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
Lazy and Loving It: My Secret to Practice Growth
The myth of discipline has perpetuated an enormous lie about what drives success in dental practices. Drawing from personal experience, I reveal why traditional definitions of discipline aren't necessary for extraordinary practice growth. Through vulnerable admissions about my own "undisciplined" habits (25 years of smoking, late-morning wake-ups, nightly cereal binges), I unpack what actually drove my success building a large group practice.
Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
We help dentists take more time off while making more money through systematization, team empowerment, and creating leadership teams.
Ready to build a practice that works for you? Visit www.DentalPracticeHeroes.com to learn more.
You ever notice how the most disciplined people you know aren't always the most successful people? You know, like? I've got some friends that wake up at 4 am. I have some friends that love running marathons. I don't understand that. I have people meal prepping and you know they may be somewhat healthy, they post the motivational quotes about hustling and all that stuff, but honestly, they're still stuck. They're not making a ton of money, they're not crushing it in business.
PAUL ETCHISON:And I remember back to when I opened up my practice and I would spend all this time there and everyone would be like oh my gosh, you're so disciplined. And oh my gosh, you're so disciplined. And you know I used to like that. It used to stroke the ego a little bit. It made me feel good, yeah, I'm really disciplined, I'm a go-getter, I'm successful. Look at me. But now I think back to it and I think about am I a disciplined person? Was it really disciplined? Now, I did put the time in. I'm not going to deny that I did put the time and the work and the effort in. But was it disciplined? Is that what got me there? And that's what I want to talk to you about today.
PAUL ETCHISON:So you are listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast. I'm your host, dr Paul Adjassin. I'm the author of two books on dental practice management, a dental coach and the owner of a large group practice in the South suburbs of Chicago. If you are somebody who wants to have more freedom, make more money and take more time off your practice and make it run without you, well, you're listening to the right podcast. That's what we do here. So let's go back to discipline Now. Am I a disciplined person? Well, let me see.
PAUL ETCHISON:You may not know this, but I smoked cigarettes for like 25 years and you know how many years of that 25 I was trying to quit? Probably 21 of them, I don't know. I started in high school and you might say well, why'd you do that dumbass? And I'll tell you because it made me look cool. Man, I want to look cool and everybody smoked when I was in high school. I graduated in 99. I hope you're not thinking I'm older than you thought. But you know what? Yeah, I smoked a really long time and I really tried to quit. It was really hard. I have quit. If anything, I think it made my voice sound a little velvety. Oh, I like it. Okay, anyway, you know what else I do. I eat a bowl of cereal every single night and it's a huge bowl. It's like this giant bowl that I bought off Amazon. It's got a handle on it. It's like a giant coffee mug, but it's huge, and you know what.
PAUL ETCHISON:You've heard me talk about this. I usually sleep in till like 12, one o'clock. You know what time I intend to wake up Usually like 9 am. Do you know how often that actually happens? Never. So am I really disciplined, and have I ever really been disciplined? I don't think so, because I don't think it's discipline that gets it done. And so I really thought about what are a few things that make a practice really grow, and that are these internal things that some people say, oh, that's discipline, but it's really not. So I'm going to give you five points today. I know you're going to find these helpful, and I hope that you listen to him and say you know what he's right. He is actually right, because I know I'm right, ready, all right.
PAUL ETCHISON:So the first one let's think back to when you were a kid. Now, when I was a mean, we played football outside, we did things outside, we were outside kids too, but we also played just tons of video games. And is that discipline? Would people say, wow, you're so disciplined in video games? No, you know why I played video games so much? Because I really loved doing it, because it was fun. I was playing. And when I think back to my practice and growing my practice, that was fun. You've heard me say on the podcast before I was just engaged, I loved it, I was getting results, everything was good. And then it eventually became this horrible part of me that I resented. But you know what? At the beginning, I loved it and I loved doing it.
PAUL ETCHISON:So what I want you to do is, if you can find things that you love doing that seem like play to you, you can do them all day and you will get results. Now you might say I'm not like that at my office. I hate my office, I don't like running my office. But what do you like about running your office? There are things you enjoy doing at the office. So how can you really lean into those? Because I'm guaranteeing you, those are strengths of yours. So lean into those things you like doing so it doesn't feel like you're working and you're going to get really great results from that.
PAUL ETCHISON:And another thing I think you'll realize is that when you start putting the time into the systems and leading and building and creating and you're not stuck in the op all the time, you start to feel energized and you get engaged and you like that. And when you know how to do it and you start mastering it which is what we teach in our programs you become somebody that becomes very passionate about it and people from the outside they're going to say, wow, look how hard that person's working, look at the discipline they got. But you know what it is, you're having fun. So you have to find those things at the practice that are like play to you. You got to do those and if, for the things that you don't like doing, this next point is going to help you with that, how do you turn what you hate into what you love? I have so many of these things.
PAUL ETCHISON:I used to have a list a mile long of things I hated to do at the practice and if you read this list you'd be like dude, you hate everything about this place and it kind of was like that because they weren't fun, they weren't engaging, they were about as fun as when I have to get all my crap together and send it to my accountant every year for taxes. I put it off every year because it's just so boring. So what do you do to take those things that you hate and you turn them into something you love? Well, well, think about this.
PAUL ETCHISON:When I signed up with MB2, when I sold my practice, I had to do the expense report. I hated the expense report. I would get pissed off. I'd sit driving to my car, just be like mother effer, like I got to do that when I get home and then as soon as I walk in the door, I'm like I'm not doing that tonight, I'll put that off for tomorrow and I would dread it. And I would put it off for so long until trained my assistant how to do it. And then, after her doing it for two months, she said you know what I love doing, that expense report. And I laughed because I thought she was kidding. She wasn't, she was actually serious, she really loved it. I couldn't believe it. I'm like you sick, twisted little girl. There's no way. But she does.
PAUL ETCHISON:So if you don't like doing things and there's things that you hate about your practice you need to find somebody else to do it. I assure you, everything you hate, there's someone on your team that loves it, and this comes back to the leadership teams that we built. If you build that leadership team and you give them the responsibilities, I would hope that you would have the same experience as me when I really leaned into my leadership team. They started doing all the stuff I hated and I loved my practice again. I loved it. I loved it. I loved every part of it. It completely changed my life.
PAUL ETCHISON:So outsource the things that you don't like doing or find someone on your team to do it. Delegate right, and that's how you stay in love with what you do. You only do the things you love, and all the things you don't love, you stop doing them. Delegate them to somebody else or outsource them, and your practice is going to grow with way less effort. It's going to take way less effort because you're engaged and it's fun.
PAUL ETCHISON:So maybe you might be thinking like I want that, I don't know how. Or maybe you just don't have the time to do it. Right, you know what you got to do, but you don't have the time to do it. So let me help you with that. Let me get you a little bit more time. Find somebody who has what you want and do everything they've done. Don't follow anyone else who doesn't have what you want. Those are just distractions. If that person doesn't have or have done what you want to do, do not follow them. Unfollow. Stop wasting your time on that.
PAUL ETCHISON:Follow the one person that has what you want and just by following them and doing the things that they're going to do, there's something called unconscious assimilation. It's kind of like how we are around or where we become a product of all of our friends. Just by spending time with that person and doing things that they're doing, you will assimilate their success. So if you want to work one day a week and have like a multimillion dollar practice that gives you the freedom and flexibility, just do what I've been doing Listen to this podcast, follow me on Instagram, sign up for my newsletter on my website, watch my videos. I mean, there's so much stuff YouTube, you know what. So just check that out and you will get the results that I got. You will get those results. So here's what we're doing. We're finding a way to love our business again by only doing the things we like doing and taking everything we don't like doing and making sure somebody else does it, and now we're not going to waste any more time, but maybe not.
PAUL ETCHISON:Maybe you just feel overwhelmed with the amount of things that you need to do. So I want you to do this. I want you to take out a pen and paper, sit down, give this the 15, 20 minutes that it deserves I assure you it'll be worth it and I want you to write down everything you think you need to do to be successful in what that goal is. So, if we're talking about your dental practice, what are the things you need to do? What are the systems in your practice that you need to tighten up? What are the issues and interpersonal things you need to address with people? Who are the leaders in your practice that you need to build up, and what are you going to have to do to build them up? And write those things down in a list. Then I want you to take that list and I want you to rank those to which ones are going to get you to your goal the fastest. And start with one and don't focus on anything else. Shut off your phone, put it on, do not disturb, don't check your notifications, don't check social media, don't do anything. Lock yourself in your office and get that done and once it's done, get the next one done and keep going, and keep going.
PAUL ETCHISON:I am not somebody who's going to do everything. You just can't scale that way. I find the one thing each day that if I do just that, I'm going to make a big difference. Like I said, I'm not very disciplined. I'm pretty freaking lazy. Sometimes I can't stand how lazy I am. I give the illusion of discipline. I don't have it, I promise. It's just that I really lean into the things I enjoy doing. All right, and I'm going to give you one more tip A lot of the stuff that we teach in Dental Practice Heroes, it's stuff that you don't do in the operatory.
PAUL ETCHISON:So you're going to have to do in your office, whether it's your office at home or if it's your office at the practice. Make it an office that you love to sit in. Spend the money to buy some nice furniture, get it repainted, get some nice decorations on the wall. Make it a space you truly love being in, because then you're going to want to go to that space. You're going to enjoy sitting there, working on things, working on your business, creating that freedom that you desire, and you want that just to draw you there. You want it to be a place that you can go to. Naturally and this goes for the whole office as well you want to love where you work. If you've got an outdated office and you don't love it, redo it. You will get that return on investment. If you don't get it from your patients which you will you're going to get it in the attitude of you and your team that's going to love their environment. We are meant to love our environment. So if you got somewhere, you're going to spend a lot of time in make it a place you want to be.
PAUL ETCHISON:So, summing up, it is not discipline, it is doing the correct things, doing just the things that are going to get you to your goal the fastest, and that's what we're doing. Our 12-month mastermind is coming up in September and it's going to be such a transformative experience for everyone. If you want a leadership team that runs everything, so you don't have to. You want onboarding systems that you can just plug your team into and get them trained. You want that delegation structure for accountability all your team into and get them trained. You want that delegation structure for accountability all those things implemented into your office. Go to the website, check out the details and set up a strategy. Call to me, because I know maybe you know what you're supposed to do, but knowing it and doing it are different things, just like everybody knows how to get fit. We got to eat better, we got to work out. Who's doing it? Show of hands? Nope, not you either. Okay, me neither. So thank you so much, everybody, for listening. I really appreciate it and we will talk to you next time.
