Mike's Newsletter | AI Is Moving From Answers to Action.
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
📢 Juan’s Marketing Tip
✨ Astro Outlook
🗓️ Plan Your 2026 CE Calendar
🔥 Trending in the OrthoPreneurs Facebook Group
🎙️ The Orthopreneurs Podcast
✨ Final Thought
📰 News Updates
🧠 Meta Launches Muse Wonder Models for Personal and Professional AI Agents
Meta unveiled Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, a new family of AI models designed for personal and professional agents, memory, coding, and longer-running tasks. The models are built around “Active Memory,” which helps an AI retain useful information across conversations, and “Active Focus,” which helps an agent continue working toward a goal when it hits obstacles.
Why it matters: AI is moving from one-off answers to assistants that remember context and keep working over time. For orthodontic practices, that could eventually affect patient follow-up, internal reporting, marketing planning, hiring workflows, and team training. The takeaway: memory can be useful, but it also raises the stakes around privacy, permissions, and what information an AI system should be allowed to retain. Read More
🛑 Microsoft Calls for Stronger AI Rules and “Emergency Brakes”
Microsoft President Brad Smith called for tougher AI safety rules, including legal obligations when rogue AI systems cause harm and “emergency brakes” that could pause or contain systems if they behave unexpectedly. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also said AI systems need to be observable, testable, and controllable rather than treated like black boxes.
Why it matters: This is the same conversation practice owners need to have at a smaller scale. As AI tools move into calls, scheduling, billing, documentation, marketing, and vendor communication, the question is not just whether they work. The question is whether the practice can see what happened, stop the tool when needed, and hold someone accountable for the outcome. Read More
🦾 Mike’s Tip of the Week: Decide What AI Should Remember
When to use: You are using AI for recurring work and want better results without accidentally giving it too much context.
How to use: Build a simple memory policy for your practice before tools start remembering everything by default.
Prompt:
“I run an orthodontic practice and we are starting to use AI tools for recurring work.
Here are the areas where AI may help: [patient communication, marketing, reporting, scheduling, call review, team training, SOPs, hiring, billing, etc.]
Help me create a practical ‘AI memory policy’ for our practice.
For each area, tell me:
● What information would be useful for AI to remember
● What information should never be stored
● What should require permission before being saved
● What should be reviewed or deleted regularly
● What patient, team, financial, or compliance risks I should consider
● How to explain this policy to my team in plain language
Then give me a simple checklist we can use before turning on memory, personalization, or long-term context in any AI tool.”
Why this works:
The next wave of AI will not just answer better.
It will remember better.
That can save time, but only if the practice decides what belongs in memory and what does not.
✨ Astro Outlook: Mercury in Scorpio Wants the Real Issue Named
Week of October 12: Mercury is in ♏Scorpio♏ this week, which makes the theme simple: look beneath the surface. You do not need to know astrology for the practical takeaway. This is a good week to stop treating symptoms and name the real issue slowing the practice down.
The practical moment: look at the problem your team keeps working around instead of solving. Maybe follow-up is inconsistent because nobody owns it. Maybe consults feel rushed because the schedule is too tight. Maybe a team member is frustrated because expectations are vague. Maybe a vendor keeps creating extra work, but no one has reviewed the relationship.
Best use of the week: choose one issue and get specific. What is actually happening? Who owns it? What is the cost of leaving it alone? What decision would make the next step obvious? The goal is not to make the conversation dramatic. It is to make it honest enough that the team can finally move.
🗓️ Plan Your 2026 CE Calendar
The Sleep & Airway Meeting
Fri, Dec 04 | Arizona Biltmore, LXR Hotels & Resorts
THE MOST UP-TO-DATE CLINICAL INFORMATION ON
SLEEP-DISORDERED BREATHING & AIRWAY.
CLOSE MORE CASES
April 1–3, 2027 | Fairmont Austin
Close More Cases is here — the fastest money in orthodontics isn't more leads or more ads, it's closing more of the patients already in your chair. In this 1.5-day intensive, Dr. Glenn Krieger sharpens the clinical close while sales expert Victor Antonio unlocks the psychology of yes — and it's training you put to work the Monday you get back, no long rollout.
Bring your TCs, walk out with one shared process, and start closing more cases immediately.
Tickets are live now — secure your spot before it sells out.
LEARN MORE ABOUT CMC
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 “Why Us?” Easier to Find
Most parents do not compare orthodontic practices the way practice owners think they do.
They are not studying every treatment philosophy, appliance option, or technology detail.
They are trying to answer a few simple questions quickly:
Can I trust this place?
Will my child feel comfortable?
Is this going to be affordable?
Do they make the process easy?
Why should I choose them instead of the office down the street?
If your website, ads, and social posts do not answer those questions clearly, families will move on.
Here’s the play:
● Look at your homepage and ask: could a parent understand in 10 seconds why your practice is different?
● Turn vague claims into specific proof. Instead of “personalized care,” say what that actually looks like in your office.
● Use real patient language from reviews. If families keep mentioning your team, flexibility, payment options, or how comfortable their child felt, make that part of your messaging.
● Make affordability easy to understand. Do not bury financing, insurance, or payment-plan information three clicks deep.
● Show the experience, not just the result. Parents want to picture what the first visit feels like.
● Repeat your strongest differentiator across your website, Google profile, ads, and social content so the message feels consistent.
The bottom line:
People do not choose the practice they understand the least.
They choose the one that makes the decision feel clear, safe, and easy.
🔥Trending in the Orthopreneurs Facebook Group🔥
💬 Exclusivity Clause in an Associateship
How common is it to have an “exclusivity” clause in a 3-day per week associateship? That is, I’d be working 3 days per week at a practice, and the contract says I cannot work anywhere else at the same time regardless of distance. Thanks for anyone’s input!
🗣️Sharing experiences can help make the right choice for you!
🎙️ On the Podcast: The 5 Biggest Mistakes I’ve Made in My Career | 5MF
What if some of the best decisions you’ll ever make in your career come from learning which mistakes not to repeat?
After more than three decades in practice, I’ve made plenty of decisions that worked out — and plenty that taught me expensive lessons. In this Five Minute Friday, I’m breaking down five of the biggest mistakes I’ve made throughout my career so you can hopefully avoid learning some of these lessons the hard way.
✨ Final Thoughts
This week gives us a pretty clear picture of where things are going. McDonald’s is already using AI to reshape how tens of thousands of physical locations operate, Meta is changing how we may interact with computers, and the major AI companies are pouring extraordinary amounts of compute into systems that are already beginning to make meaningful scientific discoveries.
The practical question is what you’re doing to keep up. Give your team access to capable AI tools, train them to use those tools well, and keep looking for the workflows where AI can save time, improve performance or eliminate unnecessary work. The technology is going to keep moving quickly. Your goal should be to make sure the capabilities of your practice are moving with it.
– Mike Vidikan
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