The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry

The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry is Ranked #1 DSO Podcast

In this end-of-year episode of DSO Declassified, Bill Neumann and Kim Larson reflect on 2025 and share their perspectives on the DSO industry.

Topics include:

Top articles, trends & podcasts of the year on GDN
GDN’s ‘Emerging Dental Groups to Watch’ award update
GDN’s new Insider Access Group
2026 events deep dive
Much more

Thank you to all of our loyal emerging dental group & DSO viewers, listeners and readers. A big thank you to our advertisers and our editorial board.

If you would like to learn more about GDN’s Insider Access Group, please email us at info@groupdentistrynow.com

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DSO Declassified 2025 Podcast with Kim Larson & Bill Neumann: 2025 Dental Industry & DSO Recap.

Kim Larson:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 2025 last edition of Group Dentistry Now’s DSO Declassified. Merry Christmas to everyone. Merry Christmas, Bill.

Bill Neumann: Merry Christmas, Kim. Merry Christmas, everybody. And Happy New Year, or soon to be.

Kim Larson: So we just want to get together here and casually talk about some of the things going on in the industry. Personally with group dentistry now, some exciting things happening for us as well as things that we’re seeing in the space and hopefully will help everyone out there, DSOs and vendors alike. So let’s start off with some of the most popular articles of the year. And the reason that we’re going to do that is because obviously it reflects what people are interested in space. So would you like to talk a little bit about what we’re seeing here in terms of articles?

Bill Neumann: Yep, so we, at the end of the year, we do top articles of the past year, and I just got done compiling them, so I don’t have them all memorized yet, but we, as usual, I think for the past, as long as we’ve been tracking the top articles, the emerging groups to watch award winners is always the top article of that given year, and this year is no different. So, the Emerging Groups to Watch Awards was the number one article, and we’ll talk a little bit more about what the awards are going to look like in 2026. Exciting news there. But, and again, this Emerging Groups to Watch Award winners is on our website as well as the list at the top. articles for 2025.

Kim Larson: Just to jump in, the new list is coming out within the first month of the year. So keep your eyes peeled for that. That’s a huge article for us.

Bill Neumann: Applications are in?

Kim Larson: Applications are in. So now we’ll see who’s going to make the list. Very exciting time. Excellent.

Bill Neumann: I was just going through the list of the top articles as well. Delta Dental of Wisconsin’s Cherry Tree Dental Acquisition. That was pretty surprising, kind of shook up the industry. It’s very controversial. Controversial. So that one makes a lot of sense. The DSO Spotlight series that we do where we feature different DSOs, especially Maybe DSOs that aren’t as well known. We did one on a rising tide dental partnership organization. That was a big one. Interesting top article, probably one of the most interesting, was a article that we did that was focused on Sleep Dentistry. So that one kind of surprised me, and then I thought a little bit more about it, and I thought, well, we’ll focus on same-store growth, bringing in more services, treatment acceptance, things like that. It seems to be a real focus for the industry. We’ll talk about that in a moment. But so a Sleep Dentistry article that we did was actually very, very high. It was one of the top 10. Dental Corp going private, so the acquisition there, that was a tough article. Park Dental going public is a top article.

Kim Larson: Ashley, and they had multiple articles throughout the year as that progressed.

Bill Neumann: Yes. And actually, the two or three that we did, they were all top articles. And in 2026, we will be spending more time with Park Dental partners and learning more about why they went public, what the organization looks like. So we’re really excited to do that.

Kim Larson: Are you using an on-site visit?

Bill Neumann: That’s the plan. So I will be in Minnesota probably in the first quarter of the new year to talk to them. Western Dental with the proposal of Slash to Medi-Cal. There was talk about Western Dental shutting some locations down in California. And then also a Smile Partners DSO spotlight. And then there was an article that we did on TAG and just a real kind of a high level article about their model and the different health care verticals that they’re involved.

Kim Larson: So if you don’t know who TAG is, it’s the Aspen Group.

Bill Neumann: Absolutely. So that’s that. Those are the top articles.

Kim Larson: And then, yeah, let’s talk about podcasts. So we did the podcast. gosh, maybe two, three times a month, sometimes four times a month, and it’s just a real big hit in the industry. You talk to industry leaders, both vendors and DSOs, and we seem to get really interesting DSOs. And every time Bill finishes a podcast, the first question I always ask him is like, how did it go? And I would say seven, eight times out of 10, he goes, that was really interesting, I learned a lot. So that says something, because Bill is sort of the, one of the leaders in the space and obviously very well connected. So when he comes off a podcast, I think, oh, that’s great. He’s really liking that podcast and that’s great for everyone. So what were the top ones?

Bill Neumann: Yeah, so the top podcast, the interview with Jake Burry of MB2, that was a great one. And I think it’s one of the fastest growing now, one of the largest DSOs out there, or DPO, sorry. DPOs out there, they coined the term. So that was MB2. Then we had Alex, Dr. Alex Scharf from Shared Practices Group. So he was on that one that performed extremely well. We had an interview with Josh Wagner of Pure Logic.

Kim Larson: We should tell them the number of the episode if they want to go quickly find it.

Bill Neumann: Sure. There’s episode 205 is the MB2 article. Episode 203 is the Dr. Alec Sharp video. 227 is Josh Wagner and Pure Logic. interesting conversation on technology and call monitoring and some of the interesting things that they’re doing there. No surprise here, episode 208, Brian Kaleo, people wanted to find out about the Dykema show, so that was a big one. Episode 209 with the chief clinical officer or chief dental officer of TENS, Dr. Chris Salerno, so Chris is always one of the, I really like having him on podcasts and does a great job. We had an on-site visit to Versailles, Ohio, and that was with the folks at Midmark and also Zerk. So we actually did spend on-site at Midmark’s corporate offices and we had Kate Reiner, and Michael Couch there. So that was really cool. You get to see behind the scenes at at the Midmark corporate offices. And I think that that is something you’re going to start to see us do more of, is are these onsites? There’s a lot more interest in that. And I think we can see that by the video views in particular. People want to see what’s going on at these different locations. Actually, another onsite, we were at Dental City in Green Bay, and that was with John Mathis. We had Jordan Lorenz and Joe Caverretta, Jordan Lorenz. there as well. So, oh, Jeb, Jordan, we’re Laurence twice down here. Anyway, that was a great one. Again, if you want to see on-site at Dental City and the robotics that they’re using, really, really cool stuff. A lot of people commented. I was at Greater New York meeting. I had a couple of people come up and talk about what was going on at Dental City as well as Midmark. Kind of round things up here and then we’re going to get on to kind of what’s going on in the industry. We had the interview with Chorus Orthodontists, which is a Canadian DSO that actually is now in the U.S. as well. That was with Dean and Adam there at Chorus. And I’m rounding things up. I’m sorry, that’s Episode 212. And then rounding things up, we had one on commercial funding, as well as patient financing, with Tua Financial and Barry Trexler and his team. And that was Episode 220. So that’s the Pie to Fast from the articles. And now we can move on to some other stuff.

Kim Larson: Let’s move on. You know, we didn’t talk about this. We don’t rehearse this. But I was thinking every year, while you’re talking, every year we have a different buzzword for that year. I think It seemed like technology was the buzzword for 2025. Before that, it was same-store growth, and then RCM had its spotlight. Every year, it seems to be a different buzzword. It’ll be interesting to see what the buzzword is for 2026. Any prediction?

Bill Neumann: It could be a continuation. We had same-store sales.

Kim Larson: So AI seems to be the one that’s taking off. But let’s move a little bit towards some exciting things happening at Group Dentistry now. We’ll talk about the Emerging Groups to Watch Awards, the physical awards. Like I said earlier, the awards will be coming out, the article on the awards will be coming out in January. But the physical awards, we’re going to actually be, would you like to talk a little bit about that?

Bill Neumann: Sure. And then it ties into events as well, right? That’s always a big, we kind of look at where people visit our website the most frequently. The events tab, that section is probably one of the highlights. So we’ve been doing our emerging groups to watch awards. I think, are we going on our 10th year for that?

Kim Larson: Yeah.

Bill Neumann: So that’ll, 2026 will be our 10th year for the awards. We’ve been handing out physical awards for five years. Yes. And we had Kim double checking them, right? And we’re switching things up in 2026. We can’t disclose everything because we haven’t signed everything quite yet, but we’re going to be moving the awards to, I think, a really interesting partner and interesting venue. And we’re super excited about it. So we will still be doing the Emerging Groups to Watch Awards online and in person. But we’re switching things up a little bit, and I think it’s going to be a welcome change.

Kim Larson: And it will be announced in the article. So when that article comes out, yeah, it will be announced there. And we’re really looking forward to that. Yes. We love watching our emerging groups grow. We like them. We like to watch them consolidate. It’s very interesting. They all have really interesting stories. There’s a reason that they make the list every year. But let’s kind of shift, well, into events.

Bill Neumann: Yeah. So.

Kim Larson: So. One of the big things we saw happen in events this year wasn’t necessarily in the DSO space, but it was in the larger dental space. And that was that SmileCon, which is ADA’s show, has decided to permanently close its show, close its door, so to speak.

Bill Neumann: And from what I understand, they’re going to be doing smaller regional meetings, maybe a little bit more specific.

Kim Larson: But what is, and so what does that mean? What does that mean in the space? Because it seems like every time we turn around, this is what we do is we keep our finger on the pulse of the DSO space, there’s another show, whether it be a DSO having a partner show or just another show geared towards groups. And though we consult for a lot of shows and what we have seen, and this is just getting, worse and worse and worse every year is it’s getting harder to get DSOs to groups. And what we’re seeing now is that it’s harder to get vendors to, I’m sorry, DSOs to shows and it’s harder to get vendors to shows now because vendors are stretched financially. They can’t be at every DSO partner show, which is, you know, they have to spend a lot of money on those. And It’s not just the money to be at the show, but it’s sending the personnel and all of the expenses that come with that. And it’s just getting worse and worse and worse. However, there are still some shows that stand out as being sort of industry staples and still very successful. And then we have a new show that’s come onto the scene. which has gotten some really good reviews. We’ve gotten some really great feedback. So some industry staples that seem to really be holding their own and still growing and thriving are, of course, Dykema, Brian Kaleo’s show with the Dykema DSO group there, and also ADSO. Their main event is also a show that remains strong and, you know, an important show to see. And then a new show that’s coming to the space which people are really talking about is Smile Together, which is a speed networking event. You’re guaranteed a certain number of meetings with DSOs and so forth. And we got some negative feedback from the vendors. We’ve communicated with the show, but we’ve also gotten a ton of positive feedback from vendors that we’ve likewise communicated with the show. So hopefully next year when they do it, I believe it’s in Las Vegas in September, October, I don’t know, check our website. they will hopefully take some of the criticisms and improve on it and keep the good stuff going. People really loved all the meetings and the networking opportunity. But you were there, so tell us what you, I’m just providing what the feedback was from the vendors and the group.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, so Smile Together was in New Orleans this year, and it was new for dental. They have been doing it in vet now for two years. This was their second year. And yeah, it was a great event. I mean, really did a fantastic job. They, between VET and dental, and that was much bigger because they’ve had an extra year, right, of history. They said in that two and a half or three day length, they had 35,000 meetings, 13 minutes a piece, two minutes to kind of rotate to the next meeting. It was it was very well done. I mean, it was I was it was excited to be there. And a little skeptical because I’ve seen it done in the past, sometimes well and sometimes not so well. But it’s a great format, and they’ve incorporated a trade show floor as well. So there are the booths, right, as well now. And that was not dental, that was vet, because they had some history with vet. Next year, dental will have that trade show component as well. But I’m really looking forward to that, and we appreciate we had a great partnership with them this year. We’ll continue on into 2026. But just to kind of recap what Kim said about the events, as far as group dentistry now, we’ll be at plenty of the events. We’re kicking off January. I’ll be speaking at NDC, which is the co-op for the distributors, the dental distributors in the industry, and talking a little bit about the DSOs. And that’s in mid-January. And then we’ll be at Yankee for their multi-site. moderating a couple of sessions there. The AADGP, who I want to mention is kind of reinvigorating and reimagining, or she really changed up their focus of their meeting to be a lot more workshop-oriented, collaborative. And that’s going to be at the beginning of February 4 through 6 in Austin, Texas at the Lost Pines. So they’re not focused on a big event, they’re focused on having Greek practices, like a meaningful, yeah, that’s looking to scale up, workshop, a lot of workshop and very, very focused. So, the agenda looks great there. And then kind of we easily get into February, you’ve got Chicago Midwinter and all these others. Just to kind of top off, you know, the events, another thing I will mention is that I thought I was at Greater New York, which has continued to shrink as a show, where Chicago’s kind of held its own as a traditional dental meeting. Greater New York has not. Greater New York certainly is extremely quiet now. They, in fact, for the first time in, I guess, in their history, or at least in recent memory, they’ve gone from four days down to three, which is actually very good. But having it, I think, that Thanksgiving weekend after Thanksgiving is a tough weekend. But we’ll see. It’s a good meeting for us. We actually, we were packed with meetings.

Kim Larson: So Wednesday will no longer happen.

Bill Neumann: Right, right. So it’ll be Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. I know that the educational events start earlier, but as far as exhibits is Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. And yeah, and just kind of to finish up Reader New York, because it ties into our businesses, You know, Greater New York for publishers is a little bit of a bellwether for what the next year looks like because budgets are together. And, you know, we finished up this year. I mean, we’re not quite done this year, but pretty much are done. We finished up this year 9% over last year, which is, you know, as you scale up, it gets harder and harder to grow. But we were, you know, very happy given a lot of this disruption in publishing and I think our focus, and Kim’s in particular, has always been digitally focused, providing valuable content for our readers, for our audience. And I think we’re focused on the growing segment of the industry. And really, and again, I don’t want to speak for you, but I mean, I know I hear it a lot because I’m more of the salesperson-ish. and keep the readers in mind first and provide valuable content. And then hopefully the advertisers will follow because you have the readers. And Kim’s really worked hard on the integrity of the content. So we’ve had a great year, and next year looks really, really incredible as far as some of the new things that we’re going to offer.

Kim Larson: Maika Leibbrandt-Kravitz Well, that’s true. But before you, I know you want to talk about that a little bit. But before we do, I just want to thank everybody, because honestly, every single year since we started this in 2014, we have grown. And that has been so wonderful for us, because you know, it makes, it makes the industry better. And that’s really our goal. So thank you to everyone who supports us in any way, shape, or form. So now moving on to some new offerings that we’re going to have in 2026 that are really exciting. We’ve been kicking it around for better part of six months or maybe more. And I think, you know, we’ve sort of been trying to iron out how it’s going to look. And, and so now I’ll let you talk about it a little bit.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, we’re working on something called insider access. So group dentistry now is insider access. And, you know, we see a lot of value in the meetings that occur. But as Kim kind of mentioned, there are so many events out there. And we’ve had a lot of people where we say, hey, when are you going to do your own meeting? We’ve never really, never, yeah. So, but I think there’s a way to provide access to DSO decision makers virtually. So the insider, and you can reach out to us to learn more about this because we, this is insider, this is going to be for a limited, limited group of our best partners, vendors, that will have access on a monthly basis to virtual meetings with DSO decision makers to learn about their model, to have conversations with them, and also access to our emerging groups to watch winners. And then we will top this off with an in-person or maybe several in-person whether it’s networking or meetings, but I’ll kind of keep it at that. I don’t want to disclose too much because, again, I want to make sure that the insiders have what the insiders get. And so if you’re interested in learning more about that, you know, the couple of people that are part of the insiders access group are really excited about it.

Kim Larson: And if you’re interested, you can just email us at info at groupdentistrynow.com. Yeah.

Bill Neumann: So yeah, we’re excited about that. We’re continuing to grow the business. I think the industry as a whole is, you know, there’s a huge focus on organic growth. There’s a huge focus on bringing specialty into your group. So we’ve got a partnership with OrthoBrain that’s coming up, and they’ll be talking a lot about bringing Ortho into your DSOs. And, you know, there’s just some great things ahead, I think. And the industry is, focused on, I guess you might call it smart growth, instead of just this gobbling off of different practices and growth.

Kim Larson: This is gross. Yeah. Yeah, very true.

Bill Neumann: So, I mean, I think that’s it. I mean, we just want to say thank you for your support.

Kim Larson: Yeah, thank you. It’s kind of like our gift to you every month. We put together DSO, the Roundup. If you are not reading that and you’re a vendor or a group or a DSO, whatever you are, you absolutely should be reading that.

Bill Neumann: The reason- As well as DSO people.

Kim Larson: as well as DSO people, right? Because you need to know how people are shifting in DSOs throughout DSOs. It seems like people jump DSOs and they’re also being promoted. So maybe that’s the contract person that you mean. So keep your eye on DSO people, but really DSO deals is What we, we follow them, we track them all month long. DSOs and I, we have very good communication and I put together this list so that you can look to see what’s going on in space. And it’s on the first of every month. So if you don’t read that, that would be my advice. Thank you to Tusk for sponsoring it. And that should be, if you’re not doing it, that should be a new year’s resolution. especially if you’re a vendor, but DSOs use it to see, you know, who’s buying DSO that maybe, or practices or groups that they’re potentially interested in or were interested in. So, yeah, just please keep supporting us.

Bill Neumann: And thank you to Fiddler and Associates for the DSO People Sponsorship, and thank you all for our, you know, the sponsors that have really supported us and have really been able to make

Kim Larson: Year after year. You know, that’s the thing about our partnerships. It just seems like every year we have a lot of the same people coming back because they’re seeing good results. And that’s what this is about. We are here to connect DSOs and vendors because DSOs have problems and issues that they need to solve and vendors have the solutions. So we have lots of advice for inventors, but we won’t get into that now. We’re going to be doing this DSO declassified series throughout the year. So we’ll be, as the year rolls out, we’ll be having more and more about that. So thank you all.

Bill Neumann: Thank you.