Dental Practice Heroes
Where dentists learn how to cut clinical days while increasing profits - without sacrificing patient care, cutting corners, or cranking volume. We teach you how to grow a scalable practice through communication, leadership, and effective management.
Hosted by Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a $6M collections group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago, we provide actionable advice for practice owners who want to intentionally create more time to enjoy their families, wealth, and deep personal fulfillment.
If you want to build a scalable practice framework that no longer stresses, drains, or relies on you for every little thing, we will teach you how and share stories of other dentists who have done it!
Dental Practice Heroes
Want Results? How Can a Coach Help?
Unlock the secrets of achieving both personal and professional growth by discovering the transformative power of hiring a coach. Imagine aligning your deepest personal ambitions with your professional goals, creating more time for yourself while reaching financial success. In our latest episode, Dr. Paul Etchison, Dr. Steve Markowitz, and Dr. Henry Ernst candidly share their journey with various coaches—ranging from life to sports coaches—and how coaching has been instrumental in maintaining accountability and uncovering insights that often go unnoticed. By reflecting on the experiences of renowned figures like Tom Brady, we underline the pivotal role of consistent guidance in avoiding pitfalls and fostering development, whether it's perfecting your golf swing or enhancing business practices.
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Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
I help dentists create thriving practices that make more money, require less of their time, and empower their teams to run the office seamlessly—so they can focus on what matters most.
Join the DPH Hero Collective and get the tools, training, and support you need to transform your practice:
- Comprehensive Training: Boost profit, efficiency, and team engagement.
- Live Monthly Webinars: Learn proven strategies for scaling your practice.
- Live Q&A Sessions: Get personalized help when you need it most.
- Supportive Community: Connect with practice owners on the same journey.
- Editable Systems & Protocols: Standardize your operations effortlessly.
Ready to build a practice that works for you? Visit www.DPHPod.com to learn more.
Do you ever feel like you might be underperforming in your dental practice? Well, I assure you you are not alone. Many practice owners find themselves juggling endless responsibilities and really just struggling to see that meaningful progress that they expect. And some others, they just know that they're destined for more and they're willing to get there. In this episode, we're going to dive into why you feeling stuck could be a sign that you're missing one crucial element a coach. Tune in as we explore how a coach could help you reach all the goals that you want and how we have personally utilized coaches to help us reach our goals.
Speaker 1:You are listening to Dental Practice Heroes, where we teach you how to build a scalable practice, make more money and take more time off. I'm Dr Paul Edgison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach and owner of a group practice collecting over $6 million in the south suburbs of Chicago. I want to teach you how to grow and systematize your dental practice so you can spend less time practicing and more time doing whatever it is that you love. Let's get started. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to Dental Practice Heroes.
Speaker 1:I am joined with my DPH coaches, dr Steve Markowitz and Dr Henry Ernst. We're picking apart topics to giving you actionable advice, and today we wanted to talk about something that we very much believe in I know a lot of people that share this belief as well is the power in hiring a coach for whatever you're doing. I mean, whether it be a personal trainer, a life coach, a therapist, someone to help you with your golf swing. I mean anything we want to be better at. It always helps to put us around people doing it better. So, henry, talk about like your experience with coaching and why you think that's an important part of your life and just personal growth.
Speaker 2:I have no idea where I would be in this world right now without coaching, and I'll tell you what. It started when I was really, really young, just playing football. Maybe it's like 10 years old. I never forgot. A coach told me listen, you want to be successful at life, find somebody that's really successful at what you want to do and kind of learn from them and mimic them and you'll get there. So you mentioned it really well, paul.
Speaker 2:No matter what facet of life, there is like people to guide us and help us, and especially people that have done it before to maybe skip the mistakes that you're going to make. The coaches in my life have led me to get so much further and not make mistakes that would have set me backwards. Look at Tom Brady, right? Tom Brady always says, no matter what point he got in his career, he always had a coach, a coach that continued to watch how he threw the ball. The reason why the dude never got hurt was because he practiced falling right. Who practices falling right? So this way you fall the right way and don't get hurt.
Speaker 2:So I've learned from you even, paul, like you know, having just a life coach right, somebody outside work that can just kind of guide you into life, and we've talked about it on previous podcasts. But the why right? My biggest thing that I love about coaching is, no matter who it is or what it is, what's your why? And let's kind of get whether it's dentistry, your business, how can we engineer your business so it can get you to your personal why? Hey, more time with my family, financial goals, get that beach house or whatever that looks like, which is very, very rewarding as a coach, on our side too.
Speaker 3:For me, coaching allows someone to hold me accountable to the things that I say I want to do and I'm actually doing them and also will keep me online. I, at one point in my life, was halfway okay at golf. I was hitting the ball, great, hitting the ball, great and all of a sudden, paul you know you do this a lot Just go, just fades away and all of a sudden you're hitting shanks. All the time I do the shanks a lot. Yeah, I'm just I'm talking.
Speaker 1:You're actually right, but yeah.
Speaker 3:And I'm sitting there with myself and I'm slowing it down and I'm doing all the stupid things and then two seconds, a coach comes over and goes what the hell are you doing with your elbow? And then I'm thinking about it. He's like just keep it back, just keep it close to your body. It's all you got to do. Honestly, as if we're both my coach and I were going to go on the golf course, I would have beat him every time, but he could still see and know me. He knew me well enough to know. Like, that's not your swing, dude, you're doing something different. You may not even know that you're doing something different. I'm able to hold you accountable to what I know you can do, and that was the benefit of a coach. And I took one. Look at it, look at my elbow. My elbow was like way up here doing a chicken wing thing and next thing, my swings back to where it was in the ball halfway.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, it's funny with golf is I had a coach and I was taking a bunch of lessons. And I'm slicing it over here and I'm getting my hands closer to my body and I start hitting it like a little, you know, a little draw. Ooh, that's nice. So you're like, hey, check that box, don't need a coach, no more. And that draw turns into a hook and then you can't figure out how to get to go back the other way. You know, all of a sudden you got to go back and he's like, okay, what I taught you you started doing and now you've taken it to the other extreme. Now we've got to get you back more.
Speaker 1:But it's, you know, it's one of those things too is that I've noticed in my life, and especially in just business and dentistry, is going to courses and just being around other people that are trying to have the same goals as you and networking. And I think this is also something that you get from a coach. And I've done this with, like you know, creating my website, writing copy I had a copy coach for a little bit and just be able to try to do something, but then also be able to get someone's outside opinion and ask questions. I mean there's so much power in getting your questions answered. I remember being an associate and just having a running list in my phone of dental things I didn't understand. And when I would go take a course, when they're like, oh okay, let's take a 15 minute break I was just right up to the instructor. I'm like I got this list of things I've been thinking about for the past three months. So if I had a coach that I talked to monthly, I'd be okay. I wouldn't have to do that.
Speaker 1:But my point in saying it is that don't let there be misunderstandings in your knowledge and gaps in your knowledge. Always get your answers that you need. But also it's that accountability and having somebody help you work through issues. I have friends that give me a really hard time about how I had a life coach and they still do it Like it'll still come up, like, oh, it sounds like a problem for your life coach, paul, they just don't get it. But there's something so powerful about somebody giving something that matters to you the energy that it deserves. And when you have a coach, you're focusing on it and you're trying to get better in it instead of just being complacent. So I think, no matter what, there is always opportunity for coaching.
Speaker 3:Most all people that we ask, or driven people, would say, of course, having a coach is amazing, it's great. Henry, why do you think most people are still hesitant to get coaching?
Speaker 2:I think there's that mantra that I went to dental school, I'm the badass, you know this, and that I mean there's this little mantra that I've noticed in dentists. They just feel like they know it and it's really sad because the people that are the most successful that I've noticed are the ones that are willing to have that candid conversation, like you said, paul, and I'm always happy to share the mistakes that I've made, because you learn a hundred times more things from the mistakes that you made rather than the successes you had. Like I always tell younger dentists with root canals that are just getting their feet wet root canals and molars and stuff. You do 19 of them. Everything went perfectly fine. You didn't really learn that much from it, it just happened. Right. That 20th one, you screwed up one little thing. You never forget it and I said it on the previous podcast. You never let a failure go to waste, right. So you remember that and you learn, and coaching is a two-way street. I think the biggest thing is I don't want other people to make any sort of mistakes that I have made. Learn from me and I'm learning from people that taught me beforehand, so we're all like a conglomerate of everything we've learned.
Speaker 2:I really realized that the value of coaching and the enjoyment of coaching just by luck. One time this was years ago this was when I was first starting my practice, a few years out, and I had a casual lunch. One of these lunches maybe that you're talking about, paul was just our dentist in a mastermind group and he just had his computer out and he was just telling me some problems with his practice and I gave him some tidbits over a half hour lunch and I thought nothing of it. About six or eight months later, come to the same mastermind meeting. He said you know what? I'm so grateful for you I almost forgot about the dude and he was like I'm so grateful for you. The advice that you gave me that lunch has led to about $200,000 more in revenue this year for my practice. And I said to myself wow, like I just was giving my thoughts and I wasn't even a coach back then. Who?
Speaker 3:paid for that lunch.
Speaker 2:I think he paid for it. He was gracious to pay for it. It was almost like I had, like a little hidden superpower that I didn't even realize. I was just giving friendly advice and giving some things that I messed up on and he could improve on. And I think the main thing is to answer your questions. If you've got to be candid, you have to also be like don't have an ego, right, we're all here to help each other. And accountability too, right? Some people don't want to be accountable. They want to be in that comfort zone. When somebody is making you accountable on a monthly basis, for example, you know it's like oh dude, I got to do something. Somebody's going to watch out for me doing it.
Speaker 1:Those- like accountability services like that'll come up on. I don't know why it comes up on my Facebook ads. It's not right now, but it has been in the past. But it's like you just hire some stranger and you just agree to hold each other accountable. I don't know how effective that would be, but the ads make it seem like it is you know Good marketing, paul, do you?
Speaker 3:It can be expensive and I'm putting that in quotes. We were talking before about being able to quantify the return. Do you think that's part of the apprehension to dive into coaching?
Speaker 1:I totally agree. Yeah, I think, and especially with, I mean, dental coaching. I think more times than not, almost unanimously, but there's sometimes that clients that I work with it's not really a monetary goal, it's more of a personal life. I just want more ease and joy while I'm at work, and those are difficult to quantify because it's just all about feelings. It's not numbers, it's metrics.
Speaker 3:Have you ever had someone who was happier at work be less profitable?
Speaker 1:Ever. I know that's what I was trying to think about is that when people come in with that goal, the profit always happens. You're right.
Speaker 3:It's just like, even when they're like my goal is I just want to enjoy my office more and I'm happy with how much money I'm making and I just want to be happier, and then we start to implement some things and like, oh, I feel better. And then they don't even look at the P&L. And then all of a sudden, next month we're looking at the P&L. They're like, holy, what just happened here? Healthy things, healthy businesses, happy people in healthy businesses create healthy profits every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I would also use the term balance, because so many people are just focused on numbers and numbers. And it's not about numbers, right, it's about being happy. We're only on this earth one time, so we have to get balance in what's going to make us happy with our families, with our interests, our hobbies and everything like that.
Speaker 1:Steve, who would you say is the most profound coach you've ever had, and for what area Can I say my wife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, good answer, good answer. It's like family.
Speaker 3:I don't know if she listens, but I make her listen to these. So thanks't. Thanks, len, I would say my current business coach I've been with him for three years has created enough accountability within myself and enough understanding of why I act and react in certain ways that that's probably the most powerful two hours of my month. I would probably credit him with a lot of my success because I know I wouldn't have made some of the decisions without him making me do what I said I was going to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. How about you, Henry? That's a tough one, I'd say I'm going to give maybe a little bit of a weak answer. I'm a conglomerate From the time of my upbringing, being around sports and people holding me accountable and doing things that are not comfortable, but you just do it and being respectful to people and always doing the right thing.
Speaker 2:As I grew older, my father-in-law I came from a family you know that was kind of like at the end my dad was just raising me stuff, so just to see what a family looks like and see like what you should do to be a good father and a good husband. So my father-in-law was a mentor and coach just how to be a good person in life. And then I would add my EOS coach. He was probably business-wise, one of the biggest really to show me how to just turn the corner from just being that dentist that just gets by to being an effective business owner and running the practice like a business and, like we've said in previous episodes along the way, creating a great business with camaraderie and heart around it.
Speaker 1:For me I would say it's either the therapist I had or my life coach. And the therapist I had, like I was seeing somebody and she's like, bring your wife in. I'm like, okay, and those sessions that we did together were just so good for our marriage and just resolving stupid conflict that was outside and looking back in retrospect, why was it so difficult to solve? But it's just having that outside influence and somebody to give you tools and strategies to use. So I think that just speaks to all sorts of coaching.
Speaker 3:Oh, I started therapy on Tuesday. Be proud of me, nice, love it First session. So we'll see. He said I was really messed up.
Speaker 3:He's like this one's going to take a while, but I'm adding to my arsenal of coaches. I love to use the word advisor. I think an advisor and a coach are interchangeable, but where I think that what we do as coaches for other dentists is we're stakeholders in the success of their practice, of their lives, and that's what I look for for coaches in mind, like the people that I know have been most influential and most impactful. When I won, it was like they. They said I can't believe we did that.
Speaker 3:Like when I was talking about my business coach, they were like I can't believe we did that, and I was like, yeah, we did, like we high-fived. My success was really, truly was theirs, and that's how I would love to pay it forward and how we continue to invest in other dentists all over the place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love what you said, steve, is I hold advice or things that we're doing together as a coach? I want them to be more successful than they maybe want for themselves and, using a gambling analogy, like I get more nervous if I'm gambling somebody else's money that they wanted me to gamble with in my own. When we're talking about things that we're considering doing to get to that why and we're making a decision, I really want them to understand the pros and the cons, the risks and the benefits, what I've done, so they can make a great decision. And it's exactly like you said, steve, when we get those, those wins, I mean I'm more excited than they are, but it's really cool moments and it's really rewarding.
Speaker 1:That reminded me of when we ran into this guy in Vegas and he was autistic and he said he counts cards and he showed us all these pictures of him with tons of chips and we said you feel like playing blackjack for us. So we gave him $10,000 and we watched him. We watched him get a really big pile and then lose all of it and we but it was, it was exciting for a moment and it was just like huh, he's like I don't always win. I'm like, I'm like, well, you said you would win. We don't give her some money back now. He didn't.
Speaker 3:He's like I need another 10 grand, give me another 10 grand, I'll win.
Speaker 1:Yeah, stories like that is why you see a therapist that's what I hold back from the therapist because I'm like too ashamed of it. Yeah, so, hey, if you guys are thinking about getting a coach or having somebody help you with your dental business, we could all use help. Reach out to us at dentalpracticeheroescom, happy to do a free discovery call with you, talk to you about your issues and what's really possible. And I will add, for anyone thinking about it, this coaching that we do at Dental Practice Heroes it is month to month. We do not hold you to any contract. As soon as you're not getting value out of it. We are not either. So there's very low commitment to try it out and see what can happen. So thank you all so much for listening and we will talk to you next time.
