Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Lior Tamir, a practicing dentist and entrepreneur who spent more than a decade in marketing technology — building platforms that turned data into action for global consumer brands — before returning to dentistry and finding a fragmented, outdated ecosystem with almost no real-time clarity. He grew his de novo practice, Bloom Dental Group, to $5M in its first seven years and used it as the testing ground for The Dental App, a cloud-based platform combining practice management, patient relationships, and real-time analytics into a single AI-powered system. The conversation centers on a provocative claim: the traditional practice management system is no longer enough. Built for an era when front desk teams manually handled everything, today's PMS simply stores data while practices juggle thousands of patients, hundreds of unscheduled treatment plans, and endless overdue recall — forcing dentists to bolt on third-party tools just to drive action. Lior argues that dentistry is only now entering the era that sales and marketing entered years ago with CRM and automation, and that data without action is worthless. His central point: most diagnosed dentistry never gets done, and while the profession obsesses over marketing, SEO, and Google reviews, millions of dollars in already-diagnosed treatment sits idle in the database. From there, Lior and Howard explore AI agents as a genuine digital workforce — software that can identify patients with outstanding treatment, reach out automatically, answer questions, book appointments, fill schedule holes, reactivate overdue patients, and collect balances at a scale no human team could match. His view is that AI won't replace staff but create "super staff," turning a treatment coordinator managing 100 cases into one managing 1,000, while freeing teams to focus on relationship building, problem solving, and patient experience. The episode closes on the rise of the dentist CEO and where the profession heads over the next decade: collapsing software categories, real-time business intelligence as standard, and winners determined less by clinical technique than by an understanding of business, hospitality, and a willingness to adopt change.   Episode #1737 : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran, Howard sits down with Dr. Lior Tamir — practicing dentist, entrepreneur, and founder of The Dental App — who grew his de novo practice, Bloom Dental Group, to $5M in seven years and used it as the proving ground for a new kind of platform. His argument: the PMS was built for an era that's gone. Meanwhile, millions of dollars in diagnosed treatment sit unscheduled in practice databases while everyone obsesses over new patients and Google reviews. The fortune is in the follow-up — and AI agents can finally do it at scale. 🎧 A sharp look at AI, systems, and the rise of the dentist CEO. #DentistryUncensored #DentalAI #PracticeManagement #DentalTechnology #TheDentalApp #DentalBusiness

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Jim Glidewell — the man he calls his idol, mentor, and the GOAT of crown and bridge — for a conversation nearly 1,800 episodes in the making. Jim traces his improbable path from a one-room Kentucky schoolhouse with a coal stove and no electricity, to returning from Vietnam, selling insurance at 21, and stumbling into dental technology after visiting a friend at his lab bench. He explains the philosophy that shaped everything since: like Henry Ford, Sam Walton, and Southwest Airlines, the winner isn't whoever charges the most, it's whoever delivers the most value for the dollar — and why he's always built for the working man rather than the "Neiman Marcus of dentistry." From there the conversation covers an enormous amount of ground on technology and the trade, including AI trained on 45 million archived crown designs that can match a crown shape in 8 to 10 seconds, the "Lego partial" that prints frame, teeth, and tissue simultaneously for a four-hour turnaround, and the surprisingly brutal engineering behind diamond-coated burs for milling sintered zirconia. Jim predicts chairside-printed dentures within three to five years and the decline of metal partials, reflects on how introducing zirconia in 2007 ended the gold and PFM markets overnight, and notes an industry that has consolidated from 17,000 labs down to just over 4,000. The back half turns candid and personal. Jim weighs in on open versus closed systems, why scanner prices are collapsing, and what actually keeps customers loyal — not the hardware, but someone picking up the phone on the first ring. He offers blunt advice to indebted young dentists about whether dentistry was ever the right fit, predicts DSO penetration could reach 70%, and shares his distaste for exit-strategy thinking and EBITDA-driven ownership, noting that most dentists he meets who sold to private equity wish they hadn't. He also talks about his management philosophy of staying out of employees' way, the AI avatars now handling customer calls, his son leaving college to learn in-house, and his near-death experience with COVID, when he was intubated at 32 pounds down with less than a 10% chance of survival. Asked why he's still first in the door at 81, his answer is simple: this isn't a business he's building to sell. His exit strategy is death. For more information on Glidewell TV: https://glidewelldental.com/company/tv    Episode #1736 : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran, Howard sits down with his longtime idol and mentor — Jim Glidewell, founder of Glidewell Dental and, in Howard's words, "the GOAT" of crown and bridge. From a one-room Kentucky schoolhouse with no electricity, to the largest private employer in Orange County with a million square feet of space. From selling insurance at 21 to building an empire on a simple belief: the winner is whoever delivers the most value for the lowest price. 🎧 A candid, wide-ranging conversation on AI, dentures, DSOs, private equity, and why at 81 he still shows up at 7:15 every morning. #DentistryUncensored #GlidewellDental #DentalLab #DigitalDentistry #DentalIndustry #Zirconia

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. Arthur Volker, a graduate of the Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery who went on to complete a Master's degree in Prosthodontics and New Technologies from the University of Siena. In addition to his private practice in Sunnyside, New York, Dr. Volker owns DigiDent Laboratory — giving him a valuable dual perspective from both the operatory and the lab bench. He has published multiple articles and textbook chapters and lectures nationally and internationally on cosmetic dentistry, minimally invasive dentistry, dental materials, and digital dentistry. The conversation centers on one of the most underrated fundamentals in clinical dentistry: isolation. Dr. Volker walks through practical isolation tactics and the specific advantages of the Isolite system, explaining how proper isolation affects everything downstream — bonding, material performance, patient comfort, and long-term restorative success. From there, he and Howard range across restorative, esthetic, and digital topics, drawing on Dr. Volker's expertise in materials science and his hands-on experience running a digital dental laboratory.   Episode #1735 : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran, Howard sits down with Dr. Arthur Volker — Columbia-trained clinician, owner of DigiDent Laboratory, and an internationally recognized lecturer on cosmetic, minimally invasive, and digital dentistry. From isolation tactics and the real advantages of Isolite, to dental materials and digital workflows, Dr. Volker brings a rare combination of clinical depth and lab-side perspective to the conversation. 🎧 A practical, technique-driven episode for any dentist who wants better isolation, better materials decisions, and better restorative outcomes. #DentistryUncensored #DigitalDentistry #MinimallyInvasive #CosmeticDentistry #DentalMaterials #Isolation

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Dr. George Hariri, entrepreneur, educator, and co-founder of Shared Practices — one of dentistry's leading coaching and consulting organizations. After acquiring and scaling his own practices, George built a reputation for a candid, systems-driven approach to ownership and a willingness to challenge the conventional wisdom that leaves too many dentists overworked and underpaid. The conversation arrives at a milestone moment: the Shared Practices Podcast turns ten this year, and George reflects on what has changed across a decade of coaching aspiring and current practice owners, the growth of the coaching program, and the release of his books Dental Moneyball and a new title aimed at pre-owners. At the heart of the discussion is a claim George is happy to argue: the industry insists 10%+ same-store growth is impossible, and he believes that's simply wrong — pointing to clients posting 37 to 39% growth year after year. He walks through the four levers behind that performance — patient retention, case acceptance, consistency in the team, and efficiency — and how that framework came together. Along the way, George shares how Howard's own work in practice management shaped his thinking about growth, and makes the case for building a practice that's both genuinely profitable and sustainable, without sacrificing your life to get there.   Episode #1734 : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran, Howard sits down with Dr. George Hariri — entrepreneur, educator, and co-founder of Shared Practices — as the Shared Practices Podcast celebrates 10 years. The industry says 10%+ same-store growth is impossible. George flatly disagrees — and his clients are posting 37–39% growth year after year. He breaks down the four levers behind it: patient retention, case acceptance, team consistency, and efficiency. 🎧 A candid, systems-driven conversation on growth, burnout, and building a practice that doesn't cost you your life. #DentistryUncensored #SharedPractices #PracticeGrowth #DentalBusiness #PracticeOwnership #DentalCoaching

In this episode, Howard Farran sits down with Anthony "Tony" Gedge, who has spent 24 years in dentistry focused on the one thing most systems overlook: trust. His route into the profession was anything but conventional — he moved from running nightclubs into dentistry, where he built a pain-free movement around anxious patients and the fear of the injection, founded the Pain-Free Dentistry Institute, and co-founded Dental Mavericks, a charity that has now helped more than 180,000 children. He also took John Lennon's tooth and Elvis Presley's crown on tour to raise mouth cancer awareness — a campaign with fresh urgency given that UK deaths have climbed from roughly seven a day when he started to closer to ten today, with cases up nearly 50% over the past decade. The conversation then turns to Tony's current work with Dental Group Signal, an evidence-led benchmarking platform studying how dental groups actually show up to patients, clinicians, investors, and the wider market. He walks through the twelve public signals the platform measures — from leadership and recruitment to patient trust, telephone access, review response, pricing visibility, digital journey, brand coherence, governance, and seller and investor signals — and shares findings from the May 2026 US DSO CEO Visibility benchmark, where only one of twenty leaders scored as a meaningful visibility leader and fifteen were rated underdeveloped. Howard and Tony explore what the US DSO market can learn from public-evidence benchmarking, why CEO and recruitment visibility have become commercial signals rather than marketing activity, and the crucial difference between simply being a large dental group and being a trusted, visible, coherent one.   Episode #1733 : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran, Howard sits down with Anthony "Tony" Gedge — a genuine dental maverick whose path ran from nightclubs to needles to benchmarking the entire industry. Over 24 years, Tony founded the Pain-Free Dentistry Institute, co-founded Dental Mavericks (which has helped 180,000+ children), toured John Lennon's tooth and Elvis Presley's crown to raise mouth cancer awareness, and now leads Dental Group Signal, measuring the public trust signals behind dental group growth. 🎧 A wild, thought-provoking conversation about fear, trust, and why dentistry should measure trust as seriously as it measures EBITDA. #DentistryUncensored #PainFreeDentistry #DentalMavericks #DSO #MouthCancerAwareness #DentalLeadership