling price, understand what you would be giving up in terms of control and independence, and have a plan for what you want to accomplish if you decide to keep the practice. The key is to decide what a sale would need to look like before an offer is on the table, so you can evaluate it with clarity rather than emotion.

Dr. Killeen explores a core lesson from Jocko Willink’s Extreme Ownership: everything that goes wrong in your organization ultimately comes back to leadership. Whether the front desk is missing calls, patients are not being reappointed, or treatment acceptance is low, the real question is what the owner could have done differently to prevent it. Taking ownership is not about blame. It is about recognizing where you have the power to make a change. Instead of focusing on what your team is doing wrong, challenge yourself and think, “This is happening because I haven’t...” Your answer may reveal the exact step you need to take to start fixing the problem.