Our story

Built from scratch. No roadmap required.

Dental school didn't teach us how to build successful businesses, and we quickly realized the industry's standard advice wasn't enough. So we became our own testing ground—trying, measuring, refining, and improving until we found what actually moved the needle. The strategies we teach aren't theories or recycled talking points. They're the same systems we use in our own practices every day

How it started

Dental school teaches you to clean teeth. The rest, you learn along the way.

In 2008, Dr. Mark S. Dill opened his first practice with two employees and zero patients. No business degree. No template for what a thriving dental practice was supposed to look like. Just a chair, a lease, and a lot of lessons ahead of him.

Seventeen years later, he has four locations across Tennessee — three in Chattanooga, one in Knoxville — and a team built around the same operational philosophy he developed from the ground up. Along the way, word got out. Dentists from across the country started calling. They wanted to visit, to ask questions, to see how it was done. Dr. Dill always said yes.

That open-door approach is what eventually became Dental Guiding Point — a podcast for dentists who are serious about building something real, and who want honest guidance from people who've actually done it.

"I learned how to clean teeth in school. Not one class on how to run a business. We got where we are because people helped us along the way — and now we want to be that for the next dentist."

— Dr. Mark S. Dill

Meet the hosts

The people behind the podcast

Dr. Mark S. Dill

Dr. Mark S. Dill

CEO & Host

Dr. Dill has been practicing dentistry since 2008, when he opened his first location with two employees and not a single patient on the books. What followed was seventeen years of building — hiring, systems, culture, growth, acquisition — learned through experience, guidance, and an obsessive commitment to doing things right.

Today he runs four practices across Tennessee and has become a quiet resource for dentists around the country who want to see what a high-performing, people-first dental operation actually looks like. He doesn't charge for that access. He just opens the door.

On Dental Guiding Point, Dr. Dill brings the same candor he brings to those visits — no sales pitch, no polished corporate speak. Just real talk about what it takes to build something worth building.

Toria Plank

Toria Plank

COO & Host

Toria has been part of Dr. Dill's team for seventeen years — starting as a dental assistant and growing into the role of Chief Operating Officer. She has lived every phase of the practice's evolution from the inside, which means she understands not just what the decisions were, but what it actually felt like to make them.

As COO, Toria owns the systems, the people, and the processes that make four locations run as one cohesive organization. On the podcast, she brings that operational clarity to topics that dentists rarely get straight answers on — staffing, workflows, culture, and the unglamorous mechanics of a practice that actually works.

Why we do this

The show we wish had existed

Dental Guiding Point is the show Dr. Dill and Toria would have wanted when they were starting out — honest, practical, and grounded in real experience rather than theory.

Every episode is built around the questions dentists are actually asking: how do I hire people I can trust? What do my numbers actually mean? How do I build something that doesn't fall apart when I'm not in the room? When does it make sense to grow, and when does it make sense to hold?

These are the questions that determine whether a practice thrives. And they're the questions nobody thought to put in the curriculum.

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