Dental Practice Heroes

Beyond Busy: The REAL Owner's To-Do List that Creates Freedom

• Dr. Paul Etchison • Episode 603

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Ever wonder why you're constantly busy but your practice isn't growing? The answer lies in understanding the critical difference between maintenance work and true business building.

As dental practice owners, we often mistake activity for productivity. We spend countless hours handling payroll, ordering supplies, managing schedules, and answering endless staff questions. These tasks give us the satisfaction of checking boxes, but they're merely keeping the lights on rather than creating growth or freedom. They're what I call "playing office" rather than working on your business.

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Paul Etchison:

What's on your to-do list as a practice owner? For most dentists, it's a mix of payroll, ordering supplies, maybe fixing the schedule, chasing labs, answering staff questions, responding to emails. But here's the problem. That's not the real to-do list of a business owner. That's just the maintenance list that keeps the lights on. We've all been told work on your business, just not in it. But nobody actually teaches us what that means. And when you're already overwhelmed, just keeping the doors open, who has the time or the clarity to even figure that out? See, the truth is most practice owners confuse. Being busy with building the business, they spend hours upon hours playing office and they wonder why they're still stuck. Well, in today's episode, I'm going to break down what actually belongs on your owner to-do list the kind of work that creates growth and freedom in a practice that makes money even when you're not there. So if you want a practice that doesn't depend on you for every decision and every dollar, stick around. This episode is going to show you how to get there. Now you're listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast, the show that helps dentists turn their practice into a true business that works without them, a business that gives you more income, more freedom and more time to enjoy life, while still delivering world-class care to your patients and to your team. I'm Dr Paul Etchison, a practicing dentist, a business coach and author of two books on dental practice management. I run an almost $6 million group practice while working just two or three clinical days each month, and I'm here to show you how to step out of survival mode, take control of your practice and design a life that you love Now.

Paul Etchison:

I remember those early days of practice ownership. I remember we would see the last patient, I would finish my notes and I'm just sitting at my desk in the back office Like I'd shut off the overhead lights. I just have a lamp it's just like dimly lit and one by one, my team would just come in there and say, hey, good night, you know, but I would stay there. I had work to do. That was my time to work on the business. And sometimes I'd open a beer, but I'd just be sitting there and I'd start digging in. I'd start doing the payroll, the invoices, I'd reconcile the numbers, everything just to keep that machine running. And at first, dude, I loved it. I felt proud. I just loved everything about it. I was just so fulfilled. Here I was. I had my own practice and people were paying me to do the work that I enjoy and I thought, dude, I am successful, I've got a successful practice. This is so awesome.

Paul Etchison:

I love running my business, feeling faded. I mean that after hours grind of just sticking around every night, it used to be exciting, but that started to feel heavy. I'd start to procrastinate these things, I'd start avoiding them and eventually I started resenting them, that I was the one that had to do this stuff. And it was not because I was like too busy, but it was more just because those tasks they weren't exciting, they didn't grow the business, they didn't do anything for me, they didn't buy me more freedom, they didn't make me any more money, they just kept me there, stuck doing things that I didn't love doing.

Paul Etchison:

And I remember one point. It just hit me I'm like, dude, this isn't working on my business, this is just playing office, and we're all guilty of that. Right, we convince ourselves that being busy equals being productive. And I want to tell you those are two very different things. I mean, as clinicians, we love, love, love checking boxes. It gives us that dopamine hit. We clear that list. We love lists and I love lists as well. I'm not saying it's wrong to love lists, but we like to finish them. We pat ourselves on the back and we say we had a great day, what a productive day. Like to finish them, we pat ourselves on the back and we say we had a great day, what a productive day.

Paul Etchison:

But here's the challenge for you Ask yourself what does it really mean to be productive? Is it just like finishing tasks, or is it something more? I think it is. I think it's creating more results than you had before and nowadays, at this point in my career, I believe that productivity means doing the kind of work that moves you forward, that grows you as a leader, grows your practice and creates more freedom in your life. It's tangible and the sad fact is that most of what dentists spend their owner time I'm throwing up my air quotes their owner time. Doing it just doesn't do that. I mean doing the payroll, doing the bill of supplies, fixing broken equipment, changing light bulbs, dude. I mean those things they feel urgent, they have to get done, but they just don't move the needle. They just keep the practice moving along.

Paul Etchison:

Now, back in the day, somebody bought me a book by Chuck Blakeman. I love this book. It's called Making Money is Killing your Business. Highly recommend it.

Paul Etchison:

In his book he calls this the tyranny of the urgent, and he's right. I mean the urgent. It commands our attention. It's the fires that we put out every single day. It's that little crying toddler that's sitting in the corner that needs your attention right now. And if you don't give it to him, man, he's gonna be relentless. He's gonna let you know about it until you pay attention.

Paul Etchison:

And there's a problem with attending to the urgent. Yes, it's loud, yes, we have to do it. We feel like we can't do anything else until we take care of it, but it doesn't honor that time that we should be spending on things that are more important, the things that we could be doing that act like investments, the tasks that give us more time, gives more money and freedom, and that's what Dental Practice Heroes is all about. We want to give you time, money and freedom, and that's why our system teaches practice owners how to do that. So you might be asking well, how should I be spending my owner time each day?

Paul Etchison:

And I want to introduce you to something that I think is really cool. This is called the Eisenhower matrix. It comes from the old time president back in the day, and this is how he said that he stayed productive. So if you've never seen it, I want you to picture like a box divided into four quadrants. Remember those like punit or punit squares, like from genetics, kind of like something like that? Remember those like punit or punit squares like from genetics, kind of like something like that? Like it's a four quadrant box.

Paul Etchison:

Now on one axis you've got the urgent versus non-urgent, and then on the other axis you've got important versus not important. Now quadrant one that's the top left one. It's urgent and it's important. Those are the fires you've got to deal with. You've got to do them right now. That's like a broken compressor, that's x-rays aren't working. That's like a patient emergency. I'm talking like a medical emergency. Somebody needs you. The server's down. Those are the things that keep you from practicing. Those are the things you have to take care of right now, because if you don't address them, we can't keep operating as a business. So that stuff it can't wait. You have to always take care of it.

Paul Etchison:

Now quadrant three that's the urgent but not important. Those are those things like getting pulled into an insurance verification issue, or maybe a staff member is asking you where do we keep the extra copy paper? Or maybe you go into your office and then a team member knock, knock, knock. Hey, you got a minute. Hey, I just want to talk to you about this vacation that I was thinking about taking. I know there's already four people off that week, but I think I want to take it off too. These are the things that land in your lap and they feel urgent, but, honestly, nothing's going to change if you don't attend to them now, so you don't need to necessarily have to be involved. That's quadrant three.

Paul Etchison:

Now let's talk about quadrant four. That's not urgent and not important. These are the worst things. These are the things you shouldn't even be doing. These are the things, unfortunately, we kind of like. It's like scrolling Facebook in your office when you're taking a break. You know these time wasters. You're on Instagram. It's. Oh my God. My wife spends so much time following these bloggers on Instagram and what does she get out of it? She spends a lot of money on clothes or something I don't know. These are time wasters and we love them because they're easy to do, they're relaxing, they're not challenging at all, but sometimes we get stuck on them.

Paul Etchison:

But here's the magic I skipped one. Did you notice which one I skipped? I skipped quadrant two, quadrant two, that's the important, but not urgent. It is very important for us to do these tasks, but we rarely spend time in this quadrant because it's not urgent. But this is where the growth happens, but so often we ignore it. Why? Because this quadrant two doesn't scream at you, it's not tugging on your sleeve like the crying toddler, it's just sitting there in the corner. It's okay and it's like you know. It'd be cool if you gave me some attention, but if you don't, I'm pretty cool, I'm content.

Paul Etchison:

So let's talk about quadrant two. What does that look like in a dental practice? I want to give you a few examples here, so that you can go back to your practice and say, hey, I should spend some time doing this. Okay Now. First one creating systems so that your team can run things without you. That is so important. And that's the stuff. See how this is like investments in time it gives you back time. Next one training your leads so that they can solve problems before they hit your desk. You're training people to take care of things without you. You want to get to the point where you don't even know these things are happening because your team's taking care of them. Next, sitting down and refining your new patient experience so that you have more patients that are raving fans. More of them are staying in your practice, more of them are referring other people, more of them are accepting treatment, training and monitoring your team on the phone calls. So what does this do? Well, more phone calls with prospective new patients will turn into new patients. There's a return on investment.

Paul Etchison:

Creating your block schedule I mean, this is what something we work on for so long in our DPH coaching programs is we teach you how to create your block schedule so that you hit your production goals every single day. It's one of those things that's so important to having this type of practice Working on leadership, working on your communication, working on your culture so that your team is motivated and that your team can be consistent, mapping out your growth strategy, sitting there and saying what do I need to do this quarter? What's going to take me to the next level? Maybe that's adding an associate. Maybe it's expanding your hours. Maybe it's increasing case acceptance, I don't know.

Paul Etchison:

Maybe and how does this sound? Maybe it's you cutting some clinical days. That sounds pretty good, right, but yeah, none of those things, none of them are urgent. Nobody's banging on your door asking you to do them today and most practice owners they're going to go their entire career without ever doing them. But they're so critical because think about this Once they're done, they pay dividends forever. These are investments with a true lifelong career, long ROI.

Paul Etchison:

Now you see, like if you're going to do one more crown, you're going to prep one more crown and you get paid once and that's it. Maybe $1,200, maybe $1,500. I don't know. Nice, but tomorrow you got to go do another crown. But if you spend that same hour in quadrant two maybe building a system, training a leader, delegating a responsibility, creating a smoother patient flow or doing something so that you get better case acceptance, that's something that's going to pay you over and over again, not just today, not just tomorrow, but for years, for the rest of your career. That is the return and that is what the real owner's to-do list should be about. It's not about the busy work, it's not about the urgent fires. It's about those quadrant two investments that make the practice run without you, generate more profit and give you more freedom. That's what we all want, right?

Paul Etchison:

I remember at one point in my practice we really decided that we wanted to get our case acceptance up. You know it wasn't bad, but we're just like let's see what we can do. So we got our case acceptance up by four percentage points. Okay, now it sounds so small. What do we do? We trained our front end on how to present the finances and made sure everybody knew how to do patient financing. Big deal, right? 4%. Who cares? But I want you to realize that at my practice we're treatment planning around $15 million of dentistry every year, so that 4% translates into an additional $600,000 of treatment. That's on my existing patients that I already have in my practice. That doesn't require new patients. They're already there, they've already shown up, they've already got a treatment plan presented to them. It really didn't require any additional resources. So that's that dividend that you get paid off.

Paul Etchison:

Let's do another example. This one I loved when I delegated the staffing to my team, when I was no longer that person that people would text when they weren't coming in or they were sick or they went. I was no longer the person that people were putting in their vacation requests with. You know, now when somebody calls off, it doesn't go through me. When somebody takes a vacation, I don't have to be the one making sure that we have coverage or asking other people if they can cover for this person. Now, how much time does that save me each month? It's hard to quantify, but it's a lot of time. But how much time does that save me for the rest of my career? I never have to do that again at my practice. I will never, ever have to do it again.

Paul Etchison:

I hope you can understand the importance of doing these things. So how can you make sure your owner time is well spent? Well, first, you've got to understand its importance, and we should be there at this point. I hope that from listening to me, you understand the importance. Step two you've got to commit to it. Even when the other things seem more important, even when they're screaming at you and they're loud, you've got to commit to spending some time on these things, regardless of what else is going on in your practice. You may got to commit to spending some time on these things regardless of what else is going on in your practice. You may have to lock your office door, you may have to come in on the weekend when no one was there. But if you want to create an amazing business at your dental practice, you've got to find time to spend time in that quadrant to work, even when it feels like you should be doing something else.

Paul Etchison:

So here is my challenge to you for this week I want you to just block off two hours of owner time. Do not fill it in with payroll. Do not fill it in with the stuff stacking up on your desk that you have to get caught up with. I want you to sit down in a quiet room and ask yourself what is one quadrant two project? That's the important, but not urgent, that I can make some progress on today. And then I want you to commit to doing at least one of these growth projects every single month. And if you can consistently make the time to do this and you consistently show up to do it, you're going to slowly buy yourself more and more time, more and more profit. You're going to be making it easier and easier every day, and as you get more time and profit, it becomes easier to do this. So this is something that compounds just like interest.

Paul Etchison:

So another thing I want you to do is I want you to make a list of the not my job stuff. These are the things that you continue to do because you don't want to train anyone else on it. You don't want to take the time to train somebody, but deep down in your heart you know that they are not a good use of your time. So put those on a not my job list and start delegating those away. And I want you to just do those things consistently.

Paul Etchison:

You delegate away the things you're putting in the good owner time and then eventually you can go and take three weeks off in a row. You go with your family to Toronto for a week and then you go spend Labor Day weekend at the Lake House and then you're off with your wife to a week for California. And you come back and you realize, dude, you were gone like 26 full consecutive days and not a single person at your practice needed you. Everything ran without you. The practice still made money, the issues were attended to by your team and you enjoyed some well-deserved family time because you've created the freedom to do this.

Paul Etchison:

So how do you get there? You got to do the things that aren't urgent, but you recognize them as important and I promise you that is the most important thing that you can do. That is the real owner's to-do list, and if you need help with those things that are not urgent but important, check out our coaching options at dentalpracticeheroescom. We would love to help you prioritize taking care of these things at your practice and really getting the practice growth and momentum that you deserve. So this week, evaluate everything you do by the Eisenhower Matrix, make that commitment to spend more time in quadrant two and I hope, slowly but surely it's going to make all the difference in your practice and because of that, it's gonna make all the difference in the quality of life that you live. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate you and we'll talk to you next time.

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Dr. Paul Etchison

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