The Dentalpreneur Podcast Archives - Dental Success Institute

On today’s episode, Dr. Mark Costes welcomes back Dr. Heather Dawn Lawson Myers for an inspiring conversation about leadership, mentorship, team development, and the future of dental assisting. Dr. Lawson Myers shares her journey from Howard University to practicing in Maryland and later building a career in Kingston, Jamaica, where she has served in private practice, dental association leadership, dental council governance, and mentorship for young dentists.

She also discusses her work as a John C. Maxwell leadership team member, her passion for helping dental teams understand their strengths, and why dentists must become better leaders if they want to create less stressful, more effective practices. The conversation also explores the growing dental assistant shortage, the importance of training people with the right cultural fit, and how her online platform helps practices develop assistants through flexible, trackable education in general dentistry, endodontics, orthodontics, implants, and more.

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On today’s episode, Dr. Mark Costes sits down with Michelle Strange, MSDH, RDH, live from Thrive Live 2026 in Las Vegas. Michelle shares her unconventional path from dental assistant to hygienist, educator, entrepreneur, speaker, and now independent hygiene practice owner in Colorado. She discusses what it was like to sell everything, travel the country with mobile dental equipment, and eventually step into ownership of a hygiene practice where she can practice prevention-focused care on her own terms.

Michelle and Mark dive into guided biofilm therapy, minimally invasive products like SDF and Curodont, BlueCheck, laser certification, implant maintenance, infection control, and how hygienists can play a powerful role in early detection and patient education. Michelle also shares her approach to motivational interviewing, trauma-informed care, and helping patients feel seen, heard, and empowered rather than judged.

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On today’s episode, Part 2 of the same keynote, Dr. Mark Costes continues his tactical playbook for building a more effective, systemized dental practice. He breaks down the five core steps of leadership, explains how to set clear expectations, and shares practical frameworks for accountability, team meetings, performance reviews, feedback, and KPI tracking.

Mark also covers the hidden cost of turnover, how to evaluate culture and alignment, why organizational charts matter, and how tools like time journals, end-of-day protocols, and downtime systems can help a practice run more efficiently without everything flowing through the owner.

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On today’s episode, Part 1 of a two-part keynote, Dr. Mark Costes shares a tactical playbook for leading and operating a high-performing dental practice. Drawing from his experience owning 16 practices—and from the mistakes he made along the way—Mark explains why a practice that cannot run without the owner is ultimately just a job with overhead.

He breaks down the current state of dentistry, including workforce shortages, rising operating costs, declining practice ownership, burnout, and the growing pressure on dental leaders. Mark also introduces the leadership, systemization, accountability, patient-experience, marketing, and financial frameworks that can help dentists remove themselves as bottlenecks and build healthier, more profitable businesses.

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On today’s episode, Ryan Gross speaks during the Dental Success Summit about how AI, marketing, and operations must work together to help dental practices grow more effectively. Ryan explains that AI is not a magic fix, but a powerful tool that can help teams become more efficient, recognize patterns, and make better decisions when the right people and culture are already in place.

He breaks down the critical five-minute window when patients choose a dental office, why phone answer rates matter, and how missed calls can quietly cost practices thousands in lost production. Ryan also shares how practices can use data around marketing performance, hygiene production, case acceptance, and new patient blocks to ask better “what if” questions and make smarter operational decisions.

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On today’s episode, Dr. Mark Costes sits down with Matt Mulcock, CFP and Managing Partner at Dentist Advisors, for a practical conversation on financial planning throughout the full arc of a dentist’s career. Matt breaks down how new graduates should think about student debt, liquidity, retirement savings, and preparing for practice ownership without rushing the process. He and Mark also discuss mid-career priorities like emergency funds, maximizing retirement accounts, profit sharing, and building liquidity both personally and inside the practice.

Later, they explore what late-career dentists should consider when preparing for an exit, including how much to rely on the sale of the practice, why rural practices can be harder to liquidate, and the importance of building assets outside the business. Matt emphasizes that intentional planning, organization, and smart investing early on can help dentists reduce financial stress and create more options for the future.

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On today’s episode, Dr. Mark Costes is joined by Dr. Dan Briskie and Dr. Thomas Fow for a practical conversation on surgical, prosthetic, and patient management complications in implant dentistry. Together, they discuss what to do when an atraumatic extraction does not go as planned, including how to manage a fractured buccal plate during immediate implant placement.

They also break down common prosthetic challenges like stripped or broken implant screws, when to stop troubleshooting, and why having the right tools and protocols matters. The conversation also dives into managing patient expectations, de-escalating difficult aesthetic concerns, identifying red flags during case selection, and knowing when to slow down, listen, and guide patients with confidence.

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On today’s episode, Dr. Mark Costes sits down with Dr. Lou Graham live from Thrive Live 2026 in Las Vegas. Lou shares the story behind Catapult Education, the independent education-based company he founded 23 years ago, and how it has grown into a powerful platform with speakers, evaluators, and tens of thousands of subscribers.

He and Mark discuss the evolution of dental education, the growing demand for hands-on learning, the challenge of keeping teams engaged in a distracted world, and how technology, AI, digital workflows, and customized education are shaping the future of the profession. Lou also opens up about transitioning out of clinical dentistry, selling to a DSO, mentoring younger doctors, and building a career around leadership, communication, and helping dentists continue to grow.

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Dr. Mark Costes presents the 2026 Golden Rhino Award case studies, honoring two standout transformations: Dr. Blake Hamlin and Dr. Collin Myrick, both UT Houston grads who joined DSI feeling successful but stuck and isolated. He walks through their application letters and financial scorecards, showing how each more than tripled their practices in three years—Hamlin from $1.6M to $5.37M, and Myrick from $2.2M to nearly $10M—largely by clarifying their model and vision before scaling.

The two then join Costes on stage to unpack how they did it. Hamlin credits a relentless focus on a few core KPIs (reappointment rate, answering every call) and a marketing breakthrough, scaling spend from $5,000 to $45,000-plus a month to multiply new patients while holding overhead steady. Myrick points to vision, mission, and core values as his foundation, plus finding his integrator, Darcy, which freed him to lead as a CEO and say yes to rapid multi-location expansion across his rural Florida hometown.

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On today’s episode, Dr. Mark Costes sits down with Seth Hamson, Head of Customer Experience at Lassie, to explore how AI is changing the way dental practices manage revenue cycle operations. Seth shares how his background in financial technology led him into dentistry, where outdated insurance systems, paper EOBs, manual posting, and overwhelmed billing teams continue to create major bottlenecks for practice owners.

He explains how Lassie is using AI agents to automate payment posting, retrieve EOBs, support free direct deposit setup, reconcile payments, and help practices reduce the time and stress tied to insurance AR. Mark and Seth also discuss the future of claim filing, eligibility verification, patient billing, in-house versus outsourced billing, and why practice owners should be thinking intentionally about how AI will shape operations, scalability, and patient experience in the years ahead.

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2571: Training the Next Generation of Dental Assistants

2570: Better Patient Care Starts With Better Questions

2569: What High-Level Dental Operators Do Differently Pt. 2

2568: What High-Level Dental Operators Do Differently Pt. 1

2567: Collective Intelligence-Unlocking Growth Through AI, Marketing & Operations

2566: How Dentists Can Build Wealth With Intention

2565: The Real Talk Behind Surgical and Prosthetic Complications

2564: Building Better Dentists Through Better Education

2563: The Blackbelt Standard

2562: The Back Office Automation Every Practice Owner Should Understand