What happens when a mechanical engineer spends 10 years in high tech, quits cold turkey in 2005 with no great plan, builds a small consulting firm with his grad school roommate, pivots to start a dental marketing agency in 2009, focuses exclusively on dentistry by 2011, works with a general dentist who built a traditional corporate DSO from 2005-2015, watches that doctor exit and get bombarded by other doctors asking him how to build a group, becomes partners with that doctor's consulting company in 2018, spends years learning the DSO model inside and out, and comes to a profound realization: the DSO model is fundamentally broken—like a taxi service where the customer experience is terrible but the incumbent dominates because there's no alternative?

Ian McNickle does exactly that, and by 2021-22, instead of building another DSO, he interviews over 200 doctors across an 18-month period, asking them what stresses them out about private practice, what they'd like to delegate, what would attract them to join a group, AND crucially, what horror stories they've heard about groups. He also talks with investors, attorneys, accountants, and investment bankers to understand how to build something legally compliant, attractive to capital, and actually good for doctors. In 2024, he officially launches Icon Dental Partners as a DPO (Dental Partnership Organization)—not a DSO—with a radically different structure where the doctor's clinical autonomy, team employment control, work schedule flexibility, and branding all remain completely in the doctor's hands, while Icon handles HR, payroll, recruiting, IT, cybersecurity, marketing, financials, bookkeeping, accounting, leases, and legal.

In this eye-opening conversation, Ian reveals why DSOs concentrate too much power at the holding company level (where investors can change agreements and eliminate autonomy), how he decentralized Icon's structure so that what defines a doctor's control is in individual agreements that NO board change can touch, why he made his board majority doctors so they have a real seat at the table, and how Icon offers doctors the best of both worlds: the culture, control, and branding of private practice PLUS the negotiating power, expertise, centralization, and potential financial upside of a group.

Ian McNickle started his career as a mechanical engineer in high tech, spent 10 years there enjoying the work and management positions, but felt an itch to be an entrepreneur. Around 2005-2006, he quit his job cold turkey without a great plan—he admits in hindsight it was a dumb move, but when you're young and ambitious, you just go for it. He and his roommate from grad school started a small consulting firm in the northwest for a few years, then in 2009 partnered with another person to start a marketing agency. By 2011, they decided to focus exclusively on the dental industry. He built that company for many years while also getting to know dental practices as clients. One of his former clients was a general dentist who had built a dental group using a traditional corporate DSO model from 2005-2015. When that doctor exited his group, other doctors started asking him how to build a similar group. That doctor started a consulting company and approached Ian to be his partner in 2018, knowing Ian was an entrepreneur who understood the dental industry. From 2018-2021, Ian split his time between the marketing company and the group consulting company, learning deeply about the DSO models. What he realized was that the DSO model is fundamentally flawed. Doctors don't typically like it, it's not necessarily better for patients, and team members don't like it either. He compares it to the taxi industry—a terrible customer experience dominated by an incumbent with no alternative. But whenever you have that situation where customers aren't happy, there's an opportunity for disruption and innovation.

What happens when you're born into dentistry (literally—dad's a dentist, mom's a hygienist), grow up stuffing envelopes and licking stamps, travel with your parents on humanitarian trips to serve orphans in Guadalajara, Mexico right after your first baby is born, and realize that patient experience and service is what lights you up? Rebecca Herring becomes a college professor of ballroom dance at the College of William and Mary, teaches kinesiology and dance majors, realizes after 15 years her body is done but her mind is not, goes back into dentistry with her passion for coaching and working with teams, works with private practices and small DSOs on the West Coast helping them grow multiple locations, takes a break to work in the veterinary industry's HR business partner role managing huge teams and C-suite leadership, then comes back to dentistry with a completely transformed understanding of compassion, empathy, tough conversations, growth, and development.

In this incredibly practical conversation, Rebecca reveals why the moment you have a "unicorn team member"—that one person who knows everything, knows where all the passwords are, knows how to schedule correctly, knows how to present cases, is the one everyone goes to for insurance problems—you've actually created a practice that ISN'T a system but a dependency that puts catastrophic stress on your strongest people. She shares what happens when that unicorn gets sick, has a family member pass away, or just burns out from being everyone's safety net: the whole practice collapses because you realize you never had a system, just one person.

She walks through why teams don't need to understand every clinical detail or every revenue cycle nuance, but they DO need to understand how their role connects to everyone else's (when the clinical team forgets to mark "procedure complete" in the back, the front office can't collect the full amount when checking out the patient), why you should stop asking "who dropped the ball?" and start asking "what part of our system allowed this to happen again?" (one question changes everything from blame to problem-solving), and why the most commonly missed systems are the ones that exist but haven't been detailed out enough that everyone truly understands every touchpoint. She explains how to implement a cadence for reviewing processes (revisit every six months), why you should assume every system has never been taught to anyone even if it has (because people make different assumptions), and how the EDGE method (Explain, Demonstrate, Guide, Enable) transforms how teams actually learn and own their roles. Most powerfully, she reveals that when team members feel valued and appreciated, they will give you more than you expect—and the opposite is also true: when brilliant A-players get stuck being the unicorn, they withdraw, get quiet, start calling out sick, and eventually leave. If you've ever felt stuck at a certain practice production level, wondered why team members who started great suddenly become disengaged, or realized you're completely dependent on one or two people holding everything together, this episode will completely transform how you think about systems, culture, and what it actually means to build a scalable practice that doesn't collapse the moment your best person has a bad week.

This episode is brought to you by Marketing 32—the only dental marketing team with a performance guarantee that if you don't grow, you don't pay. We are truly invested in your growth and making a positive impact in the industry through ethical, honest marketing. As Rebecca powerfully illustrates in this episode, you can spend all the money you want on marketing and create all the demand in the world, but if your team doesn't have systems in place, if your front office doesn't know how to answer the phone or explain what you do, if your clinical team doesn't understand how their process affects collections, if you're dependent on a unicorn employee who knows everything—you will never feel the ROI. We don't work with everybody, but if you need help with marketing, head over to marketing32.com. We'll have a quick discovery call and find out if it's a great fit to work together. The best marketing in the world can't overcome broken internal systems, lack of clarity, and team dysfunction. When you combine smart, ethical marketing with solid operational systems, clear processes, and a valued team that understands how their role connects to the whole picture—that's when practices truly thrive and scale beyond their ceiling.