Mike's Newsletter | Another Extended Edition! | The AI Shift Is Reaching Work, Security, and Wearables.
Welcome Orthoprenuers!
Every week, we bring you the latest in practice management, marketing, profitability, and next-level ortho techniques so you can work smarter, grow faster, and build the practice you want.
In this issue:
🚨 News Update
🦾 Mike’s Prompt
✨ Astro Outlook
🗓️ Plan Your 2026 CE Calendar
📢 Juan’s Marketing Tip
🔥 Trending in the OrthoPreneurs Facebook Group
🎙️ The Orthopreneurs Podcast
✨ Final Thought
📰 THIS WEEK IN TECH: ANOTHER EXTENDED EDITION
A quick apology for yet another extended edition. I keep trying to make the news section shorter, but there are simply too many consequential things happening right now to pretend they don't matter. AI, the economy, cybersecurity, wearables - the pace of change is accelerating, and I'd rather give you the important signals than force everything into an arbitrary word count.
At this rate, the "extended edition" may just become the edition.
🏢 GDP IS TRACKING 4.7% - AND THE AI JOB APOCALYPSE STILL ISN'T HERE
Here's a strange combination.
The Atlanta Fed GDPNow model is currently estimating 4.7% annualized real GDP growth for Q3, including 3.8% growth in consumer spending and an enormous 20.8% increase in private investment. That's a nowcast, not an official GDP number, but it's suggesting an economy growing much faster than most people probably realize.
Meanwhile, the August jobs report showed 162,000 jobs added and unemployment holding at 4.1%.
And this week Peter Diamandis argued that There Is No Job Apocalypse showing up in the data. He points to the World Economic Forum's projection of 170 million jobs created and 92 million displaced by 2030 - although those numbers reflect AI plus other economic, demographic and technological changes.
The reality may be more interesting. Stanford AI Employment Research finds no evidence of widespread AI-driven job displacement yet, but employment among 22-25-year-olds in highly AI-exposed occupations is now about 19% below where it would have been if it had kept pace with less-exposed jobs. The change is showing up primarily through less hiring, not mass layoffs.
Why it matters: We may be entering a strange economy where companies can produce significantly more without hiring people at the rate they once did. For practice owners, the important question may not be, "Will AI eliminate jobs?" It may be, "How much more should each person on my team be capable of producing once AI starts doing more of the work?"
🖥️ GPT-6 ASTRA CAN ACTUALLY USE YOUR COMPUTER
OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra, its most capable broadly deployed model yet, with major improvements in coding, research, professional work and, most importantly, computer use.
Astra can fill out forms, update customer records in a CRM, organize calendars, research information online, work inside documents, install and test software and troubleshoot things it sees on screen. On one computer-use benchmark, it reached roughly human-level action efficiency across most of the test.
There's also a more unsettling milestone: Astra is OpenAI's first broadly deployed model to reach its Critical cybersecurity capability threshold, meaning that with the proper tools it can discover previously unknown security vulnerabilities and develop ways to exploit them with substantially less human guidance.
Why it matters: We've spent the last few years asking AI to answer questions. We're moving toward telling it what outcome we want and allowing it to operate the software necessary to get there. Think scheduling, CRM updates, reporting, research, billing workflows and administrative tasks.
👩💻 NVIDIA JUST BOUGHT HUGGING FACE FOR NEARLY $13 BILLION
Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion.
If you're not familiar with Hugging Face, think of it as one of the central marketplaces and collaboration platforms for AI. It hosts more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets and 1 million AI applications, with more than 18 million users and 200,000 companies using the platform.
Nvidia already owns an extraordinary position in the hardware AI runs on. Now it's moving much deeper into the ecosystem where developers find, test, customize and deploy the models themselves. Nvidia says Hugging Face will remain open and will not require Nvidia hardware.
Why it matters: This is another sign that the AI industry is consolidating around companies that control multiple layers of the stack. Nvidia isn't just selling the picks and shovels anymore. It's getting closer to owning part of the mine.
🧪 AI MODELS ARE STARTING TO DO REAL SCIENTIFIC WORK
Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, and the interesting part isn't another round of better benchmark scores.
Anthropic tested the models on actual scientific problems. Mythos designed protein binders that were experimentally tested in labs, with some showing binding affinities 10 times better than the best designs from previous competitions. It also rewrote GPU code to make seven biology models run as much as 2.5x faster. Fable took decades-old NASA radar data and created a new higher-resolution elevation map covering roughly a third of Venus.
These weren't simply answers to science questions. The models were actually performing parts of the research process.
Why it matters: The AI race is moving beyond who's best at writing an email or passing a benchmark. We're beginning to see models contribute meaningful work in science, engineering and research that previously required highly specialized humans and significant amounts of time.
🔐 AI IS CREATING A WHOLE NEW CYBERSECURITY ARMS RACE
As AI agents get more powerful, a new problem is emerging: How do you secure an AI that can actually take actions?
Google just introduced Gemini 3.8 Flash Cyber, a specialized model capable of autonomously finding vulnerabilities and helping patch them. Access to its more powerful cybersecurity capabilities is initially being limited to trusted governments, critical infrastructure operators and software maintainers.
At the same time, AI-security startup AIR raised $50 million to inspect the skills, plugins and tools agents are allowed to use. AIR says it currently rejects about 27% of the agent add-ons it evaluates because they don't meet its security criteria.
And HiddenLayer raised another $100 million this week to expand security specifically around generative AI and autonomous agents.
Why it matters: Companies spent decades learning how to control what software employees can install and what information they can access. Now they may need an entirely new security layer controlling what their AI employees can install, access and do.
💻 YOUR SMART RING IS STARTING TO BECOME A COMPUTER
Qualcomm Ventures backed smart-ring maker Ultrahuman in a new $70 million funding round, but the interesting part is what the company wants to build next.
Today's smart rings primarily collect information about you - sleep, heart rate, movement and other health data. Ultrahuman wants future rings to actually run software on the device. The company is exploring rings that can interact with AI, function as pointers or computer mice, control games, operate as digital keys and allow third-party developers to build apps for them.
Some of those capabilities are expected to begin arriving through software updates before the new Qualcomm-powered hardware is even available.
Why it matters: This is another glimpse of where AI may ultimately live. Instead of taking out your phone and opening an app, AI could increasingly surround us through glasses, rings, watches and other devices that are always available and already understand our context.
🎨 GOOGLE WANTS YOU TO PROMPT YOUR MARKETING DESIGNS
Google is rolling out Google Pics, a new AI-first image creation and editing tool inside Google Workspace.
Instead of learning traditional graphic-design tools, you can describe what you want, generate it with a prompt, edit individual elements, change text, translate words inside the image and continue refining the design conversationally. Google also plans deeper integration directly into Docs, Slides and Drive.
Why it matters: Graphic design is becoming another specialized skill that AI is beginning to absorb. Social graphics, ads, flyers and other marketing materials are increasingly moving toward "describe what I want and refine it" instead of learning complicated software or outsourcing every change.
🦾 Mike’s Tip of the Week: Build better customer personas with AI
You've probably heard marketers talk about creating a "customer persona." The problem is that most personas are terrible. "Meet Sarah. She's 38, has two children, drives an SUV and spends time on Instagram." Who cares? What you really want to understand is how different people make decisions.
What scares them? What frustrates them? What are they comparing you against? Why do they delay? What language do they use? What makes them finally say yes? AI can help you build much deeper personas.
TRY THIS PROMPT:
Help me identify and build the most important customer personas for my business.
My business is: [DESCRIBE YOUR BUSINESS]
My typical customers are: [DESCRIBE WHAT YOU KNOW]
My product/service costs approximately: [PRICE]
Customers usually choose us because: [WHAT YOU THINK]
Customers sometimes don't buy because: [OBJECTIONS YOU HEAR]
First, identify 4-6 meaningfully different customer personas based primarily on their motivations, fears, buying behavior, priorities, and decision-making style - not simply age or demographics.
For each persona, tell me:
What they ultimately want
What problem they believe they are solving
Their biggest fears or anxieties
Their biggest objections
What they are skeptical about
What alternatives they are considering
What makes them delay making a decision
Who influences their decision
What language or phrases are likely to resonate with them
What messages would turn them off
What would make them say, "This is exactly what I've been looking for"
Then tell me how my marketing, offer, sales conversation, and follow-up should differ for each persona.
Do not invent facts you cannot know. Identify assumptions and ask me questions wherever more information would improve the personas.
---
For an orthodontic practice, you might discover that the "adult Invisalign patient" isn't one persona. You may have a confidence-driven adult, a convenience-driven professional, a price-sensitive shopper, and someone who has wanted treatment for ten years but is afraid they'll regret spending the money.
Same treatment. Completely different buying psychology.
✨ Astro Outlook: The Virgo New Moon Wants a Cleaner System
Week of September 7: the ♍Virgo♍ New Moon sets the tone this week, and the message is simple: clean up the system before you ask it to carry more weight. You do not need to know astrology for the practical takeaway. Virgo is about details, routines, checklists, and the small operational habits that keep things from slipping through the cracks.
The practical moment: this is a good week to look at one process your team repeats every day and ask whether it is actually clear. Missed calls. Consult follow-up. New-patient onboarding. Insurance verification. Observation reactivation. If the process depends on someone “just knowing what to do,” it is probably not a real process yet.
Best use of the week: pick one recurring workflow and tighten it. Define the owner, the first step, the follow-up rule, and what “done” actually means. A cleaner system will do more for your practice this week than another big idea.
🗓️ Plan Your 2026 CE Calendar
The Sleep & Airway MeetingFri, Dec 04 | Arizona Biltmore, LXR Hotels & Resorts
THE MOST UP-TO-DATE CLINICAL INFORMATION ON SLEEP-DISORDERED BREATHING & AIRWAY.
The Orthopreneurs CE Calendar keeps every major workshop, congress, and study club event in one place — searchable by month, so you can plan your travel and your team's coverage well ahead of time instead of scrambling the week before.
Whether you're chasing CE credits, looking for your next study club, or just want to see what's coming up before you lock in your schedule for the quarter, it's worth a five-minute look every month.
Bookmark the calendar, pick your priorities early, and stop letting CE planning become a last-minute scramble.
📢 Juan’s Maktering Tip
Make Your Website Easier for AI to Understand
Most orthodontic websites are written for people.
That still matters.
But the next wave of search may include AI assistants reading your website, comparing your practice to others, and deciding what information to pull into an answer.
If your site is vague, outdated, or thin, AI tools may not understand what makes your practice different.
Here’s the play:
● Make sure every core service has its own clear page: braces, aligners, early treatment, adult treatment, retainers, surgical cases, or whatever matters most to your practice.
● Add specific location language throughout the site, not just on the contact page.
● Keep hours, phone numbers, insurance notes, financing information, and consultation details current.
● Write plain-language answers to the questions parents actually ask.
● Add real proof: testimonials, before-and-after examples, doctor bios, technology, community involvement, and patient experience details.
● Check your Google Business Profile and make sure it matches your website.
The bottom line:
AI search will not reward confusing websites.
The practices that win will be the ones with clear, structured, useful information that both parents and machines can understand.
🔥Trending in the Orthopreneurs Facebook Group🔥
💬 Financial Planners:
who is everyone loving currently? I found a 2018 thread from Vanessa Peterson want to update it. I’m NOT looking for CWA as a planner.
🗣️Sharing experiences can help make the right choice for you!
🎙️ On the Podcast: You Are Your Own Worst Enemy in Practice Growth l 5MF
What if I told you the biggest thing holding your orthodontic practice back isn’t your team, your market, or your overhead—it’s you waiting until you feel “ready”?
In this episode of Five Minute Friday, I’m challenging one of the most common patterns I see in orthodontists: delaying the very tools, technology, mentorship, and support that could make practice easier, more profitable, and less stressful. Whether it’s remote monitoring, aligners, consulting, masterminds, or better systems, too many doctors wait for the practice to improve before investing in the things that could actually create that improvement.
✨ Final Thoughts: WATCH WHAT AI IS BECOMING
There's a common thread running through almost every story this week.
AI isn't just getting better at answering questions. It's starting to use computers, perform research, design things, secure systems and take action in the real world.
We're moving from AI that knows things to AI that does things. And that is a much bigger change.
– Mike Vidikan
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