The Successful Dentist Who Couldn’t Stand His Own Practice
Jul 14, 2026What if the part of practice ownership wearing you down isn't the dentistry, the schedule, or the money?
A few years ago, I had a conversation with an oral surgeon I have known for three decades.
By every conventional measure, he had succeeded. He was clinically accomplished. His practice was valuable. He had built the kind of career many dentists spend their lives trying to create.
Then he told me something I have never forgotten.
"Mike," he said, "I love the work... but I hate my team. I just hate the staff."
The message was unmistakable: the work he loved had become trapped inside a practice he could barely tolerate.
That contradiction should stop every practice owner in their tracks. How can a dentist achieve the outcome everyone celebrates and still dread the environment that produced it?
The Adversarial Trap
Dentists are trained to solve visible problems. A fractured tooth. A failing implant. An inefficient schedule. A weak case-acceptance rate. If we can identify the defect, we can usually find a technique or protocol to address it.
But practice culture behaves differently.
Too many highly skilled clinicians view their employees as "staff" rather than "teammates." Unconsciously, they begin to view both the staff and the patients as the enemy. This adversarial mindset creates a high-stress environment where dentists wish they could "just do the dentistry" and avoid the human element entirely.
They endure this toxic environment, treating a miserable practice culture as an unavoidable reality of the profession. It is sort of like staying in a bad marriage because you think you have no other choice.
You do have a choice.
The entrepreneur Dan Sullivan teaches a concept called Freedom of Relationship. It is the profound realization that you have the absolute right to choose the people you surround yourself with. You do not have to settle for bad lawyers, bad accountants, bad vendors, or bad teammates.
If you are going to spend your life in a dental operatory, you must exercise your freedom to build a team you actually love.
The Secret Inside 1,000 Five-Star Reviews
When colleagues visit my office, they naturally notice the clinical environment. They ask about procedures, equipment, and workflows.
Then they notice our online reviews.
Over time, our practice has accumulated nearly 1,000 five-star Google reviews. That number is gratifying, but it is not the most interesting part.
The pattern inside those reviews is.
Patients rarely write paragraphs about my surgical technique or the sophistication of our technology. Instead, patient after patient specifically names the people who support me—Danielle, Taylor, Ashley. They write about the unsung heroes of the practice.
Once you notice that pattern, it becomes difficult to view dental team building in the same way again. It proves that the patient’s experience is shaped by the emotional environment your team creates before the clinical encounter truly begins.
So, how do you create a team that patients never forget?
The 16-Hour Vulnerability Shift
Most team-building efforts are designed around information. We communicate the mission. We define expectations. We tell people how we want them to work together.
The problem is that knowing how a strong team should behave is not the same as becoming one.
To fundamentally alter the way the people in your office interact, you have to peel back the layers of the professional onion.
You cannot do that during a one-hour lunch meeting.
Once a year, I take my entire group on a grueling, unconventional 16-hour journey.
We meet for coffee at 8:00 AM, take the train into New York City, and spend hours doing a scavenger hunt in Central Park.
We spend two and a half hours trapped in a karaoke room looking foolish. We go to a Broadway play, have dinner, and don't return to Connecticut until past midnight.
Sixteen hours is a long time. It is long enough for polished professional roles to become impossible to maintain.
Why "Play" Transforms Patient Care
Why do we do this? Because there is a direct psychological link between non-clinical vulnerability and in-office patient care.
Who we are at play is who we are at work.
When teammates become vulnerable with each other by singing off-key or getting lost in the city, they learn to truly support one another. They drop their defenses.
When they return to the office, that vulnerability translates directly to patient care. Because our patients are inherently in a highly vulnerable, anxious state when receiving dental treatment, a team that has practiced vulnerability and support outside the office is uniquely equipped to comfort and serve patients inside the office.
At 71 years old, after four decades of teaching and practicing, I know this to be true: if I am not doing what I love to do, with people I love working with, I would have led a pretty bad life.
You do not have to hate your practice. Exercise your freedom of relationship. Take your team out of their comfort zone. Let them be vulnerable.
When you stop managing "staff" and start building a deeply connected team, you will eliminate the daily friction you currently accept as normal.
Be the gift!
Want Dr. Sonick to transform your team into patient experience champions?
Discover the proven "Showtime" methodology that has helped practices increase case acceptance by 25%, boost patient retention by 15%, and create teams that patients rave about. Dr. Sonick's exclusive training program teaches your entire team how to combine clinical excellence with hospitality-driven care that drives measurable results.
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