"I Was An Awful Leader": How This Dentist Turned Around Her 15-Year Failing Practice

Most dentists who burn out never say it out loud. Dr. Maggie Augustyn built a national platform doing exactly that, and still owns the practice where it all happened. In this episode of The Margin Line, Joe Lynch sits down with Maggie — founder and co-owner of Happy Tooth, Dentistry Today columnist, and National Media Spokesperson for the Academy of General Dentistry — to walk through the years of leadership before any of that was true.

She talks about:

• Her first day as a practice owner, needing to tell a panicked assistant it was going to be okay when she wasn't sure she believed it herself
• The credit card debt she couldn't quantify, and the loan she and her husband made to the practice just to stop paying the interest
• Why she described her early leadership as being a "bosshole," and what it cost her employees
• The cancer diagnosis that made going back to the same life unthinkable, and what she did differently moving forward
• What actually changed in the practice and in herself once she brought in Productive Dentist Academy
• The quarterly "dream list" that holds her accountable to this day 
• The tension she's openly still living in: compassionate care versus hourly production goals
• Her opinion on the most overrated thing in dentistry right now, which she believes will be controversial to many

Every group has a practice that looks like the one Maggie ran, and every high performer has had a version of those dreadful Sunday nights before the work week started. This is what the inside of it sounds like, from someone who found her way out and has spent the years since giving other dentists permission to admit they're struggling.

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What is The Margin Line?

The Margin Line explores how America's most successful dental organizations scale from single practices to multi-state empires. Host Joe Lynch, Head of Customer Success at Dandy, interviews DSO executives and industry leaders about the strategies that actually work - from first acquisitions and integration playbooks to technology bets and operational efficiency. New episodes every Tuesday.