Your New Hire’s Trainer is Always Available

Last week: why culture keeps people longer than pay does. This week: getting new hires productive fast, plus the something new I told you was coming.

Orthodontists at AAO 2026 Asked How to Train New Hires Faster. Here’s a Coach That Never Clocks Out.

One of the questions orthodontists brought to AAO 2026 was simple: how do I onboard and train new employees faster? Fair question. Gallup found only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding, and just 29% of new hires say they feel fully prepared and supported afterward.

Picture day three for your new Smile Stylist. Your lead assistant is slammed, you’re with a patient, and the new hire needs to know how to set up for a bonding appointment. They can interrupt someone, guess, or freeze. None of those are great options.

Now run that same day three in an office where someone on your team already built the answer. The new hire types the question, gets the setup in four short steps, and keeps moving. Nobody gets pulled away from a patient. That office isn’t bigger or richer than yours. It just has one person who knows how to build this stuff.

Build an AI onboarding coach

Take the knowledge stuck in your team’s heads and put it somewhere a new hire can ask about it 50 times without anyone sighing.

Gather what you have. SOPs, checklists, phone scripts, your handbook, even photos of the sticky notes on the sterilization room wall. Rough is fine.
Load it into an AI project. In Claude, create a Project and upload the files. In ChatGPT, build a custom GPT. Same idea.
Give it instructions. Paste the prompt below so it answers like a patient trainer from your office.

You are the onboarding coach for [PRACTICE NAME], an orthodontic office. New team members will ask you how we do things here.

Answer only from the documents in this project. If the answer isn’t in them, say so and tell the new hire to ask [TRAINER NAME].

Keep answers short and step-by-step. Use the same names we use for roles and rooms. When it fits, connect the answer to one of our core values: [LIST VALUES].

Never ask for or discuss patient information.

One rule: keep patient information out of it. SOPs and scripts only.

Quick question before you move on. Who in your office would actually do this? Gather the files, set up the project, and update it every time a policy changes? If a name just popped into your head, that’s your AI Operator. Almost every practice has one. They just don’t have the training or the time carved out yet. Hang onto that name. I’ll come back to it.

Give every role a 30-day ramp

New hires settle in faster when they can see the finish line. Ask your AI coach to draft a 30-day plan for each role from your SOPs, then have your lead adjust it. A simple shape works:

Week 1: learn the why, the values and the systems
Week 2: shadow and ask questions
Weeks 3 and 4: do it with a coach nearby, then own it

The doctor’s 15 minutes

Gallup found that when managers take an active role in onboarding, new hires are 3.4 times as likely to strongly agree their experience was exceptional. In a practice, that manager is often you. Fifteen minutes on day one, at the end of week one and at day 30 tells a new hire they matter here. The same goes for anyone you ask to learn something new, AI included. Your attention is what tells them it counts.

Crazy Enough to Work: The New Hire Builds the Coach

Give every new hire a first-week assignment: interview three veterans about how they handle one part of the job, record the answers on a phone, and add the transcript to the AI coach. The new hire learns faster and meets the whole team, and the next new hire inherits a smarter coach. Your onboarding gets better every time you hire.

The something new: AI Operator Academy

Last week I told you I was building something for the person on your team you most want to keep. It’s called the AI Operator Academy, and it opens today.

Here’s how it works. One person already on your payroll, usually your office manager, your Rainmaker or your marketing lead, meets with me live every Tuesday and learns to build the AI systems your practice runs on. They build during the sessions, get homework in between, and get real help when they’re stuck. No tech background needed. I built it for people who don’t think of themselves as tech people.

The onboarding coach in this email is one of the first things they’d build. From there it keeps going. Training manuals pulled from what your team already knows. One place where everyone finds the doctor’s answers instead of interrupting the doctor. Consult recaps and follow-ups to undecided families going out the same afternoon, in your voice. Morning huddle outlines waiting before anyone walks in. Dashboards that update themselves. And everything they build stays inside your four walls.

I know the first question, because every doctor asks it: “What if I train her and she leaves?” I built the program around that one. The work lives in your practice, not in one person’s head, and there’s a way to bring a second team member through so the know-how never sits with just one person again.

We kick off November 10 and wrap the last week of December. So your Operator walks into January with a title they earned and systems already running, while most offices are still making New Year’s resolutions about AI. The big DSOs pay whole departments for this. You’ll have it in-house.

Start with the free training. It’s 45 minutes, on demand, and starts the second you register. I walk through why the person who explains missed appointments to parents all day is better at AI than any tech hire, where practices overpay outsiders every month, and how to get more done without adding a hire. All the Academy details, including the perks for founding practices, are in the training.

Watch the free training here

Pick one and try it this week

Trying something new couldn’t hurt, and it might be the thing that changes everything for your practice. Gather your SOPs into one folder, build the coach, or put your three 15-minute check-ins on the next new hire’s calendar. And if you’d rather have someone on your team who builds tools like this every week, watch the training before the founding cohort fills.

Next week: the finale, and the toughest issue in the series. The person who might be costing you your best people.

Dino

P.S. Remember the name that popped into your head earlier? Forward this email to them and watch the free training together. It’ll tell you fast whether they’re your Operator.