Shared Practices | Your Dental Roadmap through Practice Ownership
Jun 1, 2026 · 37 min · 12 segments
In this episode of Ask George, Dr. George Hariri breaks down the common—yet avoidable—trap where adding an associate leads to a massive drop in dental practice profitability. George shares his own…
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But, you know, for me, I bought my practice right out of school, and I had my seller, who was an associate for me, working for the first six months.
And my expectations of what would happen were that my income would grow and my practice would grow.
So I thought the amount of production collection-- So, like, I'll just use real numbers, right? So I bought my practice doing around ninety thousand a month, and I grew it after I got into ownership to around a hundred and thirty, a hundred and forty thousand a month.
Some months we're up to one fifty, but, like, we were kind of in that one thirty to one forty range, kind of on a sustainable basis.
I'm getting an associate four days," so I'm thinking we're gonna grow to one fifty, one sixty, one seventy.
And I kinda got greedy a little bit, and so I bring on the associate, and the opposite thing happened.
And it was this really annoying experience, honestly, that was really unfortunate, because I'm sitting there and I'm running my practice.
I'm working harder, I have more expenses, and I'm not making any money, and I have an associate full time.
And I'm just thinking, "What is going on?" And this is a, a very key situation that we've kind of learned a lot about since at Shared Practices, where it's like if you don't bring on that associate well and you don't think through that process carefully, what you think is going to make you more money is actually going to make you less money.
And so I wanna kinda break this down and discuss the fundamentals of why this occurs.
But, you know, for me, I bought my practice right out of school, and I had my seller, who was an associate for me, working for the first six months.
And my expectations of what would happen were that my income would grow and my practice would grow.
So I thought the amount of production collection-- So, like, I'll just use real numbers, right? So I bought my practice doing around ninety thousand a month, and I grew it after I got into ownership to around a hundred and thirty, a hundred and forty thousand a month.
Some months we're up to one fifty, but, like, we were kind of in that one thirty to one forty range, kind of on a sustainable basis.
I'm getting an associate four days," so I'm thinking we're gonna grow to one fifty, one sixty, one seventy.
And I kinda got greedy a little bit, and so I bring on the associate, and the opposite thing happened.
And it was this really annoying experience, honestly, that was really unfortunate, because I'm sitting there and I'm running my practice.
I'm working harder, I have more expenses, and I'm not making any money, and I have an associate full time.
And I'm just thinking, "What is going on?" And this is a, a very key situation that we've kind of learned a lot about since at Shared Practices, where it's like if you don't bring on that associate well and you don't think through that process carefully, what you think is going to make you more money is actually going to make you less money.
And so I wanna kinda break this down and discuss the fundamentals of why this occurs.
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