Mike's Newsletter | AI Workflows Get Easier. Tech Giants Build Their Own Chips.
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
🚨 News Upadte
🎙️ Plaud AI Voice Recorder Adds MCP Integration — Meeting Transcripts Now Directly Connect to Claude and ChatGPT
Plaud announced that its AI voice recorder now supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP). At no additional cost, users can now directly access transcription and summary data stored on Plaud from AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude, eliminating the previously required manual steps of exporting and uploading data. Setup takes about 3 minutes. Users can now ask questions across all their meetings, draft follow-ups, and automate workflows directly from Claude or ChatGPT without copy-pasting transcripts. The company also introduced an automatic speaker identification feature that learns to recognize specific voices as recordings accumulate.
Why it matters: I've recommended Plaud for a while as a great tool for capturing patient consultations, team meetings, and case discussions — but the friction point has always been getting that data into Claude or ChatGPT to actually do something with it. You'd record, transcribe, export, then manually paste into your AI tool. This MCP integration eliminates that entirely. Now you can ask Claude directly — "What were the main objections to treatment?" or "Summarize the treatment decisions from today's cases." "Generate a follow-up email based on my consultation with Mrs. Smith." — and Claude reads the transcript on its own. No export, no copy-pasting, just seamless workflow. And it opens up the opportunity for automations.
The always helpful disclaimer: If you're recording patient conversations, ensure you have proper consent in your state and that your data handling meets HIPAA compliance.
🏭Tesla and SpaceX Announce Terafab — A $119 Billion Vertically Integrated Chip Factory in Texas
Tesla and SpaceX formally announced Terafab on August 6, 2026, a joint venture with Intel to build what Elon Musk describes as "the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far." The facility will be built in Grimes County, Texas, outside Houston, with more than 100 million square feet of manufacturing space planned. The companies have committed an initial $16.8 billion investment, with the total potential across multiple phases reaching $119 billion. The facility will employ at least 3,000 people and will produce chips for Tesla vehicles, Optimus humanoid robots, and SpaceX satellites. The project secured a 100 percent property tax abatement after County commissioners approved it in June 2026.
Why it matters: This is the clearest signal yet that frontier tech companies no longer trust the existing semiconductor supply chain. TSMC and Samsung have historically owned advanced chip production, but the AI infrastructure demands are so extreme, and the geopolitical risk of Taiwan concentration is so real, that major companies are willing to spend billions and divert free cash flow to build their own fabs. Terafab isn't solving today's chip shortage; it's a multi-year bet that vertical integration (designing, fabricating, packaging, and testing chips under one roof) is the only way to guarantee supply for the next generation of AI, robotics, and space infrastructure. For the broader economy: when companies stop outsourcing their most critical components, it signals either extreme confidence in future demand or extreme distrust of current supply. In this case, it’s probably both.
🦾 Mike’s Tip of the Week: The Refinement Loop — Getting Better Answers
The setup: The first answer isn't quite right. Most people get frustrated. Instead, use what you got back to ask something better.
The principle: If Claude's answer misses, don't restart — tell it what you need differently and try again.
Real example:
Claude's first answer: [gives you a generic staff scheduling approach]
Your refinement: "That's helpful, but it assumes we have more flexibility than we do. Our issue isn't the schedule structure — it's that we don't have enough TCs. Can you reframe this assuming we're not hiring, and we have 2 TCs for the next 6 months? What's actually possible?"
Why this matters: This is how real work happens. The first draft is never perfect. Learn to refine your questions and you’ll get back amazing answers in no time.
✨ Astro Outlook: A Total Solar Eclipse Puts Leo Season on Steroids
Week of August 10 - 16: this is eclipse week. A total solar eclipse and New Moon land in ♌Leo♌ on August 12 at 1:36 PM EDT — the first total solar eclipse visible from mainland Europe since 1999, and the opening eclipse on a Leo-Aquarius axis that hasn't been active in roughly twenty years.
Astrologically, eclipses function like an amplified New Moon: three times more potent, and prone to forcing beginnings rather than gently suggesting them. Mars also shifts into Cancer on August 11, staying there until late September, and Mercury conjoins Jupiter in Leo around August 15 — adding a burst of confident, expressive communication energy to the mix.
The practical moment: Leo eclipses are tied to visibility, leadership, and creative identity — being seen, whether you're ready or not. If you've been putting off stepping into a more public role at your practice (posting more, presenting to your team, being the face of your own marketing instead of outsourcing it), this eclipse tends to force the issue one way or another over the following weeks.
Best use of the week: Don't schedule your biggest swing-for-the-fences move exactly on August 12 — eclipse energy is unpredictable and better suited to noticing what wants to change than executing a precise plan. Instead, use the days around it to get honest about where you've been avoiding visibility, and let the Mercury-Jupiter conjunction on the 15th carry the actual conversation or announcement.
🗓️ 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 Text Your Default Channel, Not Your Backup Plan
Most practices still treat texting as a backup to phone calls. The data says that's backwards. SMS response rates in healthcare average around 53%, compared to roughly 6% for email, and reminder response rates run 52% for text versus 28% for email and 26% for phone. 85% of patients say they'd be more likely to schedule an appointment with a text reminder, and 84% say they'd be more likely to actually show up. If your default communication channel is still "call first, text if we have to," you're leading with the option patients respond to least.
Here's how to make the shift without creating a compliance headache:
Move appointment reminders and confirmations to text first, with phone as the fallback for anyone who hasn't opted in. Practices that do this consistently see no-show rates drop and front-desk call volume fall.
Get explicit opt-in at intake, not buried in a form nobody reads — tell patients directly that texting is how you'll reach them, and let them choose.
Keep texts logistics-only unless your platform is set up and BAA-covered for clinical content. A reminder, a callback number, or a next step is fine; detailed treatment information usually isn't.
Route anything that turns clinical to a human fast. Automation can handle scheduling and confirmations, but a question about pain, a broken bracket, or anything medical should escalate to staff immediately, not sit in an AI queue.
Use two-way texting for the moments that actually need a reply — rescheduling, transportation issues, day-of confirmations — rather than one-way blasts that patients can't respond to.
Watch your opt-in rate as its own metric. If a meaningful share of patients aren't opted in, your "text-first" system is only reaching part of your list.
The bottom line: The bottom line: Text isn't a nice-to-have add-on to your phone system anymore — for most patients, it's the channel they'll actually respond to. Building your reminder and confirmation system around it, done carefully, is one of the lowest-effort improvements available.
🔥Trending in the Orthopreneurs Facebook Group🔥
💬 Would love some feedback on this layout.
Posted as anonymous since a few competitors are in this group and do not know of our new building project.
Not the final draft but would love any and all feedback. *Stairs lead to a 2nd floor conference room and staff breakout room.
🗣️Sharing experiences can help make the right choice for you!
🎙️ On the Podcast: Are You Investing Like the Wealthy—or Just Saving?
In this episode of Five Minute Friday, I’m breaking down the different financial stages most orthodontists move through, from struggling with student debt and survival mode to having enough capital to access investments that may not have been visible earlier in your career. I share my own experience of rebuilding financially during orthodontic residency, the investing mistakes I made, and the lessons that changed how I think about preserving and growing money.
This is not individualized financial advice, but it is a challenge to become more educated, ask better questions, and surround yourself with experienced professionals and peers. The goal isn’t simply to earn more—it’s to use the income orthodontics provides to create greater freedom, security, and opportunity for yourself and your family.
✨ Final Thoughts: Access Is the New Decision
The biggest risk in a practice is not always the tool itself.
It is what the tool is allowed to touch.
Every login, integration, dashboard, and automation creates a doorway into your business. Some doors should be wide open. Some should require supervision. Some should not exist at all.
Growth gets easier when your systems are connected.
Leadership means knowing where the locks belong.
– Mike Vidikan
Our e-mail address is:
Comments