Most of the press we share is me weighing in on a single topic — breath, retainers, fluoride. This one is different. Thrive Insider sat me down for a long-form founder interview, and for once the subject wasn’t a tooth; it was why Deering Dental exists at all. It’s the closest thing I have to a founding story, and it explains almost everything about how we treat people once they’re in the chair. Here’s the short version.

I spent the early part of my career bouncing between Miami practices, and I kept seeing the same things: schedules packed so tight there was no time to explain anything, treatment decided by insurance contracts instead of by the person in the chair, and waiting rooms full of people who’d rather be anywhere else. I was convinced there had to be a better way , so I wrote down everything people told me they hated about the dentist — and set out to build the opposite.

I set out to create a practice that is at the forefront of dental medicine while at the same time providing the old school experience and doctor patient relationship that your grandparents probably reminisce about.

We opened in 2015 with a tiny team and my husband answering phones on his days off from the fire department. We made plenty of mistakes, but people could tell I genuinely cared, and that turned out to matter more than any ad. To this day our guests rarely rave about a filling or a crown; they talk about never waiting, about being heard, about leaving feeling looked after. The clinical side is the part I obsess over, and the results  bear that out — but the experience is what they remember, and the reason they send us their families.

Ten years in, we’ve outgrown our space, added doctors, and kept growing — carefully, so we never water down what makes us us. If you’ve never had a dental visit that felt like the one I set out to build, I’d genuinely like to change your mind. It starts with a single visit.

Keep Smiling,

Dr. Yenile Pinto

Read the full interview on Thrive Insider →