Teams are teams. Doesn't matter if it's a dental practice, a veterinary clinic, or a Fortune 500 company. The human problems are the same.

In this episode, Dr. Martin Mendelson and Dr. Kyle Stanley unpack what that actually means and why dentistry's tendency to treat itself as uniquely complicated has kept a lot of practice owners from borrowing solutions that have been working in other industries for decades. Martin was just interviewed on a major veterinary podcast, and the entire conversation had nothing to do with teeth. It was about people.

Kyle makes it concrete with a story: a dentist he met with had a team breakdown over birthday lunches. Two were ordered on the same day because nobody had clear ownership of the process. When Kyle started asking questions, is there a list of approved restaurants, a cost ceiling, a deadline, a backup if the owner's out? the dentist realized there wasn't actually an SOP at all. Within 10 minutes, they had one. And a recurring problem was permanently solved.

That's the throughline of the episode: you can have all the systems in the world, but if your people aren't following them, the systems are worthless. And more often than not, when the team isn't following through, it's not because they don't care, it's because nobody ever wrote it down, assigned it, or made it undeniable.

Communication. Expectation. Boundaries. The light side triad applies to every relationship in the practice.

For more info or to join their live CE course, go to www.wellnessindentistry.com

Join Carabelli Club here and save $600 on your yearly membership: https://hubs.la/Q03QQGmD0

If you'd like to chat with Martin about disability insurance, you can click here to find a time on his calendar. He's a licensed agent and happy to connect with you.

Get Kyle's founder's discount for Pearl AI by scheduling a demo here: https://discover.hellopearl.com/referral/kyle-stanley/

Your team isn't trying to ruin your day. So why does it feel that way?

In this episode, Dr. Kyle Stanley and Dr. Martin Mendelson dig into the frustration that comes with leading a dental practice — and why most of it has more to do with how we're wired than how bad our team is. Martin took a Wharton course on the neuroscience of leadership to answer one central question: why does the team think the sky's green when you think it's blue?

The answer isn't that your team is incompetent. It's that you're operating with far more blue circles around your red circle — more responsibilities, more stakes, more context — and what feels obvious to you genuinely isn't to them. That gap isn't fixed by frustration. It's fixed by documentation, workflows, and communication that actually closes it.

Kyle gets personal: his daughter was mid-tantrum, hitting and trying to get past him, and he had one clear thought — my job right now is to stay calm. The same skill that makes you a better parent makes you a better leader. You can choose your response in the gap between stimulus and reaction. That's not soft psychology — it's a trainable skill with neuroscience behind it.

The shift isn't from judgment to tolerance. It's from judgment to curiosity. I wonder why this is happening opens a door that damn it, here we go again slams shut.

For more info or to join their live CE course, go to www.wellnessindentistry.com

Join Carabelli Club here and save $600 on your yearly membership: https://hubs.la/Q03QQGmD0

If you'd like to chat with Martin about disability insurance, you can click here to find a time on his calendar. He's a licensed agent and happy to connect with you.

Get Kyle's founder's discount for Pearl AI by scheduling a demo here: https://discover.hellopearl.com/referral/kyle-stanley/

The Atlantic just ran a headline calling children's orthodontic expansion "wrenching bones apart." Kyle and Martin have some thoughts.

In this episode, Dr. Kyle Stanley and Dr. Martin Mendelson dig into one of dentistry's most polarizing debates: is early palatal expansion in children actually justified? The American Academy of Orthodontics says the research isn't there. Kyle says the absence of a 40-year longitudinal study doesn't mean the treatment doesn't make sense — and he's done the treatment himself, on his own kids.

Here's Kyle's framing: even if expansion does nothing beyond preventing crowding and creating a broad, functional smile, you haven't hurt anyone. The worst-case scenario is a better-looking bite. That's a very different calculus than the Atlantic's headline implies.

Martin draws the comparison to oral-systemic health — a field that spent years being dismissed for lacking definitive research before becoming a standard of care. Paradigm shifts in dentistry move slowly. That doesn't mean early movers are wrong.

Both hosts agree on one thing: informed consent is everything. The research is still developing, the conversation is evolving, and patients deserve to know that — not a polished sales pitch. Kyle also makes a case for something often overlooked: getting kids into the dental chair early builds the kind of familiarity that prevents dental phobia for a lifetime.

This isn't a simple debate. But "no research yet" has never meant "no."

For more info or to join their live CE course, go to www.wellnessindentistry.com

Join Carabelli Club here and save $600 on your yearly membership: https://hubs.la/Q03QQGmD0

If you'd like to chat with Martin about disability insurance, you can click here to find a time on his calendar. He's a licensed agent and happy to connect with you.

Get Kyle's founder's discount for Pearl AI by scheduling a demo here: https://discover.hellopearl.com/referral/kyle-stanley/