Bob Spiel is a dental practice consultant and co-founder of Dentist Partner Pros with over 25 years of business experience, including serving as a hospital and surgical center CEO before entering dentistry 17 years ago. With a mission to build high-performance practices that deliver exceptional service while doing more in less time with less stress, Spiel has transformed general and specialty practices by building leaders at all levels. His firm specializes in associate placement with an 85% success rate, dramatically outperforming the industry’s 75% failure rate. Beyond practice consulting, Spiel has become a vocal advocate for independent dentistry through his podcast “Just Say No to the DSO,” where he and financial analyst Nate Williams expose the predatory practices of private equity-backed dental service organizations and educate dentists about the hidden traps in acquisition offers.

Feeling tempted by those multi-million dollar DSO offers flooding your inbox? Many independent dentists are being courted by private equity-backed dental service organizations promising generational wealth, stress-free practice management, and the ability to “just focus on dentistry.” But what if these seemingly generous offers are actually sophisticated traps designed to extract maximum value from your life’s work while leaving you worse off than if you’d simply continued building your own practice?

According to Bob Spiel, veteran business consultant and co-founder of Dentist Partner Pros, the private equity takeover of dentistry follows the same destructive playbook used in medicine, veterinary care, and other service industries. Through his podcast “Just Say No to the DSO,” Spiel and financial analyst Nate Williams have reviewed over 100 DSO acquisition offers and found that not a single one truly benefits the selling dentist. The typical deal structure involves massive upfront numbers designed to create “foggy-eyed” decision-making, but the fine print reveals clawback clauses, production requirements, and equity promises that essentially amount to working five years to pay back money you thought you’d already received. Spiel’s analysis shows that dentists would literally be better off burning down their practices after 5.5 years than selling to a DSO and working under their terms.

In this episode of The Marketing32 Show, host Brett Allen interviews Bob Spiel about the hidden dangers of DSO acquisition offers and the broader private equity assault on independent dentistry. They explore the four-step private equity playbook, why 75% of associate relationships fail in traditional hiring versus Spiel’s 85% success rate, and how DSOs are buying influence through dental schools, trade publications, and industry events. Spiel shares his mission to educate dentists about maintaining independence while building successful practices through proven leadership principles, strategic associate hiring, and surrounding themselves with quality service providers rather than selling their life’s work for empty promises.