Dr. Jones sends you $500 crown cases. He calls constantly, texts you on weekends, and your team groans when his name appears. But he's high-revenue, so he's worth it... right?
Wrong.
I ran the numbers on a client exactly like this. That $500 case cost me $160 in hidden friction—3 phone calls, 2 personal texts, 15 minutes of detective work chasing missing information, and a 10% remake rate.
Meanwhile, my $120 "easy" client who used the portal and never called? More profitable.
Dr. Jones wasn't my best client. He was my most toxic one—killing my profitability and my team's morale while I thanked him for the business.
You're managing your lab by invoice totals, not by data. You can't see:
This invisible cost is your Client-Friction Cost (CFC)—the "Anxiety Tax" you pay on every dollar from difficult clients.
Your team absorbs the chaos. The constant interruptions. The weekend texts. The cases that require detective work because information is missing or unclear.
They become human shock absorbers until they burn out and resign. You're treating all revenue as "good revenue," but some of that revenue is costing you your sanity.
You're being squeezed, but you don't know who's squeezing you.
Your "high-anxiety" clients hide in plain sight because their invoice totals look great. But when you track the true cost—admin time, your personal interruptions, remake rates, and chaos management—the math flips.
The path forward: Separate your high-anxiety clients from your low-anxiety clients. This is how you get your life back, protect your team, and find your real profit.
You must track the emotional costs that never appear on your P&L:
These "touches" cost you money and peace of mind. Track them for 30 days. You cannot manage what you cannot measure.
You can't manage Client-Friction Cost on sticky notes and gut feel. You need:
A single communication channel where all client interaction is logged against their case file. No more "he said, she said." No more scattered texts, emails, and phone notes.
An LMS that connects behavior to outcomes. When you run a client report, you should see:
A "True Profit & Peace" dashboard that ranks every client by their real value to your business—not just their invoice total.
This gives you a data-driven Client Ranking. This is your freedom.
With real data in hand, you now have permission to:
Fire your bottom 10% of high-anxiety, low-profit clients.
It feels amazing. You're not being cruel—you're being strategic. You're freeing up bandwidth for clients who respect your systems and your team.
Raise prices for high-friction clients.
Implement an "Anxiety Tax"—15-20% premium for clients who refuse to use your portal, call repeatedly, or text you on weekends. If they want to operate outside your system, they can pay for the privilege.
Reward your "flow state" clients.
Give a 5-10% discount to clients who use your portal exclusively, provide complete case information upfront, and communicate during business hours. These are the clients you want to clone.
The Financial & Emotional Result
Within 30 days of implementing CFC tracking:
Within 90 days:
You don't have a revenue problem. You have a visibility problem.
Somewhere in your client list is a Dr. Jones—high invoice totals, high friction, low actual profit—who is stealing your peace of mind and making you think it's your fault for not being more "accommodating."
Stop apologizing. Start tracking.
Your "best" client isn't the one who sends you the biggest invoices. Your best client is the one who respects your systems, values your expertise, and lets you run your business like a business—not a 24/7 crisis hotline.
Track your Client-Friction Cost. Find your Dr. Jones. Then make the call.
Your team—and your bank account—will thank you.
The hard truth: If you don't know which clients are costing you money and sanity, you're paying more than you think. It's time to make the invisible visible.
Paolo Kalaw is the founder of EviSmart – Where Dental Work Flows.
A lifelong dental lab veteran, Paolo has owned and operated dozens of labs worldwide. He’s lived the “10 Anxieties” of lab ownership firsthand — from production bottlenecks to remake nightmares.
He created EviSmart to solve the problem no one else could: to give lab owners the operating system for the modern, product-led lab.
EviSmart empowers labs to:
Paolo and the EviSmart team believe there’s a better way to run a dental lab — one that’s profitable, scalable, and stress-free.
