Ask George: The Real Reason Dental Practice Profitability Is Higher Today Than In The Golden Age
Shared Practices | Your Dental Roadmap through Practice Ownership
Dr. George Hariri | Shared Practices Network
4.9 • 559 Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are you worried that you missed the "Golden Age" of dentistry? Many dental students and associates look back at the 1980s with envy, assuming that high insurance reimbursements and low competition made that the only era for true wealth. In this episode of Ask George, Dr. George Hariri deconstructs this myth and explains why dental practice profitability in the 2020s actually offers a superior path for the entrepreneurial dentist.
We shift the focus from the "Golden Age" to the "Golden Way"—a modern survival guide for transitioning from a clinical technician to a high-performing CEO. George breaks down why the current landscape of dental practice ownership is ripe with opportunity for those who embrace technology over tradition. Whether you are navigating an associate to owner transition or managing a growing firm, understanding the levers of dental practice valuation methods is critical to your exit strategy.
This episode explores three distinct paths to building a $5M–$10M net worth:
- The Mega Practice: Why a single 14-operatory office with high dental growth strategies often outperforms a multi-location portfolio with less risk.
- The Multi-Location Venture: The "irrational" drive needed to scale past four locations and the financial controls required to maintain margins.
- The Platform Play: How modern DSOs allow for wealth creation through equity without the traditional burdens of solo ownership.
Success in the mid-2020s requires extreme efficiency in marketing, patient retention, and clinical productivity. George explains how AI, guided surgery, and 3D printing have replaced "hanging a shingle" as the primary drivers of entrepreneurship for dentists. If you want to stop trading time for money and start building a "Practice 401k," this deep dive into the 170-billion-dollar dental industry is your roadmap. You aren't too late; you are exactly on time to leverage the consolidation wave and modern clinical systems for maximum financial freedom.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Shared Practices podcast. We are back for another episode of Ask George, |
| 0:07.9 | where we are going to take a deep dive into the question, am I too late to build real wealth |
| 0:14.0 | in dentistry? And, you know, I think that this is a very interesting question. And in true |
| 0:19.6 | shared practices fashion, I'm going to try to |
| 0:21.6 | address this with as much nuance as possible to really help you understand the question. First, |
| 0:28.0 | let's just give the SparkNotes answer. No, you are not too late to build real wealth in dentistry. |
| 0:33.9 | Actually, I would say kind of the opposite. I think you're right on time. I think that something that I talked about before |
| 0:39.2 | is, you know, when I was in dental school, I think a lot of my instructors felt like the 70s, 80s, 90s was the golden age of |
| 0:46.5 | dentistry. And they said, like, you know, all I have to do is put out a shingle. I put out my sign. I open up my location. I get patients. Insurance |
| 0:53.7 | reimbursements are high, |
| 0:55.5 | plenty of staff, team who want to work in dentistry. And, you know, they often call that the golden age. |
| 1:03.0 | And what I would say to that person, this is slightly rhetorical. Obviously, there were some things |
| 1:07.4 | about that age that were amazing. But like, that was 50 years ago. Like, why do we care at this point? I'm not going to sit here and reminisce about what things were like 50 years ago. That is the least helpful episode I could possibly create. And so if I'm trying to be helpful and provide value, I think it's important to say, okay, well, that's all well and good, but that time has passed. Insurance reimbursements are not what they used to be. There's definitely |
| 1:28.2 | staff. There's a dynamic in the dental workforce, especially with hygienists, where it's harder to get |
| 1:33.3 | staff. It's harder to retain staff. And so the HR component has become more complex. And then also on top of |
| 1:39.9 | that, it's not so easy to get new patients, right? We don't just hang out a shingle, and then we have |
| 1:44.9 | our office full of people who want care, right? We actually have to market and have good reviews, |
| 1:50.5 | and we have to do the things that all consumer-facing businesses do to get new patients. And so |
| 1:55.8 | dentistry has changed in the last 50 years. And so what I want to say is we can talk about the golden age, |
| 2:03.4 | which I find to be a not helpful, irrelevant conversation, or we can talk about the golden way. |
| 2:09.6 | A framework I want to introduce early in this episode that will sort of carry throughout the |
| 2:13.2 | whole episode is that there's a golden way to have success and build real wealth in dentistry, |
... |
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