Scott Hansen on Orthopreneurs: What orthodontists can learn from plumbers and HVAC techs
Podcast: The Orthopreneurs Podcast with Dr. Glenn Krieger · Episode: "How to Run Your Practice for Maximum Efficiency (and Profit!) w/ Scott Hansen" · Aired: April 30, 2024
This Orthopreneurs episode opens on a comparison most orthodontists will resist for about ten minutes before they start agreeing with it: the practice you run has more in common with a plumber's business than you'd like to admit.
Both sell high-trust services. Both ask strangers to commit thousands of dollars on the basis of relatively little information. One of those industries has mostly figured out the operational side of that ask. The other one, in Scott Hansen's experience, is still leaving voicemails to rot.
Dr. Glenn Krieger gives Scott the room to make the case. By the back half of the conversation, the framing has shifted from comparison to playbook.
A few stretches worth your attention:
- Scott's career path. He came up around an orthodontic practice and decided not to become an orthodontist. The reasoning behind that call, and what it freed him up to build instead, is one of the more interesting threads in the early part of the episode.
- The numbers he watches. Mid-episode, Scott names the operational metrics he actually tracks when he's evaluating whether a practice is healthy or quietly bleeding. They aren't all the obvious ones.
- Where AI fits, today. Toward the end, Scott talks about AI in business operations in a way that's grounded in what's working this quarter rather than what might work in five years.
The line from the show notes that captures the whole episode:
"The brightest smile in the room won't sell itself if no one answers the phone."
The forty-minute version goes deeper than the one-liner suggests.
Listen now: Buzzsprout episode page · Apple Podcasts · Spotify