Shared Practices | Your Dental Roadmap through Practice Ownership
Jun 15, 2026 · 35 min · 12 segments
In this Ask George episode, we tackle the ultimate debate in dental practice ownership: have you built a highly profitable business, or just a high-paying job? Dr. George Hariri breaks down the…
What are you really gonna do with that advice? And so I wanna be constructive, not destructive, and I want to help you wherever you're at.
If you're a solo dentist, whether that's a productive solo with two hygienists or just a solo with one hygienist, how can you make your day-to-day experience in the office more of a business and a little bit less of a job? And so same thing goes to a group practice, right? If you are in a-- If you have an associate and you have multiple dentists, whether you're a group or a mega group, how can you build your practice so that it's a business? And I really wanna kind of speak on it to each person with where they're at in the journey, so that when you are listening to this episode, it's applicable to you, and also it's something that, okay, I know how can I make my day-to-day ownership more like a business and less like a job? I wanna maybe just take a step back.
Before we even dive into any specific avatars or talk to a solo or a group practice owner or whatever, wherever you might be, I just wanna say, like, well, what are the elements of a job versus elements of a business? Well, I think there's a key man risk element of this, where if you are required for performance, it is more like a job and less like a business.
And so I think that that's kind of an important fundamental sort of put out there early, which is if I'm driving my practice every day and the performance of that office is highly dependent on me, then it's like a spectrum and a continuum between job and business or job and maybe team-led performance.
I wanna talk through at the various levels, it's all a spectrum is kind of the thing I wanna communicate because I think when people say, like, "Well, if you're the only dentist there, then you have a job, you don't have a business," that's not helpful, and it's also not true because you own your own business, right? So you have a business.
You're not taking every X-ray, right? So you do have a business underneath you.
You do have people who you are employing who are doing things that are making you money.
And so I'm gonna use the spectrum perspective, where it's like on one end of the spectrum, we have a job, and on the other end of the spectrum, we have a business.
And how can we spend more time focusing on making our business more like a business and less like a job? I wanna start with a solo dentist, and then I wanna-- I think that-- But there's, like, there's layers to this, and it, it looks different.
What are you really gonna do with that advice? And so I wanna be constructive, not destructive, and I want to help you wherever you're at.
If you're a solo dentist, whether that's a productive solo with two hygienists or just a solo with one hygienist, how can you make your day-to-day experience in the office more of a business and a little bit less of a job? And so same thing goes to a group practice, right? If you are in a-- If you have an associate and you have multiple dentists, whether you're a group or a mega group, how can you build your practice so that it's a business? And I really wanna kind of speak on it to each person with where they're at in the journey, so that when you are listening to this episode, it's applicable to you, and also it's something that, okay, I know how can I make my day-to-day ownership more like a business and less like a job? I wanna maybe just take a step back.
Before we even dive into any specific avatars or talk to a solo or a group practice owner or whatever, wherever you might be, I just wanna say, like, well, what are the elements of a job versus elements of a business? Well, I think there's a key man risk element of this, where if you are required for performance, it is more like a job and less like a business.
And so I think that that's kind of an important fundamental sort of put out there early, which is if I'm driving my practice every day and the performance of that office is highly dependent on me, then it's like a spectrum and a continuum between job and business or job and maybe team-led performance.
I wanna talk through at the various levels, it's all a spectrum is kind of the thing I wanna communicate because I think when people say, like, "Well, if you're the only dentist there, then you have a job, you don't have a business," that's not helpful, and it's also not true because you own your own business, right? So you have a business.
You're not taking every X-ray, right? So you do have a business underneath you.
You do have people who you are employing who are doing things that are making you money.
And so I'm gonna use the spectrum perspective, where it's like on one end of the spectrum, we have a job, and on the other end of the spectrum, we have a business.
And how can we spend more time focusing on making our business more like a business and less like a job? I wanna start with a solo dentist, and then I wanna-- I think that-- But there's, like, there's layers to this, and it, it looks different.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.