Puerto Vallarta, Mexico|February 27 to March 2, 2025
Three days at a 22,000 square foot private luxury mansion outside Puerto Vallarta with a small group of dentists and two faculty members who never left the property. Puerto Vallarta became the proof of concept for what Luxury Dental Retreats could be.
What made it work wasn’t the setting alone. Everyone stayed on the property, which meant the conversations kept going long after the sessions ended. Some of the most useful conversations happened over dinner, by the pool, or simply because nobody had anywhere else they needed to be.
Santorini runs October 27 to November 1, 2026.
Applications are open.
I’ve traveled with my family for about 25 years, and I kept noticing the same thing. The best thinking I ever did happened somewhere that had nothing to do with dentistry. Then I’d fly to a conference, sit in a Hyatt Regency next to O’Hare, take notes for eight hours, and fly home with a folder I never opened again.
So Dr. Jeff Buske and I tried something different at the end of February 2025. I rented a 22,000 square foot private luxury mansion outside Puerto Vallarta, brought in two private chefs, and asked a small group of dentists to give us three days.
Nobody left when the education ended, because the education never actually ended. We started each day with a physical challenge. That rolled into workshops. Workshops rolled into dinner, and dinner ran long. The setting gave us the one thing conventional CE almost never does, which is time.
Most continuing education hands you a lecture and a lanyard. Puerto Vallarta handed people 72 hours.
| Traditional CE | Luxury Dental Retreats |
|---|---|
| Eight hours in a lecture hall | 72 hours of direct faculty access |
| Five hundred attendees | A small group of dentists |
| You listen | Everyone contributes and everyone extracts |
| A predefined curriculum | Education shaped by the people and the problems at the table |
| You leave with notes | You leave with people you still talk to |
You’re sitting five feet from the person teaching. You can stop mid-sentence and say here’s my actual situation, and get a real answer instead of a slide. Then another dentist at the table says I’ve been there, here’s what I did. That’s what the format buys, and it’s the only reason any of this is worth the airfare.
The Framework
The spine of the three days came from Dr. Buske’s work with dentists. He teaches expansion across four domains, and we ran the whole retreat through them.
The person doing the work comes first.
Physical capacity isn’t separate from professional capacity. Every day started with a physical challenge before anyone opened a laptop, and I was 219 days into working out every single day when we landed in Mexico.
Who you’ve become matters.
Who you are underneath the owner title, and what happens to the rest of your life when the practice is the only thing you tend.
Success has to fit inside a life.
How the practice fits into a life instead of consuming it, which usually means an honest look at the marriage, the calendar, and your own health.
Then the practice gets better.
Leadership, systems, profitability, and the decisions that determine what the practice is worth and how much of you it needs to keep running.
We worked all four at once because they don’t come apart. Nobody left with a page of ideas either. Every goal we set came with a plan behind it and people who’d hold you to it.
The work didn’t stop when a session ended.
Inside Puerto Vallarta
All of this footage came from the retreat itself. Nothing was staged for a camera. These six films capture different parts of what happened over three days in Puerto Vallarta. Together, they show what the format felt like from the inside.
Dr. Arnold on small groups, real-time questions, and why the most valuable education isn’t always clinical.
1:00
Arrival, dinner, journaling, difficult conversations, Dr. Buske on balance, and the final night together.
0:44
Personal and professional life, honest conversations, physical challenge, and what happens when people stop holding back.
1:06
Dr. Arnold on changing the setting, raising expectations, shared experiences, and what happens when dentists learn alongside people who are trying to grow too.
0:33
The mansion, the chefs, and the table everyone kept coming back to.
0:22
Beliefs, effort, results, and the mindset behind changing what happens next.
1:08
The Three Days
Mornings started with a physical challenge. Afternoons went to workshops. Evenings belonged to the two private chefs who took care of us the entire time, and the table stayed full long after the plates were cleared. And some of the conversations that mattered most happened at that table.
Puerto Vallarta Luxury Dental Retreat 2025
What It Proved
We built relationships in three days that I still maintain now, and several people told me afterward that it was career-changing. I’m in regular contact with every one of them.
I built the format around education. What I underestimated was how much the relationships would matter.
Practice ownership can be isolating. There are decisions nobody else in the building fully understands, and most owners make them alone. Put a small group of owners together for three days, take away the conference schedule and the distractions, and the conversations turn into something else entirely.
Puerto Vallarta will always be the first one. Dubai followed in August 2025, and Santorini comes this October. Both of them exist because of what we learned in Mexico.
What Dentists Said
Dr. Zaidi came looking for a different kind of CE, and what stood out afterward was the access. Dr. Ness came looking for something past clinical dentistry and practice management. They arrived for different reasons, and both of them found what they came for.
I got much more than I wanted or expected, to be totally honest with you. I’ve never done a CE like this before.
Dr. Hasan Zaidi Dentist Toronto, Canada
The topic wasn’t clinical. It wasn’t about practice management. It was really about life and building a different life for yourself.
Dr. Doug Ness Dentist San Diego, California
Looking Ahead
Santorini runs October 27 to November 1, 2026. Five days, a small group, 18 accredited CE hours, and the same format that started in Puerto Vallarta. Every application gets reviewed personally.
Request a Private ConversationSmall group. Application reviewed personally by Dr. Arnold.
