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 str...
10
Two Paths To A Dental Practice That Runs Without You
<p>If you have been grinding to “improve the practice” but your days still feel the same, you are not alone and you are not lazy. We dig into a hard truth: you can spend an entire year fixing what is broken and still end up with almost the exact same dental practice, the same pressure, and the same dependence on you. The missing piece is not effort. It is the difference between problem solving and creation.<br/><br/>We walk through the two paths to change. The first path is reactive problem solving with a proactive layer: something goes wron...
When Your Strengths Create Dependence
<p>Being the most capable person in your dental practice can feel like a superpower, right up until it becomes the reason everything still depends on you. I’m Dr. Paul Etchison, and I see this pattern constantly with dental practice owners: we’re great at hiring, interviewing, running meetings, resolving conflict, smoothing over upset patients, and handling the sensitive admin work, so we keep doing it. Then we look up one day overwhelmed, frustrated, and wondering why nobody takes initiative, even though we accidentally trained the team to wait for us.<br/><br/>We dig into the competence trap and...
Why You Still Haven’t Cut Back a Clinical Day
<p>You can have a solid team, good new patient flow, and real culture momentum and still feel weirdly stuck. That’s the trap we dig into today: the belief that you should wait until you feel 100% ready before making a big move in your dental practice, like dropping from four clinical days to three. I share a recent coaching conversation with a practice owner who has all the ingredients to cut a day right now, yet keeps postponing it for “sometime this year,” and we unpack what’s really going on beneath that word.<br/><br/>We break down why cert...
The Dangerous Part About Having a Good Practice
<p>Your practice is finally in a good place. The schedule is full, the money is good, and you actually like your team.</p><p>This episode is about what happens when this comfort turns into complacency. The DPH coaches explain why thinking "things are good" can be dangerous, the difference between healthy comfort and complacency, and how to tell if you're building the practice you actually want.</p><p>Topics discussed:</p><p>00:00 Introduction</p><p>01:59 Why good practices stop trying to improve</p><p>06:12 Fixing problems vs. designing the practice you want</p><p>07:24 What happens when you...
Your Team Isn’t Resisting the Change. They’re Resisting This
<p>That uncomfortable moment when you roll out a new system and your team goes quiet isn’t about the system at all. It’s about what they think it means. <br/><br/>We’re talking about one of the most common breakdowns in dental practice leadership: we introduce training, new workflows, or higher standards with good intentions, and our team hears an accusation. I share a real example from my own practice after we dropped Delta and saw a decrease in new patients. I pushed case presentation training and treatment coordinator training to improve case acceptance, help more patients say yes...
You Might Be Wrong About Your Worst Team Member
<p>"They're lazy." "They don't care." "This person is the problem." You probably said something like this the last time you got annoyed at the office.</p><p>In this episode, the DPH coaches break down what to do the next time someone on your team drops the ball. You'll learn the difference between being decisive and being judgmental, when to act immediately or take a pause and get curious, and how to address problems without putting anyone on the defensive.</p><p>Topics discussed:</p><p>00:00 Introduction</p><p>02:11 The mistake most owners make</p><p>05:26 How your team...
Retiring Early in Dentistry and the Freedom Trap
<p>You can do everything “right” and still feel stuck: work harder, save more, invest earlier, chase a retirement number… then wake up the next day and realize nothing changed. That moment is what we’re unpacking, especially for dentists who are high achievers, practice owners, and the kind of people who won’t be happy staring at the ocean for 30 years.<br/><br/>We walk through the core problem with traditional retirement planning for dentists: it treats your younger years like they only exist for production, and it assumes your future income drops to zero on some arbitrary date. I share wh...
Why Your Team Only Follows Systems When You’re Watching (How to Fix It) w/ Dr. Gina Dorfman
<p>Your team does the right things when you're in the building. Turn your back and... maybe not.</p><p>Dr. Gina Dorfman has spent over 20 years building practices around culture, and knows exactly what makes a team follow through without being reminded. She explains what has to come first, the test candidates don't know they're taking, and what to do about a strong performer who's dragging the team down. Plus, hear her message to any woman who's been called difficult for holding her team to a standard.</p><p>Topics discussed:</p><p>(00:00) Introduction</p><p>(02:17) Running pediatric and...
Your Practice Will Never Give You Freedom Until Your Leaders Can Do This
<p>If your leadership meeting turns up “no problems,” we think you should be nervous. Silence can feel like health, but it often signals something else: people are checked out, nobody is looking closely, or your team doesn’t feel safe enough to tell the truth. We unpack why great dental practices don’t win by eliminating problems, they win by getting brutally good at seeing problems early, talking about them clearly, and using them to sharpen systems, service, and team culture.<br/><br/>We share a core mindset we teach inside our office manager mastery training: problems are good because...
You're Spending Time On the Wrong Thing...Focus on This Instead w/ Dr. George Hariri
<p>Whatever is holding your practice back is probably not the thing you worked on this week.</p><p>Dr. George Hariri, co-founder of Shared Practices and author of Dental Moneyball, went from one practice to nearly 50 and stopped practicing dentistry entirely — and the practice he left behind is performing better now than when he was in it. In this episode, he walks through where you should be spending your time as CEO and the growth lever already in your practice.</p><p>Topics discussed:</p><p>(00:00) Introduction</p><p>(02:25) From one group practice to nearly 50</p><p>(07:03) The decision to...
