I trained as a maxillofacial surgeon and moved into orthodontics. With two partners I co-founded a group of three clinics in Paris, which means I spent years reading a P&L rather than a report about one. I later spent time inside Publicis Health, where I saw how medical marketing is run when the budgets are pharmaceutical rather than practice-sized.
While the clinics were running, I hired an agency. Over a year I paid them more than 23,000 EUR. They held my Google and Meta ad accounts in their own name, not mine. They spent a fraction of the budget and kept the rest. In twelve months the work produced one patient, who came in for a cleaning, while I was selling orthodontic treatment.
I only found out because I pulled the accounts myself and read the raw numbers. Nobody had told me the accounts should have been mine, that ads move in weeks while search takes months, or that a report ending at impressions is a report built not to be checked.
I was not careless. I was busy, and I assumed a full schedule meant the problem was handled. I built Forge because that assumption is expensive, and almost every practice owner I meet is making it.
I write the reference pages on this site myself. They are the pages I needed and could not find when I was the one signing the invoice.