The #1 Reason Dental Practice Ownership Enters an Ugly Duckling Phase and How to Survive It

Adding an associate to your team should be the ultimate win for dental practice ownership, but it is often the exact moment where your existing systems begin to break. In this episode, Andrew Clingan and Caitlin Embree unpack the "ugly duckling" stage—that uncomfortable transition where your previous business strategies no longer scale to support multiple doctors. If you are navigating the complexities of dental practice ownership, this episode is your survival guide for the inevitable systems failures and team tension that occur when scaling toward a sustainable dental practice. As we discuss in this segment, entrepreneurship for dentists is about developing people as much as it is about fixing teeth. Andrew gets vulnerable about the "super solo" trap: trying to out-produce your problems rather than fixing the underlying systems. We dive into the specific financial management for dentists necessary to weather the "stings" of growth—like losing $15,000 cases because the team wasn't ready to present new clinical codes. Ready to take the next step in your dental practice journey? Visit to learn more about our Buyer Representation and Coaching services, designed to help dentists buy, grow, and optimize profitable practices. You can also use our Free Look to evaluate dental practice opportunities with real data before making a decision. For daily Dental Moneyball insights, strategy tips, and updates,

You can listen to The #1 Reason Dental Practice Ownership Enters an Ugly Duckling Phase and How to Survive It online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The #1 Reason Dental Practice Ownership Enters an Ugly Duckling Phase and How to Survive It is an episode from Shared Practices | Your Dental Roadmap to Practice Ownership | Custom Made for the New Dentist by Dr. George Hariri.

This episode is 32:19 long.

This episode was published on Mar 23, 2026.

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