Explore every episode of the podcast Dental Practice Heroes

Your practice is finally in a good place. The schedule is full, the money is good, and you actually like your team.

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.

Topics discussed:

00:00 Introduction

01:59 Why good practices stop trying to improve

06:12 Fixing problems vs. designing the practice you want

07:24 What happens when you stop innovating

10:17 The frustration and clarity exercise

11:32 How to tell if you’re comfortable or complacent

15:20 The one question every practice owner should answer

16:07 The future-you test for your practice

22:42 When to keep pushing and when to take a break

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

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. 

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, and reduce financial pressure. Months later, I walked into a lead meeting and could feel the tension, then heard the hard truth: the team felt like I blamed them for everything wrong in the office.

From there, we unpack the core idea: your team often isn’t resisting change, they’re resisting the story they created about why you’re implementing it. You’ll learn how to make your intentions visible, how to build a culture where training and feedback are normal, and how to diagnose resistance with curiosity instead of defending yourself on instinct. If you’re working on dental practice systems, team communication, and leadership habits that let the practice improve without constant battles, this one will land.

If you want help applying this to your practice, book a free strategy call at dentalpracticeheroes.com/slash strategy. And if this helps you lead with more clarity and less stress, subscribe, share the episode, and leave a review so more practice owners can find it.

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

"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.

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.

Topics discussed:

00:00 Introduction

02:11 The mistake most owners make

05:26 How your team labels you too

06:23 When acting fast backfires

10:52 Judgmental, patient, or decisive — how to tell

13:40 The question that works better than "why"

16:16 Why you're really annoyed

17:03 Why addressing it now helps you later

19:07 Building your practice's constitution

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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 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.

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 why that thinking quietly creates burnout and postponement, how the goalposts keep moving, and what I learned after hitting my retirement target at 39 and feeling no real freedom. We also talk candidly about a painful money loss and why it forced a healthier relationship with wealth, security, and fulfillment.

Then we make it practical. We cover how to define “enough,” set a realistic retirement target, and stop treating every dollar you don’t save as a mistake. We explore why assuming some future income (part-time dentistry, consulting, teaching, coaching, business) can change your entire plan, and how intentional spending can buy back time, reduce stress, and make ordinary Tuesdays better. Finally, we connect it to dental practice management: leadership, systems, and associates that reduce owner dependence so you can cut clinical days without your practice collapsing.

If you want a retirement strategy built around optionality, flexibility, and a practice that supports your life, listen now. Then subscribe, share this with a dentist friend, and leave a review so more practice owners can find the show.

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Your team does the right things when you're in the building. Turn your back and... maybe not.

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.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:17) Running pediatric and general under one roof

(10:43) What your team needs before SOPs will stick

(16:13) Getting the right people in the right seats

(21:57) Gina’s crumpled paper interview test

(23:32) What to do with a high performer who hurts culture

(25:58) Why the best hire may have no experience

(28:44) How far to take standardization in your practice

(34:09) Advice for female leaders in dentistry

Learn more about Yapi:

https://yapiapp.com/

Connect with Dr. Gina Dorfman:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gina-dorfman-dds/

https://www.instagram.com/drginad/

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

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.

We share a core mindset we teach inside our office manager mastery training: problems are good because they create improvement. That includes the dreaded upset patient. The loud complaint is often the only version of a problem you get to hear, while quieter patients simply disappear or stay unhappy in silence. We also explain why an “empty problem list” is rarely a victory, and how leaders can normalize surfacing issues by celebrating the courage it takes to speak up.

Then we tackle the tension most practices feel between psychological safety and accountability. Safety does not mean nobody gets corrected, and accountability does not require shame. We break down how to correct without humiliating, how to avoid refereeing who’s right or wrong, and how to create a practice where ideas, questions, concerns, and mistakes are visible instead of hidden.

If you’re serious about dental practice leadership and practice growth, build leaders around you so you can finally stop being the bottleneck. Subscribe, share this with a practice owner who needs it, leave a review, and book a free strategy call at dentalpracticeheroes.com/slash strategy.

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Whatever is holding your practice back is probably not the thing you worked on this week.

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.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:25) From one group practice to nearly 50

(07:03) The decision to go non-clinical

(11:14) Dental Moneyball: the most underused growth lever

(14:38) What makes a practice worth buying

(17:57) Splitting your week between clinical and owner time

(19:26) The biggest opportunity owners keep missing

(21:51) How to find what's actually holding you back

(23:58) KPIs, people, and culture

(27:48) Why the hygiene shortage is just getting started

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

That split second after a patient asks “Can’t you just fill it?” can quietly decide the whole case. If you hesitate, even with good intentions, you can accidentally turn your best clinical recommendation into an “upgrade” and make the compromised option feel like the default. We dig into why that happens and how to communicate treatment plans with calm confidence, so your patients feel informed instead of sold. 

We unpack the difference between what you technically could do and what you would actually recommend, using a simple analogy that makes the point stick. From crown vs filling conversations to new patient exams, we talk about the trap of negotiating against your own diagnosis, and why trying to keep everyone happy can chip away at your authority, your case acceptance, and your enjoyment of dentistry. 

We also get practical about objections. “Just a filling” is often a placeholder for something else: fear, mistrust, confusion, low perceived value, or money. You’ll hear how to stop diagnosing the patient’s wallet, ask better questions, and give real patient autonomy by presenting the ideal plan clearly, then letting them choose with full understanding of risks, benefits, and alternatives. 

If you want better communication, stronger trust, and a practice that runs smoother without you feeling slimy, this is for you. Subscribe for more dentistry practice management strategies, share this with a dentist who needs it, and leave a quick review so more practice owners can find the show.

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Cost, timing, pain, insurance. These objections don't mean a patient is saying "no."

In this episode, the DPH coaches share how they handle the most common patient objections and turn them into a "yes." You'll learn how to present treatment plans big and small — with confidence, and without being salesy or putting patients on the defensive.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:51) Why even obvious treatment gets turned down

(04:42) Defining an objection (and why they happen)

(06:47) Handling cost objections without getting defensive

(13:10) When an objection stops you cold

(16:54) What happens when you're not confident in your diagnosis

(20:24) How to respond to 'I need to talk to my spouse'

(23:49) The wrong way to uncover objections

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Your front desk can look busy all day and still leak production, profit, and patience. When phones, check-ins, insurance questions, and balance collections are treated like one giant job, “urgency” wins every time. The ringing phone gets answered, the insurance fire gets put out, and the real growth work quietly disappears: filling tomorrow’s hole, following up on that $10,000 treatment plan, and building systems that keep the practice steady even when someone is out.

We walk through a cleaner way to think about dental practice management by creating levels inside your admin department. Foundational front desk skills can be trained fast, which means you can hire great people with the right attitude and communication even without deep dental experience. From there, you intentionally develop advanced roles like insurance, treatment coordination, and true leadership. That structure gives your team a path to grow, makes onboarding easier, and stops your practice from depending on one superhero employee who “knows everything.”

We also get honest about the office manager role. Promoting the best insurance expert and changing nothing else is not management, it is a title swap. A real dental office manager needs protected time to coach people, track KPIs, improve systems, and drive proactive work that increases case acceptance and reduces schedule chaos. If you want a front desk team that scales, you need clear ownership and redundancy so every critical function has at least two trained people.

If you found this useful, subscribe, share the episode with another practice owner, and leave a review so more dentists can find the show. What role on your admin team needs the clearest definition right now?

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

We break down why the same operational problems keep resurfacing even after everyone “agrees” in a meeting. We share a simple leadership framework that turns talk into implementation so our dental practice keeps improving without constant reminders. 

• the hidden cost of repeated meetings and drifting systems 
• why agreement feels good but fails without a system 
• a real crown charting conflict that fuels resentment 
• involving the team through autonomy and a clear why 
• making a decision without chasing the perfect solution 
• setting a defined trial period so everyone tests together 
• building revisit habits with agendas, reminders, and checklists 
• getting curious when a system fails instead of blaming people 
• the four-word framework: discuss, decide, try, revisit 

go to dentalpracticeheroes.com/strategy and book a free strategy call with me. 

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Every dentist wants an assistant who anticipates their needs without being asked. Almost nobody does what it takes to get there.

Kevin Henry, dental journalist and founder of Dental Assistant Nation, has spent 21 years advocating for dental assistants. In this episode, he shares what makes them disengage, what a good day actually looks like for them, and how to train them the right way.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:52) Why your dental assistants aren't engaged

(06:13) The skills to instill in every assistant

(10:44) Dental assistant schools post-COVID

(11:51) The push to turn assistants into hygienists

(13:35) Staffing shortage or a retention problem

(16:00) The training mistake that backfires

(17:26) Setting goals for a role with no numbers

(19:07) 3 things assistants actually care about

(23:25) How to give your assistant a good day

(25:14) The commandments of treating your assistant well

(27:40) What's next for AI and staffing

(30:24) Conversations to have before someone asks for a raise

Check out the Dental Assistant Nation podcast:

https://dentalassistantnation.com/

Learn more about what dental assistants can legally do in your state:

https://www.danb.org/

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

We describe the moment every practice owner knows: you block CEO time to build better systems, then lose it to nonstop interruptions and tiny fires. We share how protecting leadership time, setting clear availability rules, and focusing on KPIs turns you from the bottleneck into the builder of a practice that runs without you. 

• why CEO time disappears faster than clinical time 
• protecting leadership time like production time 
• the difference between reacting all day and creating real growth 
• a simple closed-door boundary for uninterrupted work 
• what to do when CEO work feels uncomfortable 
• starting with KPIs, a problem list, and one-on-ones 
• spotting repeat questions and turning them into systems 
• training the team to make decisions without you 
You can book a strategy, call it dentalpracticeheroes.com/slash strategy. 
And if this episode resonated with you, I would really appreciate it if you left a review. 

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Eight out of ten employees show up disengaged. The other two are doing all the work in your practice.

In this episode, Dr. David Maloley explains what's really driving attrition and why a paycheck doesn't cut it anymore. You'll find out which outside forces are quietly commoditizing your practice, the burnout triggers already built in, and how to create an employee experience that holds your practice together.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:19) David’s dream practice that turned into a nightmare

(06:29) What hiring an office manager can't fix 

(09:18) The forces commoditizing dentistry

(18:25) What a bad employee experience looks like

(20:10) Three levels of a value-fluent team

(21:16) What's really driving patient attrition

(23:09) Burnout triggers built into dental practices

(25:30) What happens when you stop chasing numbers

(30:10) Why vague leadership creates attrition

(36:28) The Trust Triangle decision framework

Take the Commodity Threat Assessment:
https://assessment.irreplaceablepractice.com/

Listen to more episodes with Dr. David Maloley:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2311108/episodes/14424320

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2311108/episodes/14423936

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Hire another associate, open a second location, drop insurance — or maybe change nothing at all? The truth is, just because your practice can grow doesn't mean it should.

In this episode, the DPH coaches will help you figure out what kind of practice actually fits the life you want. You'll hear the mistake that almost buried one of them, the steps you should take before scaling, and the honest questions that reveal whether a bigger practice is right for you.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:26) How to make your own decision

(06:45) The mistake that can break your practice

(09:52) A framework for deciding whether to scale

(11:40) The client who was happier staying small

(13:12) What type of leader you are (and why it matters)

(15:38) One thing to do whether you scale or not

(18:30) How to know when you're ready

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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 know the moment: you’re having the same conversation again, trying to stay calm, trying to protect psychological safety, but quietly wondering why the message still isn’t landing. When a team member keeps missing a checklist step, showing up late, skipping a pre-collect, or sending patients up front with the wrong codes, it stops feeling like a one-off mistake and starts feeling like a culture problem. That’s where accountability either strengthens your dental team or slowly erodes it.

We break down a powerful tool from Crucial Accountability called CPR: Content, Pattern, Relationship. First we talk about content, the single miss that needs a quick, timely reset of expectations. Then we move to pattern, where leaders must stop re-litigating “today” and name the repetition clearly, without getting dragged into whataboutisms or excuses. Finally, we tackle relationship, the level most practice owners avoid until it hurts: when the real issue becomes trust, and the team can’t count on someone to do their part in a system that depends on everyone.

You’ll leave with three tactical takeaways you can use immediately, plus a clear test for deciding which conversation you’re actually having before you open your mouth. If accountability is a constant bottleneck in your dental practice management, we also share how a trained leadership team can carry standards with you so you’re not the only person holding the line. Subscribe, share this with a practice owner friend, and leave a review so more dental leaders can find the show.

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

"I just need to get more patients into the office." It's something almost every owner tells themselves, but it's rarely what their practice needs.

In this episode, you'll learn the five levers that decide how much your practice actually produces. The DPH coaches share their own experiences of freezing in front of patients, getting honest feedback from their teams, and coaching associates who want a raise.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:02) What to do when an associate wants more money

(06:29) Why chasing new patients keeps you stuck

(08:13) Are you doing comprehensive treatment planning?

(09:46) Five levers that decide what you produce

(12:47) Why so many doctors freeze or hold back

(16:27) The honest feedback your team isn't telling you

(19:05) Setting standards and measuring outcomes

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Your hygienist spends more time with your patients than you do. That makes them one of the biggest case acceptance drivers you have.

This episode shows you how to unlock that potential with the right systems, language, and a true doctor-hygienist partnership. Hygiene consultant Janet Hagerman breaks down how to train your team to talk about treatment, the meeting you should be having every month, and the five steps to the perfect handoff.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:08) From hygienist to fractional hygiene officer 

(05:47) Why hygiene is the bedrock of your practice

(08:28) Where to start with your hygiene team

(13:08) How to have perio conversations with patients

(18:30) Getting them involved in diagnosis and treatment

(21:01) The monthly meeting that aligns your team

(24:05) Disagree without making anyone look bad

(26:22) The perfect handoff sequence

Download Janet’s free step-be-step handoff guide: https://janethagerman.com/tpn/c/C2030/docs/DOC-5ComponentsofHandoff-c2030.pdf

Connect with Janet Hagerman:

Website | https://janethagerman.com/

LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/janethagerman/

Email | janet@janethagerman.com

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

If you walked into your dental practice right now and asked one random team member what they’re actively trying to get better at, would they have a real answer or a long pause? That moment tells you almost everything about your culture, your leadership, and why “good people” sometimes slowly turn into disengaged people. We believe most team members don’t drift toward excellence on their own, they drift toward comfort, and it’s our job to make growth the default. 

We unpack why ongoing team training is one of the highest-ROI investments in dental practice management. It’s not just about clinical skills or checking boxes after onboarding. It’s about building a culture of mastery where coaching and feedback feel normal, where people know what they’re working on next, and where your assistants, hygienists, and admin team develop into stronger communicators and leaders. We also talk through the common sticking point: many owners want better systems and better performance, but they simply don’t know what to teach, who to teach, or how to structure training so it actually sticks. 

We share a practical approach for making development consistent, including separating operational meetings from true training time, using quarterly sessions for role-play and verbiage, and setting a 90-day skill focus for every department. If you’ve been hoping your team “just gets better,” this will give you a clearer roadmap for building skills like case presentation support, patient communication, conflict handling, and leadership at every level. 

If you found yourself nodding along, take a minute to subscribe, share this with a practice owner friend, and leave a five-star review so more dental teams can build a culture that never stops improving.

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Your dental practice feels like it’s barely surviving, the team is overwhelmed, and the plan sounds logical: “Once we hire one more assistant or one more hygienist, then we’ll fix the systems.” I’m challenging that idea head-on, because waiting doesn’t pause the chaos. It feeds it. When we delay training, accountability, and process improvement, we create the exact environment that drives burnout, frustration, and turnover in a short staffed dental office.

I walk through the cycle I see constantly in dental practice management: we hire someone, we rush onboarding, the new team member is afraid to ask questions, mistakes pile up, coworkers get resentful, and suddenly we’re hiring again. The problem isn’t effort, it’s predictability. That’s why building a systematized dental practice is not a “nice to have.” Clear expectations, simple workflows, and consistent follow-up are powerful staff retention strategies that make the day feel doable and the job worth keeping.

You’ll get a practical leadership playbook for what to do right now: talk to your team with transparency, pick one recurring friction point to fix instead of launching five projects, and protect training even when the schedule is packed. Training isn’t extra work, it’s how we reduce future work and help people feel confident, capable, and loyal.

If you want help building the systems and training that keep great people, head to dentalpracticeheroes.com/slash strategy and set up a call with me. Subscribe, share this with a practice owner who’s stuck in survival mode, and leave a five-star review so more dentists can find the show.

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Front desk versus clinical: every practice has this quiet rivalry, but it doesn't have to be that way.

In this episode, the DPH coaches break down why these two sides of the office resent each other and how you as the owner might be making it worse. They share exactly what you can do to create cohesion in the office, from an exercise that breaks tension and gets people talking to an easy fix for the most common source of conflict.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:43) What causes front and back office drama

(06:55) The exercise that bonds your office

(14:11) Managing unspoken expectations

(15:42) How to handle team complaints without losing safety

(18:55) Who should handle team conflict

(21:45) The trust exercise every office needs

(25:13) When getting involved backfires

(27:22) What causes the most conflict and how to fix it

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Your dental practice can feel like it’s drowning even when you’re fully staffed and the schedule looks reasonable on paper. The real culprit is often smaller and harder to spot: tiny steps in your systems that get skipped, “just this once,” and then explode into bigger problems for the next person downstream. I’m breaking down how that ripple effect creates the daily feeling of chaos, backlog, and burnout and what to do about it as the leader. 

We walk through concrete dental practice management examples that every team recognises. First, pre-collecting patient copays for larger appointments: when we avoid a brief, uncomfortable money conversation, we often create longer conversations later, more insurance re-checking, slower check-in, and weaker patient commitment that leads to cancellations and holes in the schedule. Then we talk about scheduling hygiene and recall the right way, including the simple commitment question that reduces last-minute reschedules and protects production, team bonus, and momentum. 

We also dig into the front office and back office handoff, and how small documentation mistakes can quietly destroy trust. When the front desk has to keep double-checking what happened in the operatory, it slows everything down and can even lower treatment acceptance because patients feel the uncertainty. The solution is not hiring another person. It’s building clear agreements, coaching the “why,” and creating a culture where each team member asks, “Did I make someone else’s job easier or harder?” 

If you want calmer days, stronger systems, and a team that runs smoother together, subscribe, share this with a practice owner friend, and leave a quick review so we can help more offices. What small step gets skipped most often in your practice?

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Where did all the good hygienists go? You may be asking yourself this question, but the truth is they're out there. They're just choosing someone else.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to become the office people want to work at (and stay). The DPH coaches share how one of them out-recruited six offices for a single hygienist, why your job posting is costing you good candidates, and the interview red flags you can’t ignore — even when you're desperate.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:45) Landing a hygienist every office wanted

(07:12) Doing more with fewer hygienists

(09:21) Why recruiting is really sales

(12:25) Write an ad that stands out

(14:05) Get ahead of turnover before it hits

(19:02) Why you should involve your team

(20:15) Interview questions that assess culture fit

(23:45) Qualities that matter most in a hire

(25:38) What's more important than recruiting

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

What does it take to be a better producer? For Dr. Spencer Greer, it's not about chasing new patients or pushing treatment.

In this episode, he shares the exact language he uses to present treatment without sounding greedy, losing trust, or pressuring anyone into a "yes." You'll learn where most dentists drop the ball on case acceptance and the traits that turn a surprising hire into a top producer.

The best part: the growth you're after is already sitting in your schedule.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:03) From salesman to dentist

(04:04) Building your career with intention

(06:56) Why he hands all production to associates

(09:25) The benefit to hiring new associates right out of school

(15:30) Communication mistakes (+ how to fix them)

(18:46) Having hard conversations without sounding greedy

(21:28) Presenting it delicately, with a real example

(22:42) How to handle rejection

(24:57) More production without more patients

(30:48) Dash Production course

Use code PAUL for 10% off Dr. Spencer Greer’s Dash Production course! The course starts on July 17th, so sign up here today: https://highleveldentists.com/

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Slow doesn't mean careful. Fast doesn't mean sloppy. Most dentists think efficiency comes at the cost of quality  — but this episode will show you it's actually the key to managing a busy schedule.

The DPH coaches break down how to get through your procedures faster without cutting corners. You'll hear their tips on how to speed up everyday procedures, the three things that let you run a 5-minute exam, and where your day quietly loses the most time.

Topics discussed:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:24) Why efficiency starts with data

(04:46) How to learn from your co-workers

(06:57) Mistakes that cost you time

(09:55) Mastering the juggle of a busy schedule

(11:51) How to shorten your time with patients

(14:44) The debate: watching associates work

(20:15) How fast is fast enough

(24:54) Why you can't skip steps

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Feeling lost? The biggest thing holding your practice probably isn't your team, your overhead, or the economy — it’s the stories you’re telling yourself.

In this episode, Neo Positivity, creator of the Thoughts Become Things movement and author of Your ATM, explains how the brain's "algorithm" can keep you stuck and how to take back control of your thoughts. You'll learn daily exercises and mental habits that combat negative thinking and change how you lead your practice.

Topics discussed:

• Why most of your thoughts run on autopilot
• The stories you tell yourself about your practice
• Why the leader is often the real problem
• How to stop a negative thought
• Why your home and work mindset can't be separated
• The question that reveals your purpose

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

If your days feel jam-packed but your dental practice still isn’t improving, the problem usually isn’t effort. It’s urgency. The loudest problems in a practice always win, and they trick us into believing we’ll work on systems, leadership, and growth “once things slow down.” They don’t slow down, and that’s exactly why so many practice owners feel stuck, overworked, and quietly frustrated.

We unpack the real difference between reactive work and proactive work in dental practice management. Reactive work is the constant stream of fires: insurance denials, upset patients, schedule chaos, staffing surprises, and equipment problems. It keeps the lights on, but it doesn’t build the future. Proactive work is what creates a practice that runs without you: onboarding systems, checklists, phone scripts, KPI scoreboards, P&L review, and leader development that prevents issues before they explode.

We also talk about why this matters for your key leaders, especially the office manager. Many office managers spend their whole day reacting like a highly skilled admin employee, when what you really need is protected time for true management. I share the shift I had to make when I hit a breaking point, and how blocking and defending CEO time became the turning point for building momentum again.

If you’re ready to stop living in reaction mode and start building a calmer, more profitable practice, listen now, share this with a colleague, and subscribe so you don’t miss what comes next. And if you want help installing systems and protecting proactive time, book a free strategy call at dentalpracticeheroes.com/slash strategy, then leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

What's one thing you've been avoiding in your practice? Maybe it's a slipping standard or a team member no longer pulling their weight — and every week you wait, your practice feels it a little more.

In this episode, Katherine Eitel Belt is back to help you finally have these conversations without losing the team you've built. You'll learn how to have what she calls "invitation conversations,” what it takes to get a real commitment, and where coaching ends and micromanaging begins (and why most owners get it backwards).

Topics discussed:

(00:00) The conversation you keep avoiding

(03:29) How a near-firing became an “invitation”

(10:01) The clarity that comes before the conversation

(12:18) Why owners avoid hard conversations

(14:29) When fear-based management backfires

(16:06) Team calibration: running the invitation

(20:43) Holding boundaries and identifying non-negotiables

(23:35) Real-life example of an invitation conversation

(27:33) Coaching vs. micromanaging

Learn more about Katherine Eitel Belt and the LionSpeak Leadership Academy:

https://www.lionspeak.net/

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

If you’ve ever reached the end of a packed clinic day wondering why every single problem somehow finds its way back to you, you’re not alone and you’re not broken. I’m Dr. Paul Etchison, and I’m talking about a leadership pattern that quietly traps dental practice owners: the rescuer trap. It looks like support. It feels like servant leadership. But it often turns you into the rate-limiting step and trains your team to wait for you instead of thinking.

We dig into why dentists fall into this habit (because we’re capable, we care, and we want things done right), and why it keeps a dental practice from scaling. When the doctor fixes everything, the team learns dependence, accountability gets fuzzy, and conflict resolution gets outsourced upward. I share a real practice story that exposed how unclear expectations can persist until the owner steps in, plus the mindset shift that helps your leads take problems into their own hands.

From there, we get practical: how to create psychological safety with “grace over guilt,” why discomfort is required for leadership development, and how to switch from rescuer to coach. You’ll hear specific coaching prompts to use when someone brings you an issue, how to give fewer answers without being “unhelpful,” and what it takes to build a team that can operate without needing you constantly.

If you want a practice that runs better with less doctor stress, subscribe, share this with an owner friend, and leave a five-star review. And if you’re ready for help, check out dentalpracticeheroes.com/transform or book a free strategy call at dentalpracticeheroes.com/strategy.

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

The best practices aren't built on systems and numbers — they're built on something that's easy to forget.

In this episode, Bree Groff breaks down why people are the backbone of a practice and how leaders can bring out their team's best. Working with teams at Google, Microsoft, and Pfizer, she's developed simple exercises and team practices that  drive performance and bring fun to any size practice.

Topics discussed:

• The "performative exhaustion" trap
• What people need more than a paycheck
• The most underrated leadership role
• How to make work fun and show that you care
• Two simple tools that help teams connect
• Should you be friends with the people you lead?

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Technology in dentistry is moving faster than ever, and it's easy to feel like you're falling behind. AI is writing chart notes, robots are helping place implants, and there's a new company pitching you every day.

In this episode, Dr. Alan Mead and Paul discuss where dentistry is really headed, what's worth your attention, and what matters most even as the tools evolve.

Topics discussed:

• Microscope dentistry
• How tech in dentistry has changed over the past 30 years
• Getting patients to trust your treatment plan
• The dental task AI is about to automate
• Could robots actually replace dentists?
• Why you should beware of new AI tools

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

If you’ve ever looked around your dental office and thought, “Why am I the only one who cares?”, you’re not alone and you’re not crazy. We’ve felt that same disconnect between the emotional weight of practice ownership and a team that seems able to clock out and leave it all behind. That gap can turn into resentment fast, and it’s one of the quiet drivers of dentist burnout, poor practice culture, and constant frustration with accountability.

We dig into a hard truth in dental practice management: your team will never care the same way you do, because they don’t carry the same risk, debt, payroll pressure, and reputation stakes. But “they don’t care like an owner” doesn’t mean they can’t care deeply. The real issue is often the environment we create, especially when every decision funnels through us or through a single fixer on the team. That pattern trains dependence, kills autonomy, and leaves the owner carrying every problem, even on weekends.

From there we get practical about dental leadership. We talk about building connection outside of corrective conversations, making small relational deposits that help people feel seen, and creating psychological safety so reasonable mistakes become learning instead of fear. We also share why teams support what they help build, plus a simple framework to invite staff into solutions so they truly own results without needing equity. If you want more engagement, better communication, and a lighter emotional load as an owner, this gives you a clear starting point.

If you need help building an engaged team and a healthier dental office culture, reach out for a strategy call, and if this helps you, subscribe, share the episode with another practice owner, and leave a five-star review so more dentists can find it.

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

The most expensive report in your practice is the one you're not opening: the AR report.

This episode unpacks why your old AR keeps piling up and how to clean it up without losing patients or overwhelming the front desk. You'll learn how to collect what you're owed (and when to let go), spot problems before they spiral, and build systems that keep it from happening again.

Topics discussed:

• AR system failures and how to prevent them
• Collecting old AR without losing patients
• Patient AR vs. insurance AR
• The "zero statement" practice (and how to build one)
• Weekly metrics every owner should be tracking

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Your new hire isn’t “bad” after three days, they’re lost in your system. When we throw someone into a busy dental office with a login, a quick tour, and a vague “just ask questions,” we create office survival training. That is not onboarding, and it is one of the fastest paths to turnover, resentment, and the feeling that you can never keep a solid dental team.

I break down why dental experience doesn’t automatically translate into performance in your practice. Every office has a different pace, different expectations, different practice management software, and a different way of communicating with patients. Even talented, experienced people can struggle more when they feel pressure to prove themselves and don’t feel safe admitting what they don’t know. We talk about how inflated expectations and low psychological safety quietly destroy trust, and what to do instead if you want real employee retention.

Then we get practical: assign one trainer, not a whole department, and build an onboarding system that does not live in the brain of your best employee. I share how to create a simple training framework by role, set standards without scaring good people away, and use a 30-60-90 day onboarding plan so learning happens in the right order. The goal is a practice that runs smoother, trains faster, and keeps great people because the environment makes it safe to ask questions and grow.

If you want more structure like this in your dental practice management and leadership, subscribe, share this with a practice owner friend, and leave a five-star review so more dentists can find the show. What is the first change you will make to your onboarding this week?

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Your great employee just became a bad leader... what happened?

This episode unpacks why even the best employees aren't fit for leadership and how to tell if you've promoted the wrong person. From the traits that make a good lead to awkward demotions, you'll learn how to avoid expensive mistakes (and what to do when you've already made one).

Topics discussed:

• Why great employee struggle in leadership roles
• How to tell if someone's in the wrong seat
• The yearly leadership "invite"
• How to demote without losing them
• The accountability chart that takes you out of every decision
• An exercise that reveals how unclear your roles really are
• Skills that every lead needs

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Successful, functioning, but secretly miserable? There's a name for what you're feeling, and it isn't burnout.

In this episode, Dr. Corey Keyes, sociologist and author of Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down, breaks down what's really happening when life looks good on paper but you feel “off.”

He calls it "languishing" — and you'll learn how to tell if this is you, the five things that can pull you out of it, and where to start once you know.

Topics discussed:

• The difference between burnout and languishing
• Why so many people are languishing
• Diagnostic criteria for languishing
• What older adults can teach us about relationships
• The five vitamins of flourishing
• Active vs. passive leisure (and the cost)
• The 14-question self check-in

Grab Dr. Corey Keyes’ book:

https://www.amazon.com/Languishing-Alive-Again-World-Wears/dp/0593444620

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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’re alone in your office after hours, staring at the numbers, and you can feel it: the practice has more potential. The hard part isn’t the math. The hard part is saying “production goals” out loud without feeling like you’ve betrayed patient care or turned into a salesperson. We’ve been trained to talk dentistry, not revenue, so it makes sense that money talk can feel awkward, corporate, or even greedy. 

We walk through a simple but powerful reframe for dental practice management: if you don’t define what production, growth, and profit mean, your dental team will define it for you, and it often turns into pressure, discomfort, and underpresented treatment. That discomfort leaks into case acceptance, financial conversations, and patient trust. Then we use three questions to anchor the conversation in ethics and confidence: do patients need what we recommend, do we do good clinical work, and do we take great care of people through the full experience? When those are true, presenting treatment becomes clarity, not manipulation. 

From there, dental office metrics stop being “just numbers” and start representing value provided: pain relieved, teeth saved, disease treated, confidence restored. We also make the case that healthy dental practice profitability can improve patient care by funding better technology, training, team retention, and a calmer practice culture that isn’t desperate for every yes. If you want a stronger, more aligned team and sustainable dental practice growth, this is the mindset shift that makes the leadership conversations easier. 

Subscribe to Dental Practice Heroes, share this with a practice owner who hates talking about money, and leave a review so more dentists can find it. What’s the one “number” you want your team to see as patient impact?

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

One strategy. An almost infinite ceiling. And most of your competitors aren't willing to do it.

In this episode, founder of The Dental Marketer Michael Arias breaks down the no-cost strategy he calls ground marketing. You'll learn what it actually takes to get results, from the exact scripts to use with local businesses to how to identify the person on your team built to run it.

Topics discussed:

• The REAL framework that makes ground marketing actually work
• What most people get wrong about ground marketing
• The apartment complex playbook
• What to say when you walk into a new business
• How to work events and fill your signup sheet
• The locations most owners overlook
• Traits the person in charge needs to have
• The mindset shift that helps you overcome rejection

Connect with Michael Arias:
https://thedentalmarketer.org/

Listen to The Dental Marketer podcast:
https://thedentalmarketer.site/podcast

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Most practices are either tracking nothing, tracking everything, or tracking the wrong things entirely — and the result looks the same: a busy practice you can't fully control.

This episode will tell you what metrics actually matter and what they're telling you about your practice. Learn how to track KPIs without getting overwhelmed, use data to find trends, and solve problems in your practice.

Topics discussed:

• KPIs to check every week
• What each metric say about your practice
• 4 scorecards for running your practice
• How to use KPIs to track team performance
• Leading vs. lagging indicators
• The dumbest data point in dentistry
• Why a dashboard you check monthly is useless
• The treatment plan acceptance trap

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Cancellations are up, no-shows are almost expected — and most owners are handling it the wrong way.

In this episode, Carrie Webber of Jameson Group walks through what every person in your practice can start doing today to keep patients on the schedule. You’ll learn exactly what to say to patients to get them to show up, the front desk mistake that costs you appointments, and the unexpected reason patients don’t follow through..l

Topics discussed:

• Three issues every practice is dealing with right now
• Why cancellations and no-shows have increased
• The first step to fixing a cancellation/no-show problem
• The strategy most owners try (and why it doesn’t work)
• Seven value-building skills every role needs
• The burnout problem hurting your patient experience
• How to audit your entire patient experience in one day
• The front desk mistake that loses patients before they book
• Power words that ensure patients show up
• The biggest obstacle to patients getting treatment

Connect with Carrie Webber:

https://jmsn.com

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

Title Options:

1. Stop Charging Cancellation Fees — Do This Instead
2. Say This and Watch Your No-Show Rate Drop
3. The Words That Get Patients to Actually Show Up
4. The One Phrase Your Front Desk Needs to Stop Saying
5. Stop Saying This to Patients and Improve Your Cancellation Rate

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

There's one thing standing between you and a practice that runs without you: delegation. And you're probably doing it wrong — even if you have a leadership team in place.

In this episode, the DPH coaches break down the mistakes most owners make when they delegate and how to actually start getting things off your plate without everything falling apart. You'll get real examples of what it looks like to delegate the tasks that stress you out, from payroll to hiring, and everything in between.

Topics discussed:

• The difference between delegation and abdication
• Who belongs on a leadership team (and the role most owners get wrong)
• The mental side of delegation most owners ignore
• How to figure out what to delegate first
• The follow-up habit that keeps everything on track

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Your practice feels maxed out, but you’re not ready to build more operatories or move locations. So what’s the lever most owners ignore? Hours. We talk through why adding evenings or Saturdays sparks instant fear in dental teams, and how to lead that change without breaking trust, creating burnout, or wrecking your culture.

We share the shift design that makes expanded hours feel fair: stop treating the day schedule as “normal,” rotate intentionally, and start small so the team can experience the upsides. We also dig into how to present the change so it lands as better patient access and more flexibility, not “work later and work more.” If you’ve ever worried that one resistant team member could derail the whole plan, we address that head-on with a practical leadership stance you can actually use.

Then we zoom out to the business side of dental practice growth. If you want to hire an associate in a smaller office, the math matters: hygiene capacity, production hours, and new patient flow. We unpack why simply sliding over a chair can make you less profitable, and why split shifts and expanded hours often create the room you need without adding square footage. We even share real-world results from high-performing small-op offices that prove the model can work.

If you found this helpful, subscribe for more practice owner strategies, share it with a dentist friend who’s stuck at capacity, and leave a review so more owners can find the show. What hours change would move the needle most for your practice right now?

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Don't let all your marketing dollars go to waste… Because if you're chasing patients instead of focusing on their experience inside your practice, they may be.

Dr. Lior Tamir has built a practice doing close to $1M per chair while spending under $3K/month on marketing. In this episode, he shares exactly how he did it — from the patient experience details most owners ignore to the follow-up gap costing most practices serious revenue.

Topics discussed:

• Why marketing isn’t enough to grow a practice
• The unconventional moves that differentiated and grew his practice
• How small details compound into long-term retention
• Patient touchpoints that drive organic growth
• Why you should invest in technology (and what to buy first)
• How to unlock hidden revenue in your practice

Learn more about The Dental App:
https://www.thedentalapp.com/

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Tired of strong opinions and weak evidence running your schedule? We put everyday practice debates under the microscope and share simple experiments that turn gut feelings into clear decisions. From no-shows to network choices, we break down quick tests you can run this month to cut waste, improve flow, and protect production.

If you want a practice that improves by design, not by accident, this is your playbook for fast, low-lift experiments that build a culture of curiosity and measurable results. Subscribe, share with a colleague who loves data, and leave a review telling us the first test you’ll run.

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

We break down why a “slammed” front desk is often a symptom of broken systems, not true patient volume. We show how tighter first conversations, better phone control, and clearer financial expectations eliminate repeat work and reduce burnout.
• redundant admin work as the hidden killer of efficiency
• cancellations as an upstream conversation problem that creates multiple downstream tasks
• phone training as the difference between long meandering calls and confident appointment closes
• clear financial presentations to prevent repeated questions and follow-up work
• a leadership mindset shift from hiring to system precision
• a baseline staffing metric of collections per full-time front desk team member
• collecting the full patient portion at scheduling to reduce no-shows and friction
• homework question for the team to identify repeat tasks and remove them at the source

So if that's something that interests you, please reach out to us, set up a strategy call. Let's talk about it.
And if you like what you hear, please give a five star review on Apple for the podcast.

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Exhausted, underproducing... but busy. Sound familiar? Instead of grinding away, you could be building a $1.5 million practice with just two procedures a day.

In this episode, the DPH coaches break down block scheduling, guardrails that keep low-dollar procedures from stacking up, treatment planning benchmarks, and how to coach your team into building a profitable schedule — not just a full one.

Topics discussed:

• Why a packed schedule doesn't always equal a profitable one
• The real reason your days feel chaotic
• Block scheduling: how to protect your time
• Where low-value procedures belong in your schedule
• What a $1.5M production schedule looks like day-to-day
• How to diagnose what’s wrong with your schedule
• Four reasons you have a bad schedule
• How to audit and coach your team without drama
• The leadership mindset shift that ties it all together

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

We challenge the reflex to hire an associate or build more operatories when the real issue is low efficiency and weak utilization. We break down the numbers that reveal the true bottleneck and the practical steps that raise production and profit without adding fixed costs.
• why most “space problems” are really efficiency problems 
• the core rule: do not build a bigger box for a broken system 
• real-world production per operatory examples and why benchmarks can be too low 
• expanding hours as the fastest way to increase utilization 
• the associate trap and how extra providers can reduce profitability 
• the minimal acceptable production floor of $650 per hour and why owners should aim higher 
• identifying constraints: new patient flow, hygiene pipeline, procedure time, scheduling 
• how block scheduling can drive rapid production gains 
• using evening hours to improve access without increasing overhead 
• three questions to answer before expanding: DPH, hygiene coverage, fully utilized hours 
Go to dentalpracticeheroes.com/slash strategy.

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

The difference between associates producing $8K a day versus $1.4K a day? It has nothing to do with clinical skill.

In this episode, the DPH coaches explain why building rapport with patients is the foundation of case acceptance. You'll learn how to coach your associates without pushing them away, a 2-minute exercise that makes patient conversations feel more natural, and how to work as a team to build trust before the doctor even walks in.

Topics discussed:

• When associates don’t want to build rapport
• A simple exercise to build patient connections
• The cost of poor treatment planning
• How to explain rapport to associates in a way that gets buy-in
• How to build trust before the doctor walks in
• Conversation starters that actually feel natural
• The right way to coach associates (& why it’s a non-negotiable)

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.

Your team probably isn’t “full of problems.” More often, your standards are invisible. When we expect people to “act like adults” but never define what that means in a dental office, we get frustration, gossip, and the same performance issues on repeat. I’m Dr. Paul Etchison, and I’m sharing one of the most effective leadership exercises I’ve used to create immediate clarity and shift our dental practice culture fast.

We start with a simple idea: culture is like a garden. If all you do is pull weeds like negativity, laziness, rudeness, and defensiveness, you’ll stay stuck reacting forever. Instead, we intentionally plant the traits we want like reliability, accountability, helpfulness, positivity, and fun. I break down exactly how we ran this as a team exercise using live input, how we grouped the answers, and why the “everyone agrees” moment is where momentum starts. Once expectations are spoken, the drama fades because feedback becomes principle-based, not personal.

Then we dig into the culture divider that changes everything: accountable versus defensive. I explain how defensiveness turns simple coaching into exhausting debates, why that drains leaders, and how a shared language makes it easier to call behaviors out without shaming anyone. If you care about dental practice management, team accountability, and building a practice that runs without you as the bottleneck, this is a practical, repeatable way to get there.

Subscribe for more dental leadership strategies, share this with a practice owner who needs it, and leave a review so more teams can find it. What’s one trait you want your culture to be known for?

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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’re collecting millions, producing like crazy, and still giving away a massive chunk to taxes every single year. That usually isn’t just a tax problem — it’s a planning problem.

In this episode, CPA Seth Peabody walks through the strategies that have helped his clients save serious money (at least $50K), why many dentists never hear about them, and what proactive tax planning actually looks like.

Topics discussed:

• Tax filing vs. tax planning (and why the difference is important)
• Signs you've outgrown your CPA
• Tax strategies most CPAs never bring up
• What’s changed in 2026: bonus depreciation and the SALT cap
• How to be proactive and avoid surprise tax bills

Connect with Seth Peabody:

https://www.itxre.com/

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

Use the same marketing company as Dr. Etch!

Get your free demo with Relevance Marketing by Clicking Here

If you are ready to increase your new patients and start growing your practice, visit www.relevanceonlinemarketing.com and see what you've been missing with your current company. 

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.