What if building genuine trust and boldness in how you connect with your patients is the main key to growing your dental practice? In this episode of The Dental Economist Show, host Mike Huffaker sits down with Fred Joyal, Co-Founder of 1-800-Dentists and author of “Superbold”, to explore why patient anxiety could be your biggest opportunity, how to build a team culture that sells dentistry naturally and the counterintuitive strategies DSOs are getting right and wrong. 

Tune in for decades of proven insights on creating remarkable patient experiences and the bold mindset shifts that separate thriving practices from the rest.

Fred reveals that people experience as much anxiety about finding and choosing a dentist as they do about the actual visit itself. This insight matters because practitioners often focus solely on clinical excellence while overlooking the emotional barrier preventing patients from booking appointments in the first place. So, the key, as Fred suggests, is to train your entire team (especially front-desk staff) to be a "sympathetic voice" that reassures patients they're making the right choice, just as 1-800 Dentists did with live operators. When a patient feels genuinely cared for during their first contact, case acceptance naturally increases because they've already decided to trust you before sitting in the chair. By solving the "finding a dentist" problem, you unlock exponential growth in new patient acquisition and treatment acceptance.

Fred emphasizes that trustworthiness and the patient's perception of dentistry's value are the two pillars of practice success - not information, blogs, or extensive patient education. This matters because many practitioners default to over-educating patients, believing that more information equals better case acceptance, when the opposite is often true. The solution is to stop worrying about being the most knowledgeable and start focusing on being the most trustworthy - show genuine care, consistency, and alignment between what you say and do. 

Fred suggests that boldness is a learnable skill, not an innate trait, and it builds exactly like a physical muscle - through progressive, daily discomfort that stays within your tolerance level. This insight matters because many practitioners feel stuck by self-doubt or fear of rejection, whether it's asking for referrals, networking or even having difficult conversations with team members. Fred's tiered approach starts simple: smile at five people daily, then talk to five strangers daily, then ask deeper questions in conversations. A real-world application for a practice owner is to deliberately do one uncomfortable thing each day related to business growth. When you build this muscle consistently, the bigger opportunities that require boldness become manageable because you've already trained your nervous system to handle discomfort.

Fred's core philosophy is that trying and failing feels infinitely better than not trying at all, because regret, the classic "I should have done that", is the real failure that compounds over time. This matters because most practitioners have brilliant ideas for practice growth, but never execute them due to fear of failure or perfectionism. The challenge is that inaction feels safer in the moment but creates deep regret later, whereas bold attempts, even failed ones, provide information and keep you moving forward. The practical tool is to ask yourself before making a decision: "Which will I regret more - trying and failing, or never trying?" This framework transforms hesitation into action and ensures you're building a practice and career by your design, not by default.