Most owners have never put a number on the business they have spent their life building. This episode puts one there.

Jimmy Nicholas and Dustin Burleson take apart what a business is actually worth, what changes that figure, and what an owner can do about it long before a sale is on the table. Jimmy sold his agency to private equity in 2019, and he walks through the parts nobody warned him about. Dustin has bought, sold, and advised on the other side of the table, and he brings the buyer's view of what makes a business worth paying up for.

**In this episode:**

- Why the consultants Jimmy paid tens of thousands of dollars were wrong about a personality-based business being unsellable
- The question that tells you whether you own a business or a high-paying job: if you were gone tomorrow, does it tank in 90 days
- **Recastable expenses** and the owner salary add-back, and why the math changes once EBITDA crosses one million dollars
- Why recurring revenue commands a different class of multiple, and how consumer brands get valued on revenue rather than earnings
- The **Rule of 40**, and the third, third, third formula Jimmy ran as guardrails without knowing it had a name
- Dustin's three rules of negotiation: who you are dealing with, never negotiating under duress, and going one year further back in due diligence than you think you need to
- Why the best negotiating position is not needing the deal

**Timestamps**

- 00:00 Intro
- 00:18 Why this topic, and the four kinds of owner listening
- 02:18 Small business as a wealth generation vehicle
- 03:18 Addressing the skeptic: what the consultants got wrong
- 08:18 What building it to sell actually changes about running it
- 10:18 Exit strategy: why are you getting off the highway
- 13:18 The 90 day test
- 16:18 Jimmy's 2019 sale, and what the buyer could give his team that he could not
- 20:18 EBITDA, recastable expenses, and the owner salary line
- 23:18 Multiples by industry, and revenue multiples versus earnings multiples
- 26:18 The Powerball whiteboard exercise
- 30:18 Creating your own luck, and the room where Jimmy raised his hand
- 32:18 Due diligence, and why it is worth going through
- 35:18 What a bad negotiation looks like
- 40:18 The liability line, and the question Jimmy asked his attorney
- 44:18 What each of them wishes they had known
- 48:18 The Rule of 40
- 54:18 What is coming next month

**A note on the numbers.** The multiples in this episode are not one range. Jimmy speaks generally about businesses under one million dollars in EBITDA. Dustin's four, seven, and ten times figures are scoped to orthodontics specifically, and his Uber, Airbnb, and DoorDash figures are multiples of revenue rather than earnings. Know which one applies to you before you anchor on it.

**Get the resources.** The valuation worksheet for this episode, along with the full transcript and everything referenced, is at [MomentumInsiders.com](https://momentuminsiders.com). Free to join.

**Next month:** owning your assets versus renting them, and the things in your business you may think you own but do not.

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This is the finale of a three-part trilogy on finding and freeing the growth already sitting inside a business you own. EP 65 covered what to keep and what to kill. EP 66 covered the hidden money in your market. EP 67 answers the next question: who actually captures it, and what happens when your team, or you, becomes the thing slowing everything down.

Dustin and Jimmy soften a hard title into a useful one. As the founder, you are part of the team too, so this is not about blame. It is about a simple truth: most problems in a business are system performance problems, and the fastest way to fix them is to remove the bottleneck. Money loves speed.

The four levers covered in this episode:

Get the resources for this episode at MomentumInsiders.com. Become an insider and get the revenue per employee calculator (Google Sheets and Excel), the benchmarks, and the time and task audit that walk you through all four levers.

Next month: what is your business actually worth? Everything in this trilogy feeds into that one calculation.

Hosted by Dustin Burleson and Jimmy Nicholas.

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Your next dollar is not hiding in a new ad campaign. It is hiding inside the business you already built.

In this episode, Jimmy Nicholas and Dr. Dustin Burleson pick up where Episode 65 left off. Once you have decided what stays in your business based on principle, the next question is how to make what stays more efficient. The answer: 15 to 30 percent of additional revenue is usually already there, with no new customer required.

They walk through five profit levers you can pull this month.

LEVER 1 — Database Reactivation

Rekindling a relationship costs a fraction of buying a new one. A short, personal "are you still interested" message can restart conversations that ad spend cannot touch. Dustin shares why customers reactivate as far out as 24 months, a pattern visible in public filings from a large direct-to-consumer brand, and why "they are not coming back" is almost always an excuse. The deeper point: reactivated buyers often want to buy differently, so listen to what they are actually asking for.

LEVER 2 — Missed Calls and Speed to Lead

Almost no one leaves a voicemail anymore, so a missed call is usually a lost sale. The hosts cover AI receptionists, instant text-back, and after-hours coverage, with client examples discussed in the episode including a multi-location group that recovered tens of thousands in a single month from previously ignored missed calls. The principle stays simple: answer the phone, and answer it like a human whenever you can.

LEVER 3 — No-Shows and Schedule Gaps

You often do not have a lead problem. You have a scheduling problem. Dustin explains how opening hours competitors do not offer, and staggering the team, turned slow days into the busiest ones. Jimmy contrasts that with a real customer experience of a gate coming down at lunch, and how availability alone can win the business.

LEVER 4 — Pricing and Case Acceptance

Competing on price alone is fragile. Offering good, better, and best tiers reveals price elasticity you did not know you had. The hosts also cover how AI can audit billing and coding to surface revenue that was being left on the table.

LEVER 5 — Referral Systems

People do not refer good-enough service. Give them an experience worth talking about, and know exactly who your referral sources are. The episode covers why most referrals go untracked, and what changes the moment you start tracking them.

The throughline: AI now does in minutes what used to take data scientists and months. The operators who win ask a better question of the customers they already have.

Pick one lever. Whichever one makes you lose a little sleep is probably the one to start with.

RESOURCES

Get the tools referenced in this episode at MomentumInsiders.com: the Hidden Profit Finder and the 5-Word Text Template. Complimentary. Log in and they are waiting for you.

COMING NEXT

EP 67: Your Team Is the Bottleneck. Why headcount is not the same as capacity, and the one number that tells you which one you actually have. First Friday of next month.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Wealthy Momentum Podcast is a monthly first-Friday show where Jimmy Nicholas and Dr. Dustin Burleson go deep on one topic per episode for practice owners and service business operators, with tactical patterns you can implement before the next episode drops. New episodes the first Friday of every month.

To your momentum, Jimmy and Dustin.

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Every business has principles that should never move. It also has practices that need to die right now. Most entrepreneurs confuse the two. 

In this episode, Jimmy Nicholas and Dr. Dustin Burleson dig into how to tell the difference, featuring:

The Logo Test: go to your website, swap your logo with a competitor's, and see if anything changes. If it does not, you have a problem.

The EB White Principle: AI makes everything 10x easier, 10x faster, 10x cheaper. It does not make it 10x better. Better thinking does.

The $75,000 Core Values Story: Dustin spent years and tens of thousands of dollars with consultants discovering his core values. Today, AI can facilitate that process in minutes. The method changed. The principle never will.

The MARS Rocket Test (Vern Harnish): put your entire team on a rocket to Mars. You do not know what business you will run when you land. What would still be true about your company? Whatever survives that test is a core value. Everything else is a habit.

PLAUD and AI Coaching: how a recording device captures sales and treatment coordinator presentations and AI immediately generates customized follow-up messages based on each prospect's or patient's specific fears, hopes, and objections.

AEO vs SEO: 60% of searches now end in zero clicks. If you are not visible in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, you are invisible to a growing segment of your market.

Download the free Preserve or Kill Framework and The 3 Shifts Scorecard at WealthyMomentumPodcast.com.

Next month: Where Your Next Dollar Is Hiding. It is already inside your business. You just cannot see it yet.

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What comes next requires a different pace, different structure, and a higher standard of thinking.

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Building a great practice requires more than strong clinical skills. It requires leadership that people want to follow.

In this encore episode of The Burleson Box, Dustin Burleson sits down with leadership expert and author Sean Barnard to discuss the principles behind intentional retention. Sean shares lessons learned from decades of experience leading large teams across multiple industries and explains why most organizations lose employees long before anyone submits a resignation.

The conversation focuses on practical leadership habits that strengthen culture and reduce turnover. Sean explains why retention begins on day one, how early check-ins with new hires build trust, and why core values only matter when they actively guide decisions. Dustin and Sean also discuss empowering frontline team members, improving communication inside growing organizations, and helping leaders stay connected to the people doing the work every day.

For orthodontists, dentists, and healthcare leaders managing small teams or multi-location practices, this episode offers a thoughtful framework for building a culture where people feel supported, respected, and motivated to stay.

Key Topics Discussed:

Resources Mentioned:

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In this episode of The Burleson Box, Dr. Dustin Burleson sits down with Rebecca Hinds, PhD, to explore a topic that affects every practice, every business, and every team: the meeting culture you’ve inherited, and the meeting culture you’re choosing to tolerate.

Rebecca opens with one of the most memorable details from her book: dysfunctional meetings were once documented as an intentional sabotage tactic during World War II. The point is not to make you paranoid about your calendar. The point is that the behaviors that waste time in meetings are remarkably consistent, and most people do not need convincing that meetings are broken. They already feel it.

From there, Rebecca makes the case for a complete shift in how leaders think about meetings. Her premise is that meetings should be treated like products. They are where decisions get made, priorities get set, and culture gets built or broken, yet they are rarely designed with intention. Organizations often obsess over optimizing everything except the mechanism that dictates how work actually moves. When you treat a meeting like a product, you stop scheduling by habit and start designing for the user, the people in the room who are giving you their time, their focus, and their judgment.

One of the most practical concepts we cover is “Meeting Doomsday,” a 48-hour calendar reset where recurring meetings get deleted and employees rebuild their calendars from scratch. The power of this approach is psychological. Traditional meeting audits cause people to defend existing meetings because there’s social pressure, guilt, and fear of offending someone. Doomsday creates a clean slate, and what Rebecca finds is that most of the time savings come from redesigning meetings, not only canceling them. Meetings shrink. Attendee lists tighten. Formats become clearer. Small improvements compound fast, and teams stop carrying old meetings forward simply because they’ve always been there.

Rebecca also explains why managers suffer the most from unproductive meeting load. Her research shows unproductive meetings have increased since 2019, and managers have experienced the biggest jump. The reason is structural. Meetings are often a symptom of a broken communication system. When people do not know where work lives, where decisions get documented, or how to move projects forward asynchronously, managers end up funneling information upward and distributing clarity downward. They become the human router for dysfunction, and the calendar becomes the penalty.

To help leaders respond, Rebecca introduces the concept of meeting minimalism. Great products are minimalist by design, clear, purposeful, and free of clutter. Meetings should follow the same discipline. She encourages leaders to apply minimalism across four dimensions: meeting length, agenda items, attendees, and frequency. Even a small shift, such as running a 25-minute meeting instead of a 30-minute meeting, can force a team to design with intention instead of letting work expand to fill time. She also shares why standing meetings tend to run shorter and can change behavior in the room by reducing territorial dynamics.

We also get into a theme that most leaders underestimate: meetings are deeply human. Rebecca talks about the value of injecting delight, moments of joy and surprise, into meetings, especially in a world where so much of work has become mediated by technology. A small unexpected shout-out, a personal story, or a simple ritual can change how people experience collaboration. These touches do not need to be cheesy. They need to be memorable.

A major highlight of the episode is Rebecca’s breakdown of agendas. Many leaders assume agendas automatically improve meetings, but her research points to a more honest truth: agendas only work when they’re designed well. Too often, agenda items are recycled, vague, and structured like a laundry list. Rebecca’s favorite fix is deceptively simple. Convert each agenda item into a verb and a noun. That shift forces clarity. It also makes it obvious when an item is complete, which helps meetings end on time and decisions actually land.

Finally, we talk measurement. Rebecca explains why meeting metrics are tricky, because people are conditioned to assume meetings are inherently bad, which makes traditional feedback systems unreliable. Her recommendation is ROTI, Return on Time Investment, a simple 0–5 score that helps leaders understand whether the meeting was worth the time. When paired with one follow-up question about how to improve by one point, ROTI becomes a lightweight system for continuous improvement rather than a complaint box.

If you lead a practice, run a department, manage a team, or simply want your calendar to stop owning your week, this episode will change the way you think about meetings. You’ll walk away with principles you can apply immediately, without software, without bureaucracy, and without turning your team into meeting accountants.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• Your Best Meeting Ever by Rebecca Hinds, PhD
• Simple Sabotage Field Manual (OSS / WWII)
• Steven Rogelberg’s research on why agendas only help when they’re designed well
• Elise Keith and the concept of ROTI (Return on Time Investment)
• Ted Lasso as a cultural example of using small moments of delight to shift meeting culture

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Most healthcare professionals are trained to sprint.

Dental school is a sprint. Medical school is a sprint. Residency is a sprint. Early practice ownership often feels like one long push fueled by adrenaline, discipline, and grit. That approach can work for a while. Eventually, it breaks down.

In this episode of The Burleson Box, Dustin Burleson sits down with Travis Frederickson and Dr. Logan Frederickson to unpack what peak performance actually means for healthcare providers over the long term.

Travis draws on decades of experience training elite athletes and coaching high-performing professionals. Dr. Logan brings the medical perspective, explaining what happens physiologically and neurologically when stress, sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, and constant mental load remain unchecked.

Together, they explore why so many dentists and physicians feel successful yet depleted, how energy becomes the real constraint later in a career, and why healthspan matters as much as lifespan. The conversation moves beyond productivity tips and into the deeper work of alignment across physical, mental, emotional, and personal domains.

This episode challenges the idea that more effort is always the answer and replaces it with a more durable framework for clarity, sustainability, and long-term excellence. If you care about performing well at work without sacrificing your health, relationships, or sense of purpose, this conversation is worth your time.

Resources Mentioned:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
• Peak Performance for Healthcare Providers - Now Streaming

***

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Stay Up to Date: Sign up for The Burleson Report, our weekly newsletter that is delivered each Sunday with timeless insight for life and private practice. Sign up here:

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In this season-finale episode of The Burleson Box, Dustin Burleson is joined by longtime collaborator and digital marketing pioneer Jimmy Nicholas for a wide-ranging conversation on how artificial intelligence is actively reshaping dentistry and orthodontics.

Their story goes back more than a decade to the Dan Kennedy GKIC days, a marketer-of-the-year competition, and the early experiments that turned Google into one of Dustin’s top sources of new patients. Now, after selling his agency and sitting out a non-compete, Jimmy returns with a new focus on AI, compliance, automation, and what he calls “simple alignment” across marketing, operations, and team communication.

This conversation moves well past surface-level AI hype. Dustin and Jimmy unpack what is actually working right now inside real practices, what most doctors still misunderstand, and where real opportunity exists heading into 2026.

You will hear why Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, may soon matter more than traditional SEO, how AI is changing follow-up systems, phone automation, and patient communication, and why most medical and dental websites are still invisible to large language models. They also discuss the risks that come with careless AI use, including HIPAA violations, hallucinated data, and unreliable financial calculations.

This episode is essential listening for any practice owner who wants to stay competitive, protect their team’s time, and apply AI with discipline rather than guesswork.

Resources Mentioned:

• AI Beta Group (Free Community)
• Wealthy Entrepreneur Strategy Consultations

***

The Burleson Box is brought to you by OrthoFi:

Grow More. Worry Less. Simplify Your Practice with OrthoFi.

Did you know that practices using OrthoFi start more patients and reduce financial barriers without adding complexity to their operations? With OrthoFi, you can simplify the insurance and patient financial process, streamline collections, and free up your team to focus on patient care. OrthoFi combines smart technology with patient-friendly payment solutions to help you start more treatment, improve cash flow, and deliver a better overall experience. Patients love the flexibility. Practices love the results.

Take advantage of a platform built specifically for orthodontists and dental specialists—helping you manage everything from eligibility verification to automated payment processing in one easy-to-use system. Grow your starts. Increase your efficiency. And reduce the headaches of insurance and collections with OrthoFi.

Want to learn more? Schedule a demo today and see how OrthoFi can help your practice thrive.

Click below to learn more:

OrthoFi.com

***

Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, exclusive study guides, special edition books each quarter, powerpoint and keynote presentations and two tickets to Dustin Burleson's Annual Leadership Retreat.

http://www.theburlesonbox.com/sign-up

Stay Up to Date: Sign up for The Burleson Report, our weekly newsletter that is delivered each Sunday with timeless insight for life and private practice. Sign up here:

http://www.theburlesonreport.com

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http://www.burlesonseminars.com

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Show Notes

• Guest: Dr. Jeremiah Sturgill — Founder, Sturgill Orthodontics; Co-founder, Go Unicorn Strategy (concierge SEO/SEM for orthodontists).
  Learn more: https://gounicornstrategy.com
• Why another company? A veteran ads/SEO partner (ex-HGTV/Discovery; managed ~$50k/day in Google Ads for a private client) audited ortho sites and found pretty but underperforming builds. Early tests drove measurable gains in qualified Google referrals; the two formalized a boutique service.
• Boutique by design: Targeting ~20–30 practices so one point of contact knows your brand, market dynamics, and projects end-to-end.
• Inside-out marketing: Don’t pour money into ads until the phones, web forms, and team follow-up are dialed in. Track missed calls (goal: zero), record and review, and role-play quarterly.
• Feedback loop that works: Ads go live → the team tags outcomes (show/start/no-show) → campaigns are adjusted to favor demographics, keywords, and offers that convert in your market.
• Budget truth: Tiny spends create noise, not signal. Commit to a test period and a budget that can generate statistically useful data; adjust by market competition (it’s a real auction).
• Brand over commodity: Build a site that sells your culture and trust, not “$500 off aligners.” If your web vibe doesn’t match the in-office experience, trust evaporates.
• Pricing with confidence: If you deliver Four Seasons-level service, don’t set Motel 6-level fees. You’re not everyone’s cup of tea—and that’s healthy positioning.
• Language matters: For out-of-network calls, lead with help (“We can file Delta for you… let’s get you scheduled…”) rather than a hard “We’re out of network.”
• AI on the horizon: Jeremiah is building a practice “master prompt” to capture decisions, SOPs, and red-flag handoffs so teams ask the system before they page the doctor.

Practical Takeaways

1. Fix the fundamentals first: Fast phones, fast follow-up, and a brand-true website before buying more traffic.
2. Measure what matters daily: Missed calls, call length outliers, and lead outcomes by source—then tune campaigns accordingly.
3. Fund real tests: Set a market-appropriate budget and time horizon; dabbling hides the truth.
4. Sell the who, not the what: Lead with trust, culture, and clarity; avoid commodity framing.
5. Close the loop with training: Quarterly role-play on the hardest questions your team actually hears.

Mentioned

• Go Unicorn Strategy: https://gounicornstrategy.com
• Acquired podcast (Google series)
• Scheduling Institute (Jay Geier) — phone excellence
• Dan Kennedy — back-end sales before better ads
• CliftonStrengths “WOO” — why trying to win everyone over can hurt decisions
• Four Seasons/Ritz-Carlton service standards as a pricing/positioning lens

Past related episodes: Dr. Jamie Reynolds; Dr. Ben Fishbein.
Subscribe to The Burleson Box wherever you listen.

***

The Burleson Box is brought to you by OrthoFi:

Grow More. Worry Less. Simplify Your Practice with OrthoFi.

Did you know that practices using OrthoFi start more patients and reduce financial barriers without adding complexity to their operations? With OrthoFi, you can simplify the insurance and patient financial process, streamline collections, and free up your team to focus on patient care. OrthoFi combines smart technology with patient-friendly payment solutions to help you start more treatment, improve cash flow, and deliver a better overall experience. Patients love the flexibility. Practices love the results.

Take advantage of a platform built specifically for orthodontists and dental specialists—helping you manage everything from eligibility verification to automated payment processing in one easy-to-use system. Grow your starts. Increase your efficiency. And reduce the headaches of insurance and collections with OrthoFi.

Want to learn more? Schedule a demo today and see how OrthoFi can help your practice thrive.

Click below to learn more:

OrthoFi.com

***

Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, exclusive study guides, special edition books each quarter, powerpoint and keynote presentations and two tickets to Dustin Burleson's Annual Leadership Retreat.

http://www.theburlesonbox.com/sign-up

Stay Up to Date: Sign up for The Burleson Report, our weekly newsletter that is delivered each Sunday with timeless insight for life and private practice. Sign up here:

http://www.theburlesonreport.com

Follow Dustin Burleson, DDS, MBA at:

http://www.burlesonseminars.com

Get additional resources, scorecards, and working frameworks at WealthyMomentumPodcast.com

Subscribe on YouTube: YouTube.com/@WealthyEntrepreneurHQ

Learn more: WealthyEntrepreneur.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.