Why Goal-Driven Dental Practices Win (Especially When the Year Gets Messy)

2026, a new year. Fresh calendar. A blank production report that hasn’t beaten you up yet.

Most dentists tell themselves, “This year, we’re going to grow.” Fewer can answer two simple questions:

• Grow by how much?
• And… why does that number actually matter?

In a recent Dental Unfiltered episode, Matt Brown and Dr. Andrew Vallo spent half an hour unpacking something a lot of practices gloss over: how serious, structured goal-setting is the difference between “coasting” and building a top-tier, multi-location group.

The conversation wasn’t fluffy theory. It was gritty: missed days from hurricanes, slow summers, end-of-year fatigue, last-minute Invisalign pushes, and the emotional weight of deciding whether you’re the kind of owner who quits at 80%… or claws your way to 100%.

Let’s pull out the big lessons and turn that into a playbook you can actually use to grow your dental practice this year.

Motivation Is the Spark. Consistency Is the Engine.

You probably know the pattern already.

January hits. You feel that little internal flame. New Year’s resolutions. New patient goals. “We’re going to grow 20% this year.” For a few weeks, you and your team are giving 110%. Morning huddles feel sharp. Schedules look tight. Everyone’s “all in.”

Then life happens:

• A key team member goes on leave.
• Spring gets busy at home.
• You stop checking your KPIs every week.
• The “goal” becomes more of a vague wish.

Matt and Andrew made a simple point that’s easy to ignore: motivation is cyclical, so your systems can’t be.

If your goals rely on you “feeling fired up,” you’re already in trouble. The question isn’t, “How do I stay excited all year?” It’s, “What rhythms and constraints do I build so progress keeps happening even when I’m tired?”

That’s where the structure of your goals matters.

Set Goals That Actually Move the Needle

Dr. Vallo talked about growth targets for individual offices and the group as a whole. His approach is a helpful framework:

• Realistic, but not timid.
  He’s not telling each office, “We’re going to double revenue this year.” For a mature practice, that’s usually fantasy. But 15–20% growth? That’s aggressive and achievable if you treat it seriously.
• Bigger than inflation.
  Saying “We’ll do 3–5% more than last year” is often just keeping pace with inflation and fee changes. That doesn’t actually change your life, your team’s opportunities, or the value of the practice.
• Time-bound and specific.
  “We want to grow Invisalign this year” is vague.
  “We’re going to maintain Diamond Pro status over this six-month window” is crisp. Same with: “We’ll add $4.3M in collections this year across the group.”

Here’s the part most owners skip: why does this goal matter?

“Hit $2M in collections” doesn’t mean anything by itself. But:

• “Hit $2M so I can comfortably bring on an associate and drop a clinical day.”
• “Maintain Diamond Pro so we keep our lab discount and pass real savings to patients.”
• “Grow implants 25% so we can invest in a second CBCT and raise the ceiling on complex care.”

Those are goals with teeth. Your “why” is what you lean on in November when you’re tired, short-staffed, and Christmas music is everywhere.

The Two Big Failure Zones: Never Starting and Quitting Late

Matt framed goal failure in a way that’s brutally accurate.

There are two main choke points:

1. You never actually commit.
   You think about improving your hygiene reactivation, or finally pushing clear aligners, or opening a second location… but you keep everything in the “someday” bucket. No number. No date. No plan. No risk. And no reward.
2. You quit between 60–100%.
   This is the dangerous one. You’re in motion. You’ve made progress. Then it gets hard, inconvenient, or uncomfortable.
   • The schedule feels light.
   • Phone calls to unscheduled patients feel awkward.
   • The advertisement you ran didn’t work the first time.
   • You’re one case status away from a tier, but the team is fried.

So you let up. You tell yourself, “We almost hit it. Given everything that happened, that’s good enough.”

The problem? That becomes a habit. And once your brain gets used to bailing at 80%, it starts doing it everywhere: health, leadership, expansion, clinical mastery.

Matt talked about this as “that 60–100% window” where most people fail. The solution isn’t some motivational poster. It’s a decision: I’m not going to be the person who always backs off at the finish line.

In a practice, that shows up as:

• One more day of calls to benefits-remaining patients.
• One more Invisalign promo push instead of “we’ll try again next year.”
• One more creative solution, even when the calendar is stacked against you.

Measurement: If You Don’t Know the Score, You’re Not Really Playing

A huge part of their conversation was about scoreboards.

Some dentists genuinely don’t want to see how they stack up. Matt mentioned groups who loudly claim to be “the best” while comparable practices down the road are doing four times their numbers. The data is there. They just don’t want to look at it.

On the other side, you have owners like Andrew who want to see the leaderboard:

• Where are we in Invisalign status?
• How many cases do we need this period?
• Where are we on annual collections versus goal?
• What’s our average monthly production, and what do we need to average in the final stretch?

That mindset shift matters:

“I believe knowledge is power and what you measure improves.”

You don’t need a fancy BI tool to start. You do need a visible scoreboard:

• Annual collections vs goal
• Monthly production vs target
• Invisalign or clear aligner starts
• Big-ticket case acceptance
• Hygiene reactivation / unscheduled treatment

If your numbers live in your practice management software but never make it to a whiteboard, dashboard, or huddle sheet… your goal is just a number in your head.

Case Study: Chasing Invisalign Status Through Hurricanes and Holidays

One of the most instructive parts of the episode was Andrew’s Invisalign story.

• His group hit Diamond Pro in the first half of 2024.
• That made them the top Invisalign provider in the entire Tampa Bay area, including orthodontists.
• As soon as they hit it, the counter reset. Day one of the next six-month period: back to zero.

Now the goal was: maintain Diamond Pro again.

Sounds straightforward—until reality enters:

• July and August: historically slow months.
• One startup GP office in the mix, still ramping.
• Fall Invisalign day: sandwiched between two major hurricanes.
• The office closed multiple days over a three-week stretch.

They still did well—closing around 38–40 cases on that Invisalign day—but it didn’t match the previous big event. And as the year marched toward the holidays, they were behind pace.

Here’s where goal-driven thinking showed up:

1. They never lost sight of the number.
   Andrew always knew how many cases they needed and how much time was left. There was no hand-waving, just math.
2. They layered on intentional pushes.
   • Invisalign party
   • Black Friday sale
   • Aggressive social ads
   • Team alignment and talking points
3. They used a “final push” lever.
   In the final days, Andrew told his team: for three days, you can offer the lowest Invisalign fee they’d ever given—$2,995. Follow up with anyone you think is a candidate. One day later, they’d closed the seven cases they needed.

That doesn’t happen by luck. It happens because:

• The goal is clear.
• The status is tracked.
• The team knows the “why.”
• Leadership is willing to flex creatively in the last stretch.

When Life Hits Your Schedule: Resilience Over Excuses

The Invisalign status wasn’t the only goal under pressure.

The group also had a collections goal: grow from about $4.7M the previous year to roughly $9M across four (then six) offices.

Then: the worst hurricane season the area had seen in years. Offices closed for a full week once, and part of another week. That’s almost half a month of production gone.

Most owners would quietly assume: “Well, there goes that goal.”

Instead, Andrew asked a different question:

“How do we make up the lost production?”

That’s the mindset shift.

Concrete moves included:

• Mining unscheduled treatment, especially patients with unused insurance benefits.
• Running strong Black Friday offers, especially for implants.
• Directly texting hundreds of past implant consults with a time-sensitive offer if they scheduled and paid a deposit by a certain date.
• Looking at the remaining open days across six offices and asking, “What can we do to maximize collections on these exact days?”

Will they hit exactly $9M? Maybe, maybe not. But the point is this: the goal stayed the goal. The plan flexed; the standard didn’t melt.

And that’s a subtle but crucial leadership signal to your team.

Your Team Needs a Story, Not Just a Number

You can’t drag a practice to a big goal by yourself.

Andrew’s team didn’t hustle for Invisalign purely out of charity. They had:

• Clear incentives: more aligner cases meant more bonus potential.
• Emotional pride: being the #1 Invisalign provider in Tampa is genuinely cool.
• Practical patient benefit: better lab discounts let them offer better pricing without destroying margins.

On top of that, there’s the cultural story:

“We’re the kind of office that finishes. We don’t coast into the holidays. We sprint through the tape.”

That matters in December when everyone has a “Friday feeling” for two straight weeks and wants to ease up. The owner’s job is to reframe:

“This is our last chance to hit the goals we’ve worked toward all year. Let’s press harder in this final week so we can relax with real pride.”

You’re not just setting goals for your P&L. You’re shaping your team’s professional identity.

How to Build a Goal System for Your Dental Practice This Year

Let’s turn all this into something you can actually implement.

Here’s a simple, practical framework:

1. Choose 3–5 core goals.
   Examples:
   • Total collections
   • New patient count
   • Clear aligner starts
   • Implant starts
   • Big project (e.g., open a second location, add sedation, launch a membership plan)
2. Write down the “why” for each goal.
   Tie it to real life: time off, associate hire, tech investment, team bonuses, patient access.
3. Make each goal time-bound.
   Yearly, quarterly, or six-month windows (like Invisalign status).
4. Break goals into monthly and weekly targets.
   “We need $9M this year” becomes, “We need about $750K/month” which becomes, “We’re aiming for $180–200K/week across all locations.”
5. Build a visible scoreboard.
   Whiteboard, TV dashboard, or a simple shared Google Sheet. The key is that it’s seen and talked about.
6. Review consistently.
   • Weekly leadership review of KPIs and gaps
   • Short mention in team huddles: “Here’s where we are; here’s what matters this week.”
7. Plan your “fourth-quarter moves” now.
   Don’t wait until November to invent Black Friday offers, benefits-remaining campaigns, or Invisalign days. Put them on the calendar and design them to be your final sprint.
8. Decide in advance: you won’t lower the bar.
   If you miss, use that frustration as fuel for the next cycle—not as an excuse to stop setting bold goals.

Key Takeaways: Turning Goals Into Growth

• Goals must be specific, time-bound, and meaningful. “Grow” isn’t a goal. “Increase collections 18% so we can add an associate and reduce doctor days” is.
• Motivation is unreliable; systems aren’t. Build rhythms—scoreboards, reviews, promos—so progress continues even when you’re tired or distracted.
• Most failure happens at two points: never starting and quitting near the finish. Decide that you’re not going to be the owner who lives at 80% forever.
• What you measure improves. If you don’t know your Invisalign case count, your collections pace, or your unscheduled treatment numbers, you’re guessing, not leading.
• Creative “final pushes” can change the whole year. Smart discounts, benefits-remaining campaigns, and focused reactivation work in the last few weeks can be the difference between missing and hitting a big goal.
• Your team needs a narrative, not just a target. Tie goals to pride, patient impact, and shared wins. Make “we finish strong” part of your culture.
• Set bold goals even when you miss some. Falling just short of $9M while swinging hard is far better than hitting $7M on autopilot and calling that a win.

You don’t remember the years where everything was easy and you coasted. You remember the seasons where hurricanes hit, schedules got chopped up, your back was against the wall… and you still found a way to push, track, adjust, and finish with something you’re genuinely proud of.

Going into 2026, build your dental practice like you actually expect to be in that top 10% that do finish the race.

Listen to the Original Apple Podcast HERE.

Listen on Spotify HERE.

View the Episode on YouTube HERE.