EBITDA: The 29% “Impossible” Goal (And How the Best Labs Are Quietly Achieving It)

Why Top Dental Labs Are Outperforming the Industry

For most lab owners, 29% EBITDA sounds like a fantasy number — something reserved for DSOs or corporate consolidators with massive scale and leverage.

But in reality, independent labs are quietly reaching and sustaining those margins — not by working harder, but by systematizing what used to be unpredictable.

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If you want to see how they’re doing it, you can download The 29% EBITDA Playbook — a practical framework that breaks down the exact systems, metrics, and process improvements driving this level of profitability.

The pattern across these labs is clear: they’ve eliminated chaos, stabilized operations, and built data-driven processes that scale profitably.

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The Real Barrier to Profitability Isn’t Revenue — It’s Chaos

When a lab runs on anxiety — chasing remakes, managing client friction, and fighting fires — it burns energy faster than it builds value.

Each point of chaos costs margin:

That’s 30 points or more of margin walking out the door every day because the lab runs on anxiety instead of a system.

The labs that break past this ceiling don’t rely on heroic effort — they rely on calm, repeatable systems.

‍The Systemic Path to 29% EBITDA

The turnaround always starts the same way: by converting uncertainty into visibility.

1. Improve Quality and Control Material Cost: Labs that use automated quality checks and AI-driven nesting optimization cut both remakes and material waste by up to 40%.
2. ‍Increase Administrative Efficiency: Every minute your team spends downloading files, entering case data, or searching for information is profit lost. By digitizing these manual processes, labs reclaim hours of productive time. ‍
3. Create a Friction-Free Client Experience : Miscommunication and missing instructions are silent profit killers.
   Top-performing labs simplify this with centralized communication platforms such as EviSmart Comm, where all case updates, approvals, and messages live in one place.
   The result is fewer errors, happier clients, and faster case turnaround.

When these components align, anxiety turns into predictability — and predictability is the foundation of EBITDA.

Small Gains, Compounding Results

High-performing labs don’t chase one big win. They build multiple small efficiencies that compound:

• 5% fewer remakes through better quality checks 

• 8% lower admin overhead by automating manual tasks  

• 10% faster case turnaround with smoother workflows

• 3% higher client retention from frictionless experiences  

Each of these improvements adds margin — but together, they multiply.
That’s how a 12–13% increase in revenue can translate to a 40–49% improvement in EBITDA.

Introducing the EBITDA Playbook: A Framework for Predictable Profitability

We’ve put together what the top labs are doing differently into a repeatable framework — the EBITDA Playbook.

This resource outlines:

• The 9 key operational metrics that directly impact profitability,

• How to measure and improve them systematically, and

• The proven automation framework used by high-EBITDA labs.

Every step is actionable immediately—no complex system migration, no organizational overhaul. Just structured, incremental wins that build confidence, stability, and measurable profit.

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If your goal is to reach—or exceed—29% EBITDA, this Playbook is where the transformation begins. Get it now!

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About the Writer

Paolo Kalaw
Founder & CEO, EviSmart

Paolo Kalaw leads EviSmart — an AI-powered dental automation platform with operations in Vancouver, Manila, and Seoul. He built EviSmart to help labs move beyond survival and into systemized scale — combining design, automation, and lab-first tools to power the modern dental economy. He believes the lab of the future is built on clarity, trust, and speed — and that the builders who embrace this will own the next decade.