🎯 What happens when unlimited opportunity meets limited capacity? Dr. Allison House shares her $100K failure—and why she'd do it again.

As 2025 wraps up, we're sitting in our new studio having the conversation every dental professional needs before stepping into the new year. This isn't your typical goal-setting episode. It's a raw, honest look at what it actually takes to live authentically in an era where AI, new technology, and endless opportunities are creating both unprecedented possibility and overwhelming paralysis.

"I don't know what to do with limited capacity, limited bandwidth, and seemingly unlimited opportunity," Shawn admits. "The disparity between the two is bigger than I've seen ever in my life." If you're a dentist scrolling through Facebook groups seeing colleagues doing all-on-fours, veneers, and every new procedure—while wondering if you're falling behind—you're not alone. Dr. House responds with hard-won wisdom: "I can't do all of it. And that's okay."

Dr. Allison House opens up about her toughest year yet—speaking out against an ethical violation and finding herself without the support she expected from colleagues she'd helped for years. Her response? "That doesn't mean you stop being who you are." This is what authentic dental practice leadership looks like when the cost is high and the applause is silent. For anyone who's ever taken a principled stand in dentistry and felt isolated, this moment will resonate deeply.

We also dive into the story Allison rarely tells: spending $100,000 on a CEREC machine in 2004 that became an "abject failure" within six months. But here's what most people miss—that failure transformed how she understood crown preparation, patient communication, and clinical excellence. "I all of a sudden had to see my preps up close," she recalls. "I could see if something wasn't smooth." Sometimes the wrong decision is exactly the right teacher.

If you're feeling the weight of FOMO, drowning in opportunities you can't possibly pursue, or wondering whether to take that risk you've been avoiding—this episode is your permission slip to move forward imperfectly and discover who you really are in the process. Whether you're navigating dental burnout, questioning your practice model, or simply trying to find fulfillment as a dentist in an overwhelming landscape, this conversation offers both wisdom and encouragement.

✨ KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• The flywheel principle: "Even if I pick the wrong thing, it's still moving me forward." Getting momentum started takes enormous effort, but once moving, it builds on itself. Stop waiting for the perfect decision.

• Fear is just a shadow: Most of what stops us isn't real—it just seems big and loud. Name your greatest fear and examine it. Often, it's smaller than it appears.

• Failure reveals identity: "If everything you do is something you knew for sure you could do, you never get to see who you really are." Stretching beyond certainty is where self-discovery lives.

• Ethical courage costs—stay you anyway: When Allison spoke out and no one came to help, she learned that integrity isn't about reciprocation. Keep being who you are regardless of support.

• Memory is a choice: Every memory you revisit, you strengthen. Choose to reinforce the wins and the wisdom, not just the wounds.

🕐 Episode Highlights:

Year-end reflection framework: 8:04

The $100K CEREC failure story: 17:30

Allison's ethical stand moment: 22:50

"Fear is just a shadow" insight: 25:15

Final encouragement for 2026: 27:17

👨‍⚕️ ABOUT THE HOSTS:

Dr. Allison House is a practicing dentist with over 25 years of clinical experience, known for her ethical leadership and commitment to authentic practice. She's served in organizational leadership...

What happens when a dentist who started with pegboards faces down stage four cancer and emerges with the wisdom of 44 years in practice?

In this deeply moving episode, Dr. Allison House and Shawn Zajas sit down with Dr. Michael Thompson, a pioneering Arizona dentist whose career spans from the pre-internet era to today's AI-driven landscape. This isn't just another career retrospective—it's a masterclass in building authentic dental practice while maintaining unwavering integrity.

Dr. Thompson opens up about the pivotal moments that shaped his authentic leadership journey: from that first meeting with Dr. House at Bucky's Barbecue 25 years ago, to the gut-wrenching decision to replace 50+ failed crowns at his own expense, to facing his mortality with stage four lymphoma and choosing to dedicate his "bonus years" to mentoring the next generation at A.T. Still University.

The conversation tackles the profession's greatest challenges with refreshing honesty. When did the pressure to produce 100 new patients a month become the industry standard? How do you maintain ethical practice when overhead keeps climbing? What's the real cost of losing human connection in an increasingly automated healthcare system?

Dr. Thompson shares his three-part formula for daily success—feeling well-compensated spiritually, professionally, and financially—and why compromising any one dimension leads to burnout. He reveals how his father's dinner table lessons about entrepreneurship shaped his practice philosophy, why he believes "you're only as ethical as you can afford to be," and what it really takes to build 30-year patient relationships in an era of corporate consolidation.

But perhaps most powerful is his cancer journey: diagnosed at 67 while in the prime of his practice, facing refractory stage four B-cell lymphoma, and ultimately experiencing what he calls "a story too good to be true" through CAR-T immunotherapy. His reflection on looking back without regrets—"I don't regret the things I did, I regret the things I didn't do"—offers profound wisdom for practitioners at every career stage.

This episode is essential listening for any dental professional wrestling with authentic practice in today's commoditized healthcare landscape, seeking to understand how to maintain integrity when business pressures mount, or simply wanting to hear what sustainable success looks like over a four-decade career.

Subscribe to the podcast on APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-authentic-dentist/id1487586274

Or SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qapfaNRkcIlCjgIsftb60?si=d02c74cf4f924897

In this groundbreaking first in-studio episode of The Authentic Dentist Podcast, Dr. Allison House and Shawn Zajas sit down with Adrian Lefler, founder of My Social Practice, to unpack the seismic shifts reshaping dental marketing and practice management.

Adrian's journey into dentistry began unconventionally—emerging from bankruptcy in 2009, he discovered how to get businesses on the front page of Google and partnered with a colleague who had access to 3,500 dental practice contacts. What started as survival became a 15-year deep dive into understanding the unique challenges dentists face in marketing their practices.

The conversation reveals why dentists make ideal clients: they're intelligent, ethical, pay their bills on time, and navigate extraordinary complexity managing both clinical excellence and business operations. Yet this same complexity creates vulnerability to marketing companies that don't understand the nuances of local, relationship-based dental practices versus national brand strategies.

Adrian delivers immediately actionable insights, emphasizing that Google Reviews remain the most critical marketing investment. With three out of four potential patients checking reviews before making decisions, a robust Google Review profile becomes the filtering system for all other marketing efforts—making or breaking even six-figure advertising campaigns.

The discussion takes a fascinating turn into AI's disruption of traditional search engine optimization. As Google integrates AI overviews at the top of search results, conventional advertising models are collapsing. Ad costs have doubled or tripled as fewer people scroll past AI-generated answers to click on paid advertisements. Adrian explains how AI doesn't just match keywords—it analyzes context, sentiment, and nuance in longer conversational search queries, fundamentally changing how dental practices must approach content creation.

Perhaps most provocative is the revelation about practice management system data ownership. While doctors legally own their patient data, PMS companies charge multiple third-party vendors for API access to that same information—costs ultimately passed to dentists. Adrian proposes a revolutionary solution: an open-source PMS where dentists receive payment when vendors access their data, potentially reducing costs by hundreds of dollars monthly while maintaining superior functionality.

The conversation doesn't shy away from emerging challenges: cloud-based systems that hold data hostage when contracts end, the rapid proliferation of AI products promising to revolutionize everything from scheduling to note-taking, and the consolidation wave that will inevitably follow as successful solutions absorb competitors.

Adrian's vision for dentistry's future includes AI receptionists that never tire, conversational interfaces replacing traditional search, and the potential for collaborative dental centers—hospital-like facilities where practitioners share expensive technology like CBCT machines, CEREC equipment, and specialists under one roof, dramatically reducing individual overhead while elevating care quality.

This episode challenges dentists to think differently about marketing, data ownership, and practice structure. It's a masterclass in understanding not just what's changing, but why it matters and how to position yourself for success in an AI-transformed landscape.

Subscribe to the podcast on APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-authentic-dentist/id1487586274

Or SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qapfaNRkcIlCjgIsftb60?si=d02c74cf4f924897