Mike's Newsletter | Extended Edition | AI Moves Into the Physical World. Security Warnings Get Louder.
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
Apparently Everyone in Tech Decided to Make News Last Week
We usually try to keep this section to just a few of the most important stories. That wasn't happening this week. There was simply too much consequential news to leave out, so you're getting an extended edition.
🤖 AI Agents Can Now Control Physical Machines
Anthropic introduced the Model Hardware Standard, a new framework that allows AI agents to communicate directly with programmable physical equipment. In early applications, AI can operate robotic arms, microscopes and laboratory equipment, and even help perform complex tasks such as drug-discovery experiments and calibrating lasers used in quantum computers. Anthropic is starting with select partners for safety testing before eventually making the technology open source.
More Than 100 Companies Warn That AI Could Supercharge Cyberattacks
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Visa, IBM, Capital One and more than 100 other organizations issued a joint warning calling for a major increase in cybersecurity defenses as AI agents become more capable. Their concern is simple: the same AI that can automate legitimate work can also make hackers faster and more effective. The companies argue that the window for strengthening defenses before AI-driven attacks become significantly more sophisticated is narrowing.
👂Plaud Wants to Put an AI Assistant in Your Ear
Plaud unveiled Plaud One, AI-powered earphones that can record calls and in-person conversations, transcribe them and eventually hand the information to AI agents that can work with Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion and Slack. The charging case even has its own eSIM, allowing users to communicate with Plaud's AI remotely without their phone or computer. The larger idea is much more interesting than another pair of earbuds: AI is becoming something that's always available, hears what you hear and can turn conversations directly into actions.
💥 Nvidia Is Making a $279 Billion Bet That the AI Boom Is Just Beginning
Nvidia reported an astonishing $96.2 billion in quarterly revenue, including $89 billion from its data-center business, and expects $108 billion next quarter. But perhaps the crazier number is what's happening behind the scenes: Nvidia has accumulated roughly $279 billion in supply-chain commitments, locking up manufacturing capacity, advanced memory and other components it believes it will need to satisfy future AI demand. Meanwhile, Amazon is reportedly planning to deploy another 2 million Nvidia GPUs by 2028. Whatever you think about an AI bubble, Nvidia and its biggest customers are placing enormous real-world bets that demand for AI computing is still nowhere near its peak.
🤖 The Robot Boom Is Starting to Show Up in the Numbers
China produced an estimated 95% of the roughly 20,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide last year, and the money pouring into the industry continues to accelerate. This week, Xpeng's robotics division raised more than $900 million at a valuation above $6.3 billion, while RoboSense reported that shipments of LiDAR sensors for robotics jumped more than 500% year over year. There is an important reality check: today's humanoid robots still struggle with many ordinary factory tasks. But the rapid growth in sensors, manufacturing capacity and investment suggests that physical AI is moving from demonstrations toward a real industry.
🪙 Coinbase Just Put the Stock Market on the Blockchain
Coinbase launched tokenized versions of Apple, Nvidia, Meta and Alphabet shares on its Base blockchain this week. These aren't simply crypto tokens designed to mimic stock prices. Each token is backed 1:1 by an actual share held in regulated custody and gives its owner an economic claim on that share. The tokens can trade 24/7, including holidays, live inside a digital wallet and potentially be lent, borrowed against or used inside other blockchain-based financial applications. Coinbase recently received regulatory approval in Abu Dhabi to establish an international tokenization hub and says additional stocks are coming. For now, Americans ironically aren't eligible to buy the tokenized shares, but this may be an early glimpse of what the future stock market looks like. If you want to hear more about this story,
🪙 Bitcoin Surges as Washington Starts Writing the Rules for Crypto
Bitcoin climbed above $80,000 this week and is up roughly 28% in August. But the price may be less important than what's happening in Washington. The SEC proposed a new Regulation Crypto Assets framework last week designed to create clearer rules for crypto-related securities, while the Treasury is implementing the new GENIUS Act framework for regulated payment stablecoins. Put that together with Coinbase moving real stocks onto blockchain rails and the story becomes much bigger than Bitcoin: the U.S. appears to be moving from debating whether crypto belongs in the financial system toward establishing rules for how it will operate within it.
Why Does All of This Matter?
Step back from the individual headlines and something much bigger is happening.
AI is moving from answering questions to taking actions, and now from software into earbuds, robots and physical equipment. The infrastructure companies powering it are spending hundreds of billions of dollars because they're betting that demand is still in its early stages. At the same time, the financial system is beginning its own technological transition, with dollars, stocks and other assets increasingly capable of moving onto programmable blockchain rails.
For an orthodontic practice, the takeaway isn't that you need a robot at the front desk or Bitcoin on your balance sheet. It's that the underlying technology businesses operate on is changing unusually quickly.
Over the next several years, practices will increasingly have AI agents handling calls, follow-ups, scheduling, documentation, marketing and administrative work. Patients will interact with their own AI agents. Wearable AI may capture conversations and automatically turn them into tasks. Robots will gradually become economically viable for more types of physical work. Payments and financial infrastructure may change. And many capabilities that seem expensive or experimental today will become cheap and ordinary surprisingly quickly.
You don't need to adopt everything early. But you probably do need to pay attention earlier than you used to.
And that’s why I love writing this newsletter. So for those of you reading right now, thank you.
🦾 Mike’s Tip of the Week: Turn AI Into Your Investment Research Partner
Most of us ask AI how to improve our business. Here's a more uncomfortable exercise: ask it how it would destroy your business. Imagine a highly ambitious orthodontist is opening three miles away from you. They're well funded, technologically sophisticated, great at marketing, and their goal is to take as much market share from you as possible.
TRY THIS PROMPT:
Pretend you are an aggressive, extremely smart orthodontist opening a competing practice in my market. Your goal is to take market share from me and eventually make my practice irrelevant. [Give it information about your practice, market, website, link to reviews, pricing, and anything else it should know.] Analyze my practice like a competitor would.
Tell me:
Where I am most vulnerable.
Which patients you would try to steal from me first.
What you would offer that I currently don't.
How you would position yourself differently.
What marketing channels you would attack.
What weaknesses you see in my website, messaging, reviews, patient experience, pricing, financing, or follow-up.
What would make it difficult for you to compete with me.
The five things I should strengthen now before a competitor exploits them.
Be specific and critical. Do not try to make me feel good about my business. I want to discover weaknesses before my competitors do. Before beginning, ask me whatever questions you need to better understand my practice and market. You can make this dramatically better by uploading your website copy, Google reviews, competitor websites, marketing materials, treatment fees, consult process, and even call transcripts.
---
Sometimes the most useful question isn't "How do I get better?"
It's "If someone wanted to beat me, how would they do it?"
✨ Astro Outlook: Mercury in Virgo Wants the Details Right
Week of August 31: Mercury is in ♍Virgo♍, which is a useful symbol for precision, clean communication, and fixing the small things that create daily friction. You do not need to know astrology for the takeaway here: this is a good week to slow down and get the details right before you make the next move.
The practical moment: look for the places where vague instructions are costing your team time. The handoff from phone call to consult. The script for financial objections. The way notes are entered. The process for missed calls. The checklist for new-patient onboarding. If your team keeps asking the same question, the system is probably not clear enough yet.
Best use of the week: pick one recurring communication problem and clean it up. Rewrite the script, clarify the owner, define the next step, and remove the “I thought someone else was handling it” gap. Small clarity compounds faster 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🔥
💬 Biohazard Protocol
Hello all! What would y’all do if you had the first patient of the afternoon walk up to your clinic door and just projectile vomit all over the place? The door, floor, walls, pretty much everything except the ceiling was covered in vomit. It basically created a moat of vomit, preventing patients from being able to come back to the ortho bay for their appointments.
It was like the pea soup scene from The Exorcist. We had to reschedule the first two hours of patients to clean it up. I went to Walmart and got kitty litter, bleach, and a burner broom/mop, and our cleaning crew came in to help. Patients were upset AT US, too, including the mom of the boy who threw up. She stated, "He already hasn't been seen in four months!" when we told her he needed to be rescheduled. Well lady, it's gonna be five!!
Looking for recommendations, what you would have done in this situation, other similar horror stories, etc.
🗣️Sharing experiences can help make the right choice for you!
🎙️ On the Podcast: Stop Waiting: Fix Your Practice’s Biggest KPI Today l 5MF
What if I told you there’s a guaranteed way to make your orthodontic practice more profitable—and it starts with identifying just ONE number?
Most practice owners know they want more production, better profitability, or higher case acceptance. The problem is that knowing you want growth isn’t the same as knowing exactly where to focus. In this Five Minute Friday, I’m challenging you to stop trying to fix everything and identify the one KPI that could make the biggest difference in your practice right now.
✨ Final Thoughts: Watch the Direction
You don’t need to react to every headline.
But when enough signals start pointing the same way, pay attention.
The advantage often goes to the people who recognize the shift early and start adapting before everyone else.
– Mike Vidikan
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