Why Doing “More” Isn’t the Answer — Doing the Right Things Is

Ask any dental practice owner about their growth strategy and you’ll usually get a list. More ads. More social posts. More software. Another insurance plan to “fill the schedule.” More, more, more. But here’s the thing nobody talks about: working harder while solving the wrong problem doesn’t just fail to help — it actively makes things worse.

This is the heart of a recent conversation between Ben Tuinei (President, Veritas Dental Resources) and Naren Arulrajah (CEO, Ekwa Marketing) on the Insurance Untangled podcast. Adapted from Episode 137, this article distills what’s become one of the most counterintuitive lessons in modern dental practice management.

The action bias trap

“As humans, we have this bias towards action,” Naren observed early in the conversation, “especially those who end up in dental school.” Dentists are, by selection, the kids who got A’s and worked harder than everyone else. That same instinct — when in doubt, do more — carries straight into running a practice.

The problem is that running a practice rewards a different muscle: knowing what to do. And the two muscles often pull in opposite directions.

A real example: 30 new patients, no actual growth

Naren shared a recent call with a new client who, on paper, looked like a marketing success story.

Read that again. Thirty new callers. Almost no new patients. The marketing was working perfectly. The conversion was broken.

Now imagine the natural reflex. The doctor’s first instinct? “We need more leads.” So he runs Google Ads on top of the SEO. The conversion rate doesn’t go up — it gets worse. As Naren put it: “If you can’t convince somebody from Google who’s trusting you because they found you organically, and you’re only converting one out of four, how are you going to convert people who are calling from an ad?”

Fix the conversion before you spend

This is what doing the right thing looks like:

• If 180 phone calls are producing only seven new patients, the problem isn’t traffic. It’s call handling.
• If your conversion rate is 30%, getting it to 60% doubles your business — without spending another dollar on marketing.
• If you don’t have call tracking, you don’t have data. You have guesses.

Naren is blunt about the math: a new patient lead from SEO might cost a practice $50–60. A new patient lead from Google Ads might cost $300. Same patient. Same end result. Five-times the cost. So the question isn’t “should we do Google Ads?” — it’s “do we know which channel is producing what?”

The same trap, on the insurance side

The “more is more” reflex isn’t unique to marketing. Ben sees the exact same pattern in insurance participation. Dentists signed up for 12, 20, 24 plans — directly or through umbrella networks — many of which don’t even pay enough to cover the cost of doing the dentistry.

That’s not a small leak. That’s $546,000 in production handed to insurance carriers in exchange for the privilege of doing the work. And the doctor is busy. Maybe even too busy. Just not in a way that pays.

Less is more (and the math proves it)

Here’s the part that most dentists don’t believe until they see it: the practices that participate in fewer plans almost always make more money than the ones in more plans.

Why? Because pricing power compounds. When you’re contractually obligated to a hundred fee schedules, you have no leverage. When you’re choosy — and the plans you do take are well-negotiated — you keep more of every dollar you produce.

A real fee negotiation, in numbers

Ben described a recent client, a Florida practice whose molar endo fee under one PPO sat in the $450 range — in a market where non-negotiable rates for endodontists started at $800. After the renegotiation? The fee went to $1,200. Roughly 3x. Across the entire fee schedule, the average increase came out to about 50%.

The doctor’s reaction wasn’t celebration. It was anxiety: “Is this fee increase too high?” Ben’s response: that PPO had been underpaying her for years. The plan probably should have been dropped years ago. Every patient on it was costing the practice money.

What “doing the right thing” actually looks like

If you take one thing away from this conversation, it should be this. Doing the right thing isn’t a vague aspiration. It’s a process:

1. Find where you’re actually leaking money. Conversion? Write-offs? Marketing channel mix? Treatment acceptance?
2. Solve that. Not the thing the last conference speaker told you to solve.
3. Measure with real data. Call tracking. Cost per lead by channel. Annual write-offs by carrier. Without numbers, you’re guessing.
4. Drop what doesn’t work. The PPO that loses money. The marketing channel that doesn’t book. The “engagement” tactic that doesn’t move the needle.
5. Repeat. The bottleneck moves. The answers change. The discipline doesn’t.

Or as Naren summed it up at the end of the conversation:

Want to listen to the full conversation?

This article is adapted from Episode 137 of the Insurance Untangled podcast. The full audio runs about 20 minutes and includes more real client examples, fee negotiation specifics, and the back-and-forth between Ben and Naren that text can’t fully capture.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube — or read it weekly. Either works. Just don’t keep doing more.