The Burleson Box: A Podcast from Dustin Burleson, DDS, MBA cover art

The Burleson Box: A Podcast from Dustin Burleson, DDS, MBA

The Burleson Box: A Podcast from Dustin Burleson, DDS, MBA

By: Dustin Burleson DDS MBA
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 Welcome to the Burleson Box podcast – your go-to resource for dentists and orthodontists seeking game-changing insights. Dive into compelling, evidence-backed guidance from renowned authors and experts who've shared their life's work in top-selling books. Join us alongside influential CEOs, CMOs, academic thought leaders, and savvy business investors as we unravel the intricacies of marketing, management, and leadership best practices. Uncover the impact of your decisions on all facets of your organization, and elevate your expertise with actionable wisdom. Tune in for a transformative journey in private practice success.All Rights Reserved, Dustin S. Burleson, DDS, MBA Economics Leadership Management Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • Rebecca Hinds on Your Best Meeting Ever

    Rebecca Hinds on Your Best Meeting Ever
    Feb 6 2026
    In this episode of The Burleson Box, Dr. Dustin Burleson sits down with Rebecca Hinds, PhD, to explore a topic that affects every practice, every business, and every team: the meeting culture you’ve inherited, and the meeting culture you’re choosing to tolerate.Rebecca opens with one of the most memorable details from her book: dysfunctional meetings were once documented as an intentional sabotage tactic during World War II. The point is not to make you paranoid about your calendar. The point is that the behaviors that waste time in meetings are remarkably consistent, and most people do not need convincing that meetings are broken. They already feel it.From there, Rebecca makes the case for a complete shift in how leaders think about meetings. Her premise is that meetings should be treated like products. They are where decisions get made, priorities get set, and culture gets built or broken, yet they are rarely designed with intention. Organizations often obsess over optimizing everything except the mechanism that dictates how work actually moves. When you treat a meeting like a product, you stop scheduling by habit and start designing for the user, the people in the room who are giving you their time, their focus, and their judgment.One of the most practical concepts we cover is “Meeting Doomsday,” a 48-hour calendar reset where recurring meetings get deleted and employees rebuild their calendars from scratch. The power of this approach is psychological. Traditional meeting audits cause people to defend existing meetings because there’s social pressure, guilt, and fear of offending someone. Doomsday creates a clean slate, and what Rebecca finds is that most of the time savings come from redesigning meetings, not only canceling them. Meetings shrink. Attendee lists tighten. Formats become clearer. Small improvements compound fast, and teams stop carrying old meetings forward simply because they’ve always been there.Rebecca also explains why managers suffer the most from unproductive meeting load. Her research shows unproductive meetings have increased since 2019, and managers have experienced the biggest jump. The reason is structural. Meetings are often a symptom of a broken communication system. When people do not know where work lives, where decisions get documented, or how to move projects forward asynchronously, managers end up funneling information upward and distributing clarity downward. They become the human router for dysfunction, and the calendar becomes the penalty.To help leaders respond, Rebecca introduces the concept of meeting minimalism. Great products are minimalist by design, clear, purposeful, and free of clutter. Meetings should follow the same discipline. She encourages leaders to apply minimalism across four dimensions: meeting length, agenda items, attendees, and frequency. Even a small shift, such as running a 25-minute meeting instead of a 30-minute meeting, can force a team to design with intention instead of letting work expand to fill time. She also shares why standing meetings tend to run shorter and can change behavior in the room by reducing territorial dynamics.We also get into a theme that most leaders underestimate: meetings are deeply human. Rebecca talks about the value of injecting delight, moments of joy and surprise, into meetings, especially in a world where so much of work has become mediated by technology. A small unexpected shout-out, a personal story, or a simple ritual can change how people experience collaboration. These touches do not need to be cheesy. They need to be memorable.A major highlight of the episode is Rebecca’s breakdown of agendas. Many leaders assume agendas automatically improve meetings, but her research points to a more honest truth: agendas only work when they’re designed well. Too often, agenda items are recycled, vague, and structured like a laundry list. Rebecca’s favorite fix is deceptively simple. Convert each agenda item into a verb and a noun. That shift forces clarity. It also makes it obvious when an item is complete, which helps meetings end on time and decisions actually land.Finally, we talk measurement. Rebecca explains why meeting metrics are tricky, because people are conditioned to assume meetings are inherently bad, which makes traditional feedback systems unreliable. Her recommendation is ROTI, Return on Time Investment, a simple 0–5 score that helps leaders understand whether the meeting was worth the time. When paired with one follow-up question about how to improve by one point, ROTI becomes a lightweight system for continuous improvement rather than a complaint box.If you lead a practice, run a department, manage a team, or simply want your calendar to stop owning your week, this episode will change the way you think about meetings. You’ll walk away with principles you can apply immediately, without software, without bureaucracy, and without turning your team into meeting accountants.Resources...
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    38 mins
  • Travis and Dr. Logan Frederickson on Peak Performance

    Travis and Dr. Logan Frederickson on Peak Performance
    Jan 2 2026

    Most healthcare professionals are trained to sprint.

    Dental school is a sprint. Medical school is a sprint. Residency is a sprint. Early practice ownership often feels like one long push fueled by adrenaline, discipline, and grit. That approach can work for a while. Eventually, it breaks down.

    In this episode of The Burleson Box, Dustin Burleson sits down with Travis Frederickson and Dr. Logan Frederickson to unpack what peak performance actually means for healthcare providers over the long term.

    Travis draws on decades of experience training elite athletes and coaching high-performing professionals. Dr. Logan brings the medical perspective, explaining what happens physiologically and neurologically when stress, sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, and constant mental load remain unchecked.

    Together, they explore why so many dentists and physicians feel successful yet depleted, how energy becomes the real constraint later in a career, and why healthspan matters as much as lifespan. The conversation moves beyond productivity tips and into the deeper work of alignment across physical, mental, emotional, and personal domains.

    This episode challenges the idea that more effort is always the answer and replaces it with a more durable framework for clarity, sustainability, and long-term excellence. If you care about performing well at work without sacrificing your health, relationships, or sense of purpose, this conversation is worth your time.

    Resources Mentioned:

    • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
    • Peak Performance for Healthcare Providers - Now Streaming

    ***

    Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, exclusive study guides, special edition books each quarter, powerpoint and keynote presentations and two tickets to Dustin Burleson's Annual Leadership Retreat.

    http://www.theburlesonbox.com/sign-up

    Stay Up to Date: Sign up for The Burleson Report, our weekly newsletter that is delivered each Sunday with timeless insight for life and private practice. Sign up here:

    http://www.theburlesonreport.com

    Follow Dustin Burleson, DDS, MBA at:

    http://www.burlesonseminars.com


    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Jimmy Nicholas on AI, AEO, and the Future of Dental & Orthodontic Marketing

    Jimmy Nicholas on AI, AEO, and the Future of Dental & Orthodontic Marketing
    Dec 5 2025

    In this season-finale episode of The Burleson Box, Dustin Burleson is joined by longtime collaborator and digital marketing pioneer Jimmy Nicholas for a wide-ranging conversation on how artificial intelligence is actively reshaping dentistry and orthodontics.

    Their story goes back more than a decade to the Dan Kennedy GKIC days, a marketer-of-the-year competition, and the early experiments that turned Google into one of Dustin’s top sources of new patients. Now, after selling his agency and sitting out a non-compete, Jimmy returns with a new focus on AI, compliance, automation, and what he calls “simple alignment” across marketing, operations, and team communication.

    This conversation moves well past surface-level AI hype. Dustin and Jimmy unpack what is actually working right now inside real practices, what most doctors still misunderstand, and where real opportunity exists heading into 2026.

    You will hear why Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, may soon matter more than traditional SEO, how AI is changing follow-up systems, phone automation, and patient communication, and why most medical and dental websites are still invisible to large language models. They also discuss the risks that come with careless AI use, including HIPAA violations, hallucinated data, and unreliable financial calculations.

    This episode is essential listening for any practice owner who wants to stay competitive, protect their team’s time, and apply AI with discipline rather than guesswork.

    Resources Mentioned:

    • AI Beta Group (Free Community)
    • Wealthy Entrepreneur Strategy Consultations

    ***

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    ***

    Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, exclusive study guides, special edition books each quarter, powerpoint and keynote presentations and two tickets to Dustin Burleson's Annual Leadership Retreat.

    http://www.theburlesonbox.com/sign-up

    Stay Up to Date: Sign up for The Burleson Report, our weekly newsletter that is delivered each Sunday with timeless insight for life and private practice. Sign up here:

    http://www.theburlesonreport.com

    Follow Dustin Burleson, DDS, MBA at:

    http://www.burlesonseminars.com


    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 5 mins
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