The Doctor Avi Show

"Do you know women doctors have shorter lifespans than all other women?"

Dr. Joy Vega says that fact is part of why she changed course. Nine years into practice, she realized she had been trying to keep up with the boys in cosmetic dentistry, and she no longer knew if it was good for her body.

So she pivoted. She slowed her dentistry down, moved toward comprehensive care, and raised her prices. Some patients were upset and some couldn't follow her, and she still sees them one day a week at her old practice.

She also built her brand from scratch in Houston, a city where she knew no one. Online, she was told nobody wants to see her weekends. When she posted cases, she says other dentists bullied her for it. Her answer: the market meets you where you're at, and at least she's sharing.

Dr. Joy Vega is a cosmetic and general dentist.

In this conversation with, you will learn:

• Why she says women doctors have shorter lifespans, and how that changed her career
• What it took to slow down and raise her prices without losing her patients
• How she moved from volume dentistry to experience-driven dentistry
• Why being herself online was the hardest part of building her brand
• Why she believes brand isn't about the best content, it's about time spent getting to know you

This episode is for you if you're a dentist wondering if your pace is sustainable, or you're building a personal brand and worried about what other dentists will say.

What would you change about your practice if you knew it was costing you years?

Follow Dr. Joy Vega on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjoyy/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoyy/

Shoutout to our sponsors:
Clear Aligner Advisor: https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹 General Dentists
If you're looking to implement clear aligners confidently and predictably:

Free Training → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹 DSOs & Group Practices
If you're exploring doctor activation, aligner adoption, or associate retention strategy:

Learn more → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/aligneradvantage

About Dr. Avi:
Dr. Avi Patel is a general dentist and founder of Clear Aligner Advisor. He works with solo practices and DSOs nationwide to bridge the gap between education and real-world execution — helping doctors grow with clarity and confidence.

Connect with Dr. Avi
Instagram → / doctor.avi
LinkedIn → / dr-avi-patel-clearaligner-advisor

"Do you know women doctors have shorter lifespans than all other women?"

Dr. Joy Vega says that fact is part of why she changed course. Nine years into practice, she realized she had been trying to keep up with the boys in cosmetic dentistry, and she no longer knew if it was good for her body.

So she pivoted. She slowed her dentistry down, moved toward comprehensive care, and raised her prices. Some patients were upset and some couldn't follow her, and she still sees them one day a week at her old practice.

She also built her brand from scratch in Houston, a city where she knew no one. Online, she was told nobody wants to see her weekends.

When she posted cases, she says other dentists bullied her for it. Her answer: the market meets you where you're at, and at least she's sharing.

Dr. Joy Vega is a cosmetic and general dentist.

In this conversation with, you will learn:

• Why she says women doctors have shorter lifespans, and how that changed her career
• What it took to slow down and raise her prices without losing her patients
• How she moved from volume dentistry to experience-driven dentistry
• Why being herself online was the hardest part of building her brand
• Why she believes brand isn't about the best content, it's about time spent getting to know you

This episode is for you if you're a dentist wondering if your pace is sustainable, or you're building a personal brand and worried about what other dentists will say.

What would you change about your practice if you knew it was costing you years?

Follow Dr. Joy Vega on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjoyy/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoyy/

Shoutout to our sponsors:
Clear Aligner Advisor: https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹 General Dentists
If you're looking to implement clear aligners confidently and predictably:

Free Training → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹 DSOs & Group Practices
If you're exploring doctor activation, aligner adoption, or associate retention strategy:

Learn more → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/aligneradvantage

About Dr. Avi:
Dr. Avi Patel is a general dentist and founder of Clear Aligner Advisor. He works with solo practices and DSOs nationwide to bridge the gap between education and real-world execution — helping doctors grow with clarity and confidence.

Connect with Dr. Avi
Instagram → / doctor.avi
LinkedIn → / dr-avi-patel-clearaligner-advisor

One piece of content went viral. Dentologie was booked out for six months straight.

Dr. Suhail Mohiuddin says new patients couldn't get in, not even for hygiene recall, which had always been the hard sell before.

That same visibility created a second, bigger problem: last year, Dentologie received 1,000 dentist applications for 20 open spots.

He didn't build a recruiting strategy. He built a business staff dentists and hygienists actually wanted to work for, and the applications followed on their own.

Dr. Suhail co-founded Dentologie in 2013 with his two best friends from college. Seventeen locations later, he calls it "the best and worst decision of my life."

In this conversation, you will learn:

• How one viral piece of content booked out an entire practice for six months
• Why hygiene recall, usually a practice's hardest sell, stopped being a problem
• The real reason Dentologie got 1,000 applications for 20 spots in a single year
• What it's actually like running a 17-location organization that started with three friends
• His honest take on being called "corporate" while believing dentistry needs more dentist-led organizations

This episode is for you if you're trying to understand what content can actually do for a practice, or you're building a culture people want to work inside.

1,000 applicants for 20 spots, what do you think they actually saw?

Follow Dr. Suhail Mohiuddin / Dentologie on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.m_____/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.m_?lang=en
Dentologie: https://www.instagram.com/dentologie/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsuhail/
Shoutout to our sponsors:
SprintRay Midas: https://info.sprintray.com/midas-podcast
Neer: https://www.getneer.com/patel
Clear Aligner Advisor: https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹 General Dentists
If you're looking to implement clear aligners confidently and predictably:

Free Training → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹 DSOs & Group Practices
If you're exploring doctor activation, aligner adoption, or associate retention strategy:

Learn more → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/aligneradvantage

About Dr. Avi:
Dr. Avi Patel is a general dentist and founder of Clear Aligner Advisor. He works with solo practices and DSOs nationwide to bridge the gap between education and real-world execution — helping doctors grow with clarity and confidence.

Connect with Dr. Avi
Instagram → / doctor.avi
LinkedIn → / dr-avi-patel-clearaligner-advisor

Would you do this treatment on your own mother?

That's the test Steve Bilt holds every location in his company to. Not a slogan. A line he says dentistry has sorely lacked, because most standards never get defined clearly enough to actually hold anyone to.

Here's what that test reveals: the 'cheaper' option is usually the most expensive one.
A three-unit bridge redone three times over a lifetime, destroying two more teeth each time, costs far more than a single implant properly cared for once. Not by a little. By a lot.

Patients don't leave because of sticker price. They leave because the short-term fix became a lifetime of redoing it.

Steve Bilt is CEO of Smile Brand Inc.

In this conversation, you will learn:

• The "mom test" he uses to define standard of care across every location in his company
• Why the cheaper option up front is almost always the more expensive one over a patient's lifetime
• What happens when a dental license lets you decide "what's right," without a clear definition of right
• How bone grafting after extraction protects options an implant will need later, and what happens when it's skipped
• Why he believes dentistry has sorely lacked a clearly defined standard, and what it takes to actually hold one

This episode is for you if you've ever had to defend a treatment plan on cost, or you're building standards across more than one location.

Would you pass the mom test on your own treatment plans?

Follow Steve Bilt / Smile Brand Inc. on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smilebrands/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-bilt-782835b/

Shoutout to our sponsors:
SprintRay Midas: https://info.sprintray.com/midas-podcast
Neer: https://www.getneer.com/patel
Clear Aligner Advisor: https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹 General Dentists
If you're looking to implement clear aligners confidently and predictably:

Free Training → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹 DSOs & Group Practices
If you're exploring doctor activation, aligner adoption, or associate retention strategy:

Learn more → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/aligneradvantage

About Dr. Avi:
Dr. Avi Patel is a general dentist and founder of Clear Aligner Advisor. He works with solo practices and DSOs nationwide to bridge the gap between education and real-world execution — helping doctors grow with clarity and confidence.

Connect with Dr. Avi
Instagram → / doctor.avi
LinkedIn → / dr-avi-patel-clearaligner-advisor

Dr. Aman Kaur has spent over 18 years in the DSO space. Not one model, all of them: for-profit, not-for-profit, private equity-backed groups, technology companies trying to break into dental.

That range gave her a rare vantage point most people in this industry never get.

Six years ago, she founded Women in DSO. She's had women come up to her in tears at conferences, telling her their life changed because of it. That's the moment, she says, that makes the travel and exhaustion worth it.

Her advice to any young woman entering dentistry right now: stop fighting to be right, start doing the right thing. And get financially literate, because confidence follows knowledge, not the other way around.
In this conversation with Dr. Aman Kaur, you will learn:

• What running for-profit, not-for-profit, and private equity-backed DSOs taught her about the industry
• Why Women in DSO exists, and the impact she's seen firsthand
• The advice she'd give any woman starting out in dentistry today
• Why financial literacy matters more than another clinical CE course
• How she balances constant travel with staying present in her personal life

This episode is for you if you're navigating the DSO space in any capacity, or you're a woman in dentistry looking for real community and mentorship.

What's one thing you wish someone had told you before you got into the DSO world?

Follow Dr. Aman Kaur on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womenindso/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-aman-k-5971bb171/

Shoutout to our sponsors:
OrthoBrain: https://bit.ly/4vFk9OI
SprintRay Midas: https://bit.ly/SprintRay-Podcast
Neer: https://bit.ly/4vzRFG3
Clear Aligner Advisor: https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹General Dentists
If you're looking to implement clear aligners confidently and predictably:
Free Training → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹DSOs & Group Practices
If you're exploring doctor activation, aligner adoption, or associate retention strategy:
Learn more → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/aligneradvantage

About Dr. Avi:
Dr. Avi Patel is a general dentist and founder of Clear Aligner Advisor. He works with solo practices and DSOs nationwide to bridge the gap between education and real-world execution — helping doctors grow with clarity and confidence.

Connect with Dr. Avi
Instagram → / doctor.avi
LinkedIn → / dr-avi-patel-clearaligner-advisor

In 2010, Dr. Chris Salierno started a blog called The Curious Dentist, the same year he opened his own practice.

That blog is what eventually led to him becoming Chief Dental Officer at Tend, a role that meant walking away from both his practice and his position as Chief Editor of Dental Economics. He took months to decide. Five years later, he hasn't looked back.

But the real lesson he shares isn't about the blog. It's about failure.

"The part of our brains that makes us excellent dentists can make us terrible business owners."

Dentists are trained to fear the smallest error, fractions of millimeters. That same instinct kills experimentation in business. Chris's approach: fail fast, learn, iterate. Don't wait for the perfect plan before you try anything.

Dr. Chris Salierno is a general dentist and Chief Dental Officer at Tend. In this conversation with Dr. Salierno you will learn:

• How a personal blog turned into a Chief Dental Officer role at a national dental brand
• Why Tend requires a minimum of two years of experience before a dentist can even apply
• The mindset shift between being a great clinician and being a great business owner
• Why "thoughtful experiments" beat waiting for the perfect plan every time
• What it actually takes to build a brand patients trust enough to promise an elevated experience

Worth listening to if you're a dentist thinking about a path beyond ownership, or you're stuck waiting for the "perfect" plan before making a business decision.

Comment below the one business decision you're overthinking right now instead of just testing it?

Follow Dr. Chris Salierno on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_curious_dentist/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-salierno-dds/

Shoutout to our sponsors:
OrthoBrain: https://bit.ly/4vFk9OI
SprintRay Midas: https://bit.ly/SprintRay-Podcast
Neer: https://bit.ly/4vzRFG3
Clear Aligner Advisor: https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹General Dentists
If you're looking to implement clear aligners confidently and predictably:
Free Training → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹DSOs & Group Practices
If you're exploring doctor activation, aligner adoption, or associate retention strategy:
Learn more → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/aligneradvantage

About Dr. Avi:
Dr. Avi Patel is a general dentist and founder of Clear Aligner Advisor. He works with solo practices and DSOs nationwide to bridge the gap between education and real-world execution — helping doctors grow with clarity and confidence.

Connect with Dr. Avi
Instagram → / doctor.avi
LinkedIn → / dr-avi-patel-clearaligner-advisor

Dr. Amer used to hold the steering wheel of his beat-up car and visualize a different emblem on it. Feeling it before it was real.
He didn't know it had a name yet, but that was manifestation. He calls it the reason he went from starting a single ortho practice in Edmonton in 2010 to now running 10 locations across Alberta and BC.
But there's a mindset problem he says almost every dentist walks out of school with: scarcity.
Dental school trains you for competition, limited spots, pass or fail. Business people operate the opposite way, in abundance. The dentists who actually scale are the ones who learn to turn that scarcity mindset off.
Dr. Amer is an orthodontist and founder of Pure Orthodontics. In this conversation with Dr. Amer you will learn:

•  How visualization and manifestation directly shaped his business growth
•  The scarcity mindset dental school trains into every graduate, and why it holds practices back
•  How he built from one location to ten without forcing decisions that didn't flow naturally
•  Why personal branding is one of the most underleveraged opportunities in dentistry
•  What changed for him after leaning fully into content and sharing his day-to-day

Worth listening to if you've ever felt boxed in by the way dental school trained you to think, or you're scaling a practice and want to understand the mindset shift that actually makes growth possible.
What's one belief from dental school you've had to unlearn to grow your practice?
Follow Dr. Amer on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DcJiZ8_SE0h/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amer-hussain-97467120/
Shoutout to our sponsors:
OrthoBrain: https://bit.ly/4vFk9OI
SprintRay Midas: https://bit.ly/SprintRay-Podcast
Neer: https://bit.ly/4vzRFG3
Clear Aligner Advisor: https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/
🔹General Dentists
If you're looking to implement clear aligners confidently and predictably:
Free Training → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/
🔹DSOs & Group Practices
If you're exploring doctor activation, aligner adoption, or associate retention strategy:
Learn more → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/al...
About Dr. Avi:
Dr. Avi Patel is a general dentist and founder of Clear Aligner Advisor. He works with solo practices and DSOs nationwide to bridge the gap between education and real-world execution — helping doctors grow with clarity and confidence.
Connect with Dr. Avi
Instagram → / doctor.avi
LinkedIn → / dr-avi-patel-clearaligner-advisor 

Dalton Albertin played tennis at Ball State, interned with the Colts, and spent about five years selling spinal implants to neurosurgeons and orthopedic spine surgeons.

Then Zimmer Biomet bought his company, and he pivoted into dental.

Today he and his wife Mary run LADD Dental Group, a company founded by Dr. John Lad and Tisa Lad in Kokomo, Indiana in 1978. Neither Dalton nor Mary is a dentist. Mary is an attorney by background and now serves as CEO. They have been running the group for a little over 10 years, and it now includes 11 offices plus a denture and partial lab.

What makes his perspective useful is where he came from. He watched hospital consolidation reshape the MD world and saw surgeons lose autonomy over which implants they could use. He brought those lessons into dental on purpose.

Inside the conversation:

- Why he thinks the solo practice model has real headwinds coming

- The build out costs nobody warns you about, including a $1,000 Ethernet run just to keep the warranty on a $10,000 autoclave

- Buck boosters for vacuum and compressor units, and another five to ten thousand dollars added to a de novo

- Running the group on EOS with quarterly rocks and a Monday morning executive meeting

- Moving the whole organization from Softdent to Denticon, and the conflict that came with it

- An office level profit share for support staff, and what it did for retention

This one is for group operators, multi location owners, DSO leaders, and any dentist heading into ownership who wants to hear what actually happens after you sign the lease.

Comment with the build out surprise that cost you the most.

Follow Dalton at @Dalton Albertin and LADD Dental Group at @ladddental.

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Shoutout to our sponsors:

SprintRay Midas: https://bit.ly/SprintRay-Podcast

OrthoBrain: https://bit.ly/4vFk9OI

Neer: https://bit.ly/4vzRFG3

Clear Aligner Advisor: https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

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🔹 General Dentists

If you’re looking to implement clear aligners confidently and predictably:

Free Training → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹 DSOs & Group Practices

If you’re exploring doctor activation, aligner adoption, or associate retention strategy:

Learn more → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/aligneradvantage

About Dr. Avi:

Dr. Avi Patel is a general dentist and founder of Clear Aligner Advisor. He works with solo practices and DSOs nationwide to bridge the gap between education and real-world execution — helping doctors grow with clarity and confidence.

Connect with Dr. Avi

Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/doctor.avi

LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-avi-patel-clearaligner-advisor/

For 15 years, Shreyas watched his mom run her dental practice alone with no systems in place. Then she got breast cancer, and the whole thing fell apart almost overnight.He had a computer science degree from Stanford. He figured, how hard could revenue cycle actually be?938 days later, building Daydream Dental taught him exactly how wrong he was.Shreyas Parab is the co-founder of Daydream Dental. What started as stepping in to help his mom's one-person practice turned into a company built to fix the revenue cycle problems that quietly drain practices everywhere.In this conversation we talk about:➡️How much money is quietly disappearing from associate paychecks due to bad RCM practices, and why it's so hard to catch➡️How one practice improved production by $70,000 in a single month using AI to surface unscheduled treatment➡️Why dentistry just became one of the safest professions on earth as AI reshapes everything else➡️What it actually took to go from "how hard could this be" to building a company around solving it➡️Why he believes knowledge, not just tools, is what shifts power back to dentistsWorth listening to if you've ever felt like your practice's revenue cycle is a black box, or you're a DSO leader trying to understand where AI actually helps versus where it's just noise.What's the one billing or RCM issue that's quietly costing your practice the most?Follow Shreyas Parab on:Instagram →   / daydream_billing  LinkedIn →   / sparab18  Shoutout to our sponsors:Daydream Dental: https://daydream.dental/Clear Aligner Advisor: https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/Dr. Avi Patel shares real conversations and practical insights on modern dentistry — including DSO growth, associate retention, clinical execution, aligner implementation, leadership, and personal development in the profession.This channel is built for dentists, leaders, and operators who want clarity on what’s actually working today.---🔹 General DentistsIf you’re looking to implement clear aligners confidently and predictably:Free Training → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/🔹 DSOs & Group PracticesIf you’re exploring doctor activation, aligner adoption, or associate retention strategy:Learn more → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/al...About Dr. Avi: Dr. Avi Patel is a general dentist and founder of Clear Aligner Advisor. He works with solo practices and DSOs nationwide to bridge the gap between education and real-world execution — helping doctors grow with clarity and confidence.Connect with Dr. AviInstagram →   / doctor.avi  LinkedIn →   / dr-avi-patel-clearaligner-advisor  

Stephen Thorne's mom died at 65. A heart attack, three weeks after her cardiologist told her she'd probably live to 100.

Her scores were perfect. She'd done everything right. Her death sent him looking for answers. What he found was research connecting oral health to overall health, especially cardiovascular health, something none of the dentists in his own family (his grandfather, his father, two of his brothers) had ever mentioned to him.

Stephen is CEO of PDS Health, formerly Pacific Dental Services. He started the company with his father in 1994, hit his first real growth ceiling in 1999, and has spent decades building it into the organization it is today.

That personal loss changed the direction of the whole company.

In this conversation with Dr. Avi:

➡️Why he believes dentists can be the point person for a patient's overall health, not just their teeth

➡️The four chronic disease categories tied to inflammation, and why gingivitis sits at the center of all of them

➡️How PDS Health started integrating physicians and nurse practitioners directly into dental practices

➡️Why saliva diagnostics are coming, and what changes once chairside testing gets approved

➡️What it took to rebuild the company's org structure around this shift, and why COVID set that timeline back years.

Worth listening to if you're a dentist trying to understand where the industry is heading, or a DSO leader thinking about medical-dental integration.

Comment with what you think dentistry's role in overall healthcare should look like.

Follow Stephen Thorne on:

LinkedIn @stevethornepdshealth

Instagram @stevethorne_pdshealth

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Shoutout to our sponsors:

SprintRay Midas: https://bit.ly/SprintRay-Podcast

Neer: https://bit.ly/4vzRFG3

Care Credit: https://www.carecredit.com/providers/dental-practice-growth/

Clear Aligner Advisor: https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

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🔹 General Dentists

If you’re looking to implement clear aligners confidently and predictably:

Free Training → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/

🔹 DSOs & Group Practices

If you’re exploring doctor activation, aligner adoption, or associate retention strategy:

Learn more → https://www.clearaligneradvisor.co/al...

About Dr. Avi:

Dr. Avi Patel is a general dentist and founder of Clear Aligner Advisor. He works with solo practices and DSOs nationwide to bridge the gap between education and real-world execution — helping doctors grow with clarity and confidence.

Connect with Dr. AviInstagram →   / doctor.avi  LinkedIn →   / dr-avi-patel-clearaligner-advisor