How to Make This Year Feel Different as a Practice Owner

You start the year with big intentions, but end up back in autopilot mode. Sound familiar? This episode breaks down why good goals fall apart, especially in growing practices.

The DPH coaches share how you can reset, refocus, and make sure this year doesn’t end with you right back where you started. From setting the right goals to building a leadership team you can rely on, you'll learn how to turn big goals into clear, actionable steps that help you create the life and practice you actually want.

Topics discussed:

• Why most practice owners' goals fall apart
• How to plan intentionally and actually reach your goals
• The move that gets you out of autopilot
• 6 questions that help you build a plan for the new year
• How to audit your progress throughout the year
• Why vision and values are non-negotiable leadership tools
• How to align personal goals with practice goals

This episode was produced by Podcast Boutique https://www.podcastboutique.com

Join us for Free Live Trainings and Community Discussion in the DPH Hero Collective on the DPH App.  Click Here to Join!

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.

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Resolutions Fail In Busy Practices
• 2:10 Intentional Year Design For Life And Work
• 3:19 Meet The Coaches And Their Practices
• 5:01 Leadership Teams As Stress Relief
• 7:54 Quarterly Planning And Goal Breakdown
• 10:13 Reducing Chair Time To Lead Better
• 12:07 Six Critical Questions To Reset Strategy
• 16:10 Financial Goals That Fuel Growth
• 18:19 Block Scheduling For Revenue And Time Off
• 20:46 Meaning, Values, And Team Alignment
• 23:07 Auditing The Seven Systems Quarterly
• 25:10 Making Values Real, Not Poster Words
• 27:26 Vision Boards To Know Your Team

Transcript

Paul Etchison: 0:01

Every January, we all do the same thing. We tell ourselves this is the year we're finally going to slow things down. We're going to fix those problems that have been nagging us for our entire career, and we're going to make the practice feel better to run. And then the year begins, the schedule fills, the patients show up, and before you know it, you're right back in reaction mode. And it's not because you don't care, but it's because you've never actually created that space to think and plan and decide where you really want this practice to go. So if you've ever looked up mid-year and thought, how did I end up right back here where I was last year? This is the episode for you. Today we're talking about how to intentionally plan your year, not just your practice, but for your life. We're going to be breaking down how high-performing practice owners actually reflect and plan, why leadership teams, clarity, and meaning matter more than hustle, and how setting the right goals can lead to more growth and more time off. So if you want 2026 to feel different, not just busier, this conversation is going to help you. Now you are listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast, where we teach you how to build a team-driven practice that gives you freedom, clarity, and profit without burning yourself out. I am your host, Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a large five-doctor practice in the south suburbs of Chicago. If you want to stop running on autopilot and start intentionally designing both your practice and your life, then you are in the right place. Today I am joined by my two DPH coaches, Dr. Henry Ernst, the owner of a large 18-op practice in the Carolinas, and Dr. Steve Markowitz, the owner of six practices on the East Coast. Let's get to the episode. We are in 2026 now. And if we did this correctly, you're hearing this in January. If it's February, we totally blew it. So that means I forgot to put it on the schedule and I forgot we did this episode. But hey, 2026, what are we going to do to make this the best year ever? And this is the time for reflection. This is when we sit back, we look at the year, how have we done? And of course, there's all these personal things we could be doing. You know, we can be coming better in in so many ways. And I think we often get guilty about we should be doing as much as possible. And I think there is some level of, you know what, if you're happy, let it be. Potential is unlimited. But nonetheless, I think most of our listeners want to be better. So they should be doing some sort of reflection exercise at the beginning of the year and planning out for the year. So I'm going to hear from you, Henry. Like, what do you do? How do you plan for the year? Like, what do you do at your practice?

SPEAKER_00: 2:46

I would say for the person who's boots on the ground, in there all the time, right? And stuff like that. I mean, we're kind of at a different point right now. But what I would say is like have some reflection. Now's a great time, right? Right now, as we're doing this podcast, you know, it's the middle of December. So I would take some time to reflect and maybe just it's the old habit where you just, what are the things I hate doing in the practice that I can't, what are the things that are so problematic that just bother the heck out of me, right? So hopefully, hopefully you have a leadership team. If you do not have a leadership team, make 2026 the time that you start a leadership team. We've done it for lots of clients, and once they do it, it is just so life-changing, stress-relieving, right? So yeah, if you don't have a leadership team, that's right there. Start a leadership team. I have started leadership teams for clients that have had as little as four team members. It starts the basic framework, right? And then you can do this task that we're talking about and hand it off to them. What are the things that frustrate them and tackle it as a group, right? Say, hey, a year from now, I want this to happen. This is gonna happen a year from now. Then you break it down into quarters. What should we do each quarter to get it to that point? Heck, what should we do every week to get it to that point? Years ago, we had, we were really were scaling ortho really invisalign in our practice a lot. And so we said it was December. We said, we want to have a hundred starts next year. A hundred starts. We've never had that many. And so, okay, if we're gonna do that, how do we do it? We break it down into let's get the whole team trained, let's make sure we've got enough ITROs. That's the first quarter. Second quarter, we're gonna make sure we have two consults, two to three consults every day. And we kept checked it, we audited it, we made sure it happened. That year we came just shy. We were like at 96 or something like that. But ever since then, every year, way over 100. We continue to be because we've had that vision. So, leadership team, if you don't have it, ask us for help. We can make it happen even with as little as a few employees, but also make sure that you tackle these issues, reflect on what you want to have happen a year from now, and make it happen.

Paul Etchison: 4:46

Yeah, I think that's such a big thing. You know, I had a coaching call with someone yesterday, and he's a large office, you know, four-doctor office. And just, you know, I know I need to be doing the hygiene calibration meeting. I know I need to be doing working with my associate more. She's not the most productive and she's really slow. I know I need to be like checking on my phone skills and this. And the fact of the matter is, is that he's doing everything, but what he is doing, he's still seeing patience a ton, way more than he should be. And that's like one of the things is I think when we work with coaching clients, or one of our first goals is to get you down to three days so that you can actually have the time to work on these things because all these things you're gonna look at and you're gonna reflect and you're gonna say, Hey, this really bothers me at the practice. Hey, I need to work on this this year. Hey, that this is what it should do. You need time to do it. And sometimes I think it's really hard to do when you say, I'm gonna do that after seeing patients, because you just don't get into it. What are your thoughts on like this, Steve? And and also just what is someone should to be doing looking forward into 2026 so that they can make this amazing year?

SPEAKER_01: 5:46

Cool. It's such a big topic, so we can take it so many ways. But I talk about palancioni probably on this podcast, and I might have gone through these questions before, so you can edit it out, Paul. If I've already shared this, of course not. Every year around this time, in his book, The Advantage, he talks about six critical questions. I go back and I answer them again. And those six questions are why do we exist? How do we behave? What do we do? What is our strategy for success? What is most important now and who's gonna do what? And sometimes the answers are the same every year, and many times they're not. And as we've evolved and I've evolved as a leader, the how do we behave, which is our values, I need to be even more clear about it. It can't just be these single words anymore. Sometimes it needs to be more detailed of like, how do we handle certain situations? And so right now, what I'm doing is I'm asking myself, how do I handle patient interactions and how do I take how I handle those situations and try and share it clear enough so other people can do that? So I'm going through those questions, and that's one side of how I set the year up. And then the other side is I start with financial goals. So I know where we are, and I'm looking at our PL and our and our revenue numbers, and I dive into that and I say, what would make next year exciting? Like what would be worthwhile for growth? Because I know we need to grow. And the reason we need to grow is because the practice needs fuel, our patients need to be better taken care of, and our team needs to grow. And that only happens if our revenue grows, our practices grow, and our profitability grows. So that's a non-negotiable. And the second thing I do after I answer those questions is I go into my numbers and I pick our financial goals. And from there, I can then work with our team to decide what we need to do to allow us to hit those goals that fits within the confines of how I answered those six questions.

Paul Etchison: 7:50

Yeah, I love how that, you know, for me, this relates back to the block schedule. When you get these financial goals and you decide what you're gonna do. And I remember I did the first year I did this, it was I was taking off like two or three weeks a year. And then I said, you know what, what goal am I gonna hit this year? And what is the dollar per hour it's gonna take to do it? And I remember that was the first year that I took off like six or seven weeks, because it was like, if we can build this into the schedule, I can still hit this goal and take off seven weeks. And I didn't feel bad about it that year. But you know what I'm hearing you say is that so often us as doctors and as leaders of the practice, we have an idea of where we want to go. We have an idea of what we want from a practice, but we don't ever verbalize it. We don't ever talk to the team about it. We don't make it like a thing. I just read Victor Frankel's book, The The Man's Search for Meaning. And this is a Holocaust survivor, and he's talking about how when he was in the camps, like how did he carry on? How did he say one of the things that happened to the prisoners is that when they lost hope, that was like one of the things where they lost meaning. So his big thing is logotherapy, logo meaning Latin for meaning. But we need to bring meaning to our teams. What are we doing here? Like it's more than just financials. We're helping people. I mean, we're in healthcare. We're taking people that most people have had really bad dental experiences sometimes, and we're showing them that it doesn't have to be like that. I mean, there's so much meaning to be given to everything we do for every member of our team, and I think that shouldn't be overlooked. Now, I would say like the big exercise I do with my team, we go through the seven systems, you know, seven system categories. You know, this is like phone skills, the financing, the patient experience, collections, reactivation, clinical scheduling, and delivery of care. I think I did those all. I don't have them all in front of me. But we go through each of those seven categories and we say what's going really well and what are we really going to work on? And this is a quarterly exercise for me and my team. We do this often. So, Henry, like we've talked about this in before, is like one of the first things we do with clients is we do like the mission, vision, core values, but then nobody speaks about it. And then when they do, they're like, My God, that meeting went so well. I feel like the team is aligned. I feel like people are excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00: 9:54

Yeah, we start every quarterly meeting with reintroduce, we're talking about the mission, vision, core values. We start every morning with our core value pledge that one of the team members reads off, and it takes about a minute to do it, right? But let's let's look at this a different way. Like we're all business owners, but we're servant leaders. We serve our team. We have great responsibility. So one exercise is a great time of year to this. Is the time of year to do it. Every year at around the beginning of the year, we always do a vision board exercise. Every single team member, you have to do one. It's almost like it looks like a little kindergarten. In our break room, we'll set up a table and we give them like a month to do it, right? And we give them a guideline of how they should do their vision board, like financial, personal, like mine will say one date night a week with my wife, work out four days a week, like things that I want to accomplish this year. And so we have everybody do that. And in our office, we have everybody has lockers in the break room. They just put them, they take them to their lockers and they stay there all year. Why is that great? If somebody does a really great job of something, I just go to their locker and I look at their vision board and I see, I don't know, maybe they wanted to go to a certain place, maybe they wanted to take their kid to Great Wolf Lodge, which is like a local place near our. You know what? I'm gonna give them a gift certificate for them to go to Great Wolf Lodge. And then sometimes we'll just pick random people, like here, here's your vision board. I took a picture of it. Let's go over your vision board with the office. So we get to know our team members better and we get to let them accomplish their goals. So, yes, all these things are great. We have our eight big metrics that we keep track of over the year, over the quarters as a business, but let's talk about our team too. Make them accountable to get some of their goals accomplished too.

Paul Etchison: 11:31

I love that idea. I wouldn't want to personally do it. You gotta do it too, Paul. Come on. I know it would just feel hokey for me. I get, dude, you know, it I'm probably gonna make a statement I shouldn't, but I feel like we have our fun coordinator. I don't know if we call her that, but she's the one that plans all the fun things at our meeting. Social director. Yeah, and um the team loves it, but sometimes I feel like I'm at like a like a baby shower. You know, just play just playing silly games. So uh I try to avoid those. So it's a little bit out of my comfort area. I don't know if anyone shares that feeling, but I think that's great.

SPEAKER_01: 12:02

I do think it's great. I totally get what you're saying though, Paul, because uh it does need to be genuine. And I think when you're going through your mission values and vision, like it needs to be truly what you want. Sometimes as people are going through it and they're choosing values. I was just talking to a client earlier today, and we were having that discussion, and he was like, It's just uh I can't share with the team. I'm just it's just I don't feel like we have it. I did the exercise, I'm just not feeling super comfortable with it. And I was like, then it ain't yours. That's not real enough. Yeah. Go back, and if it's not really what you can preach and scream by the top of your lungs, then it probably isn't genuine to what you actually want. And if it was then, Paul, then you would be like, Yeah, I need to be part of it. I don't want to. I actually need to.

Paul Etchison: 12:47

Yeah. I mean, I'm speaking more of just the vision board exercise. But yeah, you're so right. And then I don't know why owners feel silly about it. I feel silly about the silly games. I try to sneak in. It's like, you know, when I'm at a seminar, like when and I haven't been to it, I don't shit. I just you know what the dental seminars, and they're like, we're gonna do role-playing. I'm like, I have to go to the bathroom. I don't want to be here.

SPEAKER_02: 14:01

Yeah, but you're you're leading it. You're the person they're there to see. It's different when it's my team. And then you're taking out the back door. It's different when it's my team, but if we're if I'm at a if I'm at a course, I'm in the take it out.

SPEAKER_00: 14:14

Maybe I didn't articulate it correctly. There's not like an actual thing you have to sit in. Like everybody just makes a vision board and just tape it to your uh locker.

Paul Etchison: 14:21

Oh, so we're not doing crafts time together?

SPEAKER_00: 14:24

No, no, no. Like if there's ever down in the next like we tell our team, it's December 12th today. By January 1st, have your vision boards done. So I love if there's time throughout the day where there's downtime, do it. If you want to like cut out some pictures and take it home and do it, do it. But we just want everybody's vision board to be done on January 1st, just over whatever random date. Uh I much like this, Barno. And then they're all just done. And there's if you walk into our break room, we have 30 team members, there's 30 vision boards, 30 people's dreams, goals, aspirations. No, it's not like kindergarten time, no.

Paul Etchison: 14:58

Not like tea parties and doilies and and sure was hot today. It's gonna be hot tomorrow, I heard.

SPEAKER_00: 15:04

No, in fact, you'll like it, Paul, because there's no socializing in at all. It's just do it, put it up there, and let's see them. Mine sits at my desk too. I don't have to speak to people. Perfect. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:13

Henry, what's on your vision board for 26?

SPEAKER_00: 15:16

Well, I haven't done 26 yet. See, Henry's got to like pull stuff out of like luxury magazine and stuff like that. He's got expensive taste. My 25 was like uh for socially was like to have uh date night with my wife once a week to try to do one on my daughter, my youngest daughter is the only one who lives with me. You know, all the other ones are gone to school and stuff, but try to have one one-on-one day a week with my daughter where we do something just the two of us. Financially was like a lot of the practice stuff, keep the practice at a certain level, blah, blah, blah. One big team outing every year, like a lot of stuff. And then personally, like try to do so many cold plunges a week and try to do workout and blah, blah, blah. And there's pictures, so it's very visual. So there's a there's kind of like um a how-to-do it thing that we sent to the team to remind them. But it's just a nice thing to your office. And whenever you get somebody who comes, like we had a hygienist, we just hired a hygienist in 2025, amazing, that's willing to work evenings and Saturdays. Whoa. I know, amazing, right? She came from Mars, I think. And uh when she walked into our break room, she saw and she's like, wow, these are cool. She just remarked on how she thought that was really cool, on how she can just see everybody's dreams, aspirations right there. So how long have you been doing cold plunges? Oh man.

Paul Etchison: 16:33

Oh, about two years now. I feel like you're the first person that does cold plunges that hasn't told me about it. I'm surprised this has never come up before.

SPEAKER_00: 16:39

I know everybody that does cold plunges, like that's all they ever want to talk about. Yeah, I don't say I just I'm a secret cold plunger.

Paul Etchison: 16:46

Yeah, man, that sounds horrible. I mean, I I did it. We went to Kohler Spa in Wisconsin, which is a really cool place if you're like in the Midwest. It's associated with the like the frostets and stuff like that. But man, they had like uh you get in that sauna and you turn around and jump in that. I don't know how cold that thing was, but I can't say it felt good.

SPEAKER_00: 17:04

It felt good after. If you do it for a while, there's actually like if you have some anxiety or even like borderline depression, it actually helps with that stuff. I don't know how what the mechanism is, but it just does. I think it just makes you so focused on doing this one thing that's hard to do. And you do it, and there's like that feeling of just euphoria. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 17:22

You know what makes me feel good when I'm depressed? Warm plunge. A warm plunge. Yeah. Like I just take a shower, I'm like, man, I'm not feeling good. And then I take a shower, I'm like, man, that was so good. It's 2026. I get to take this hot shower, and I feel amazing, and I'm so thankful for that.

Paul Etchison: 17:39

Totally. You know what? On Thanksgiving, we used to be we got to the point in my family where it was me and my wife and my mother-in-law. And so we finally we joined fam with my best friend, who is also my wife's cousin. So we did Thanksgiving with them, and everybody wrote what they were thankful for. And I wrote electricity and indoor plumbing. Love it. And I was, you know, it's the same thing. What a beautiful thing that we have here. And after, you know, coming back from India, like no toilet paper, just using the butt gun and stuff like that, you know. But not everybody's got it as nice as us.

SPEAKER_00: 18:07

Well, there's another one for 2026. We can be grateful for what whatever we have. We always talk about the problems we have in practices. Hey, let's be grateful for what we have in this country and in our lives, right?

Paul Etchison: 18:17

Yeah, you know what? And we're talking a lot about, I mean, we're talking a lot about personal stuff now. And I don't I just want to bring that to light. There's a ton of personal things you can do. And as far as I'm concerned, if you're only setting practice goals, I mean, shit, the reason we have the practice is to live a better life. And if all you're doing is at your practice, I mean, you're essentially making the same mistake I made for the first eight years of my practice life, which I definitely regret. And I and I think a lot of people can relate to that. I mean, do you guys also have that like regret of the busy years of your practice where you were just feel like you were just way too focused on it?

SPEAKER_00: 18:47

I do. I mean, I missed out on a lot of stuff. I have older daughters now that are 24, 21, 21. And maybe 10 years ago, when the practice was just about a year old, I mean, I was like laser focused, practice, expanded hours, learning from mistakes. The associate has to fire. Now I got to work six days. I missed a bunch, right? I can never get that time back, right? But turning things around and making things like we were just talking about, eventually getting myself down to two days. And that is the biggest length of time where we had the most growth. When I went from four days, four to five days to two days. Yes. And I was intentional. I was a better business leader. The practice grew faster than it ever did. And now I'm intentional with my time. With doing all those things, like you said, doing the successful things in business leads to personal things, right? My wife and I always wanted to live by the beach. We live two blocks from the beach now because we did all that hard work and we made it happen. And while I was in my mind here, too, personally, you don't have to do this with your team, but have your what's like my five-year goal for this business? Am I gonna build this to sell? Am I building it to create a lifestyle practice? All those steps and these goals should lead to that. So don't forget that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 19:59

How about you, Steve? Yeah, I was while you were talking about having other interests, I I blacked out. I'm confused. I don't know what that means. Uh because quickly I haven't got there yet. But for goal setting, I do spend a lot of time on not just the practice goals or the company goals, but I I separate it into professional goals, personal goals, financial goals. And I make sure I have I just write them out for all three of those categories and make sure that I am clear on how much I want to save, on how much time I want to be on vacation, on and then I can schedule it. What are your travel goals this year, Steve? Uh I said uh vacation. I didn't say travel.

SPEAKER_00: 20:41

If if the listeners know Steve, Steve's deathly afraid of airplanes. I see Tennessee and your future in April.

Paul Etchison: 20:49

I looked up the driving distance. Yeah. We're doing our next mastermind retreat in April and uh Yeah. Do you have one of those cars that can drive itself yet? Oh, one of those cars? No. You think a car that can just that's the lane assist where it stays in the in the lanes, you get on the interstate?

SPEAKER_01: 21:02

Uh no, I'm gonna get an RV. Like John Madden never he didn't fly anywhere. He was eat every football game he announced.

SPEAKER_00: 21:12

The Madden cruiser.

SPEAKER_01: 21:13

Get on my uh Henry et al. RV. I bet you could afford a driver, Steve. You'd probably already have a driver. You're looking at my driver. Handsome guy. Super handsome dude. What about a cost to get a driver? Dude, my 2020 Honda Pilot. Let me tell you something about my 2020 Honda Pilot. Tell me about it. It has every light when you turn it on in the dashboard, every single thing's buzzing. It is perfect. I can identify that that vehicle as soon as I'm in in any parking lot. I know it's not one of those fancy H2 Hummers or whatever the kids are getting nowadays. But I do not have a driver. I fill that vehicle with regular unleaded. Oh yeah.

Paul Etchison: 21:59

I got an electric car, an electrical vehicle, and uh I don't have the the 220 volt outlet. And guess how fast it charges out of a normal outlet? One mile per hour.

SPEAKER_01: 22:10

It takes eight, eight days. You plugged your car into the same thing you plugged your phone into?

Paul Etchison: 22:15

Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's the outlet. Yes. I just got it. You know? But it's like that's pretty funny. It's becoming a nuisance. It's such a pain in the ass because I want to drive the thing, but I can't get it charged.

SPEAKER_01: 22:26

Every time you plug your car in, does your house explode?

Paul Etchison: 22:30

It's like Clark Griswold. Yeah, literally. No, it does. It flips the G the G what it's GFCI or GO. It flips it all the time in my ground.

SPEAKER_01: 22:38

For sure. Because it's like you're plugging in like it doesn't work. It's amazing that your microphone that that thing hasn't exploded from your new car.

Paul Etchison: 22:46

Well, thanks. Thank you everybody for listening. We hope you found some goals to set this year and some reflection. And you know, I think that's the most important part. You got to sit down and just do it. It's one of those things, man. We we talked about in our last mastermind meeting. Somebody brought up delegation. Man, I am delegating so many things since I sat down and did the delegation exercise that we gave them. So that's the same thing with setting goals. You got to sit down and do it, make it happen, and that's how you're going to change and move the needle. Man, great discussion. What really stood out in this conversation for me is that growth without intention, it just turns into noise. As our practices grow, we tend to have more production, we get more responsibility, but with that comes more stress and not necessarily by any means more satisfaction. The practices that have owners that feel good about their practice, they love being there, they love owning it. It's not accidental. I mean, these practices are built intentionally by the owners that step back and they reflect and they decide what matters to them and what matters in their lives. And then they align their business or their practice around that. Now, if you're heading into this year and you want it to be different, I want you to take time to reflect on what's frustrating you. Don't ignore it. Really think about what's frustrating you and get clear on what you want one year from now. What do you want from your practice? What do you want it to be like? And then when you figure that stuff out, start breaking out these big goals and break them into like quarterly or maybe weekly actions. Take them into smaller steps so that they're manageable. And no matter what you're doing, part of your goal should be trying to build the leadership and systems into your practice so that that growth doesn't depend only on you alone. So this planning stuff, it's not just fluffy BS. It is leverage. This is what's going to create the difference for you. So get intentional about it. And if you want help creating that clarity, whether it might be leadership at your practice, the systems, the scheduling, the long-term direction, I want you to set up a strategy call with me. Go to dentalpracticeheroes.com/slash strategy, and we're going to have a real conversation about where you are, where you want to go, and what it might actually take to get there. No pressure, just a plan. So thank you so much for listening. If you feel like this episode helped you think differently about the year ahead, a quick review helps the show reach more dentists than needed. And as always, build a practice that gives you more life, not less. We'll talk again soon.