Episodes
Most dentists are using AI without knowing whether it is actually improving their practice or creating more busy work. Gary Bird breaks down six signs that your AI is working, from capturing missed calls and increasing new patients to improving collections, freeing up time, reducing micromanagement, and helping you make better decisions.
Nearly 600% marketing ROI helped Dr. Mike Scruggs grow his dental startup from roughly 30–40 new patients a month to nearly 90 at its peak. In this episode, Gary Bird and Dr. Mike Scruggs breaks down the scheduling, clinical efficiency, team alignment, treatment communication, and patient-access systems that helped turn marketing into real new patient growth. You’ll learn how to shorten wait times, protect new-patient blocks, fill schedule openings, expand hours, and keep your practice flexible as demand increases.
Too many layers of management can quietly disconnect you from your patients and kill practice growth. Gary Bird breaks down how having four layers between leadership and the client created confusion, why removing just one layer made problems dramatically clearer, and why dentists should build working systems before adding more management.
Most dentists focus on clinical excellence while overlooking the patient experience, which is quietly costing them new patients and treatment acceptance. In this episode, Gary Bird shares 10 practical ways to build a practice patients genuinely love, including reducing the 28-day wait, improving front desk performance, using patient financing to increase treatment acceptance by 30%, and earning more Google reviews. Drawing from the systems SMC has implemented across more than 1,195 dental practices, Gary explains how these simple operational changes drive better dental marketing results, stronger practice management, and sustainable new-patient growth for fee-for-service, PPO, startup, and DSO practices.
Most dentists aren’t losing money because they spend too little on marketing. They’re losing money because they’re paying for websites, SEO, and ads instead of buying predictable new patient growth. In this episode, Gary Bird breaks down the math behind successful dental marketing, including the marketing budget percentages that drive growth, why 45–55 qualified leads can become 30 new patients, and how phone conversion, show rate, and referrals determine your real ROI. You’ll also learn why the cheapest marketing option usually becomes the most expensive mistake.
Most dentists assume an AI receptionist is either working or not working. The reality is that not all AI platforms perform the same. In this episode of Dental Marketing Goat, Gary Bird sits down with Dr. Jancy Parkerson to break down why they replaced their original AI receptionist and what happened next. You’ll learn how one system converted around 40% of missed new-patient calls while the replacement converted 74%, resulting in 17 scheduled new patients from 23 calls in a single month.
