Dental practice financials are the numbers that show whether your practice is truly healthy: your collections, your AR, your hygiene production, your overhead, and your profit. If you avoid them, you are not alone. Plenty of practice owners know what they collect each month and that the bills get paid. But they have no idea what their AR looks like, whether they overpay for supplies, or how to plan for that next big equipment purchase. Dental school never taught you the business side, so it is easy to decide you are bad with numbers when you were simply never trained.

Brandi Marzolino, a 20-year dental industry veteran and leadership coach and host of The Real Talk of Dental, sits down with Jessica Nunn, CPA, founder and CEO of Maven Financial Partners. Maven is a female-led financial consulting firm serving dental, dermatology, and plastic surgery practices. Jessica shares how she went from preparing tax returns to building a firm where clients actually look forward to their monthly numbers meeting. You will hear her core principle, big change requires big change. You will also hear why feelings aren't facts when you review your P&L, and how a budget tells your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. You already earned your seat. Now it is time to look under the hood.

You’ll learn:

• Why dental practice financials feel so scary: Jessica Nunn explains how money conflict growing up and zero business training in dental school lead owners to assume they are bad with numbers.
• What big change requires big change means for your profitability: a financial consultant brings awareness, but small tweaks rarely move the needle, so real profit growth demands real change in how you operate.
• How feelings aren't facts plays out in your dental practice financials: owners who feel they had a bad month often had their most profitable one, driven by hygiene, ortho starts, or a strong associate.
• How to fix team compensation that is hurting your profit: Jessica's take on paying your team wrong, gradual pay restructuring, and when keeping a loyal team at a higher cost is a valid choice.
• Founder-led practices vs private equity-backed platforms: why about 98% of Maven Financial Partners clients are founders working side by side with their teams, and how emotion can cloud lab and vendor decisions.
• What a dental practice budget actually does: Maven's definition of a budget as telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went, plus how a year-at-a-glance plan keeps you proactive.
• How to choose the right financial partner for your practice: why approachable advice in plain English matters, and why a CPA or advisor who leaves you feeling dumb or in tears is the wrong fit.

🔗 Join the community and submit your anonymous questions:

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We talk about:

00:00 Welcome to The Real Talk of Dental

01:00 Do you really know your dental practice numbers

05:00 Jessica Nunn's path from CPA to Maven founder

09:00 Correcting veteran CPAs as a young woman

12:00 Why big change requires big change

14:00 Are you bad with numbers or just scared

17:00 You cannot measure what you are not tracking

18:00 Feelings aren't facts in your dental practice financials

21:00 Why does a financial review feel like getting naked

28:00 Running your practice by values or the bottom line

32:00 A budget tells your money where to go

33:00 Finding a financial partner you actually vibe with

Got an insurance horror story or a fee negotiation confession? Leave Brandi an anonymous voicemail for The Real Talk of Dental at https://www.speakpipe.com/TheRealTalkofDental

Connect with Jessica

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-nunn-cpa-1474a417/

Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/maven-financial-partners/

Company Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mavenfinancial

Website: https://www.mavenfp.com/

Connect with me

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandimarzolino/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandi.marzolino/

https://courageandjoyatwork.com/

https://leadhershipexperience.com/

Phone: 616-682-6222

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