Passive Practice: Begin Your Journey Towards Time Freedom By Stepping Away With Dr. Eric Roman

In this episode of Dental Wealth Multiplier, Jonathan Moffat and Dr. Eric Roman go deep into what it really takes to build a resilient dental life. They talk about the challenges most dentists face behind the scenes: burnout, overwhelm, and feeling stuck. They also discuss how small, consistent changes can lead to massive results. From the law of marginal gains to personal stories about business struggles, this episode is a real, raw conversation about finding clarity, regaining control, and building something that truly lasts.

Find Jonathan at jonathanmoffat.com

Learn more about Aligned Advisors at alignedadvisors.com

Connect with Dr. Eric Roman at drericjroman.com

Find Jonathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanmoffat1/

Find Dr. Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drericjroman/

Join us weekly as we explore what it really takes to grow your wealth while designing the life you want. Visit dentalwealthmultiplier.com for more!

—

Watch the Episode here

Listen to the Podcast here

Passive Practice: Begin Your Journey Towards Time Freedom By Stepping Away With Dr. Eric Roman

Thanks for joining us for our second episode. They don’t know what they’re in for.

The Raw Inside Your Life

What are we talking about? We talk about real dental people and real dental problems. We do it because we want you to know you have a choice to have a robust, resilient, and incredible dental life. We’re going to talk about exactly how to get there, but maybe we should always start by talking about what’s hard. What’s raw inside your life?

Thanks. It’s important or relatable if you’re like, “This person’s in the mud with me. We’re in the mud, and we’re all getting muddy.” When you asked that question of what feels raw or what’s in my face, it is this idea around the business. It’s always the business. I was telling you I can see where the business needs to be going and the potential of where the business can get to, but for the last couple of months, it feels like it’s out of reach. That was weird.

It is this idea that I can see where the business needs to go. I can see where we’re headed or where we could and should be, and yet, it is out of reach. I can’t grasp it, and it’s so frustrating. I go home and talk to my wife about it. I’m talking to my team about it. I’m trying to relay this vision and get my team on board with the vision, too. I’m like, “This is where we could be, and this is where we can go.”

There seems to be one obstacle in front of another that’s keeping us from getting to where, ultimately, I feel like we should be in this next step. That, for me, is what I’m spending a lot of time on. I’m spending a lot of time on my morning meditations. I was telling you that I’m journaling through the EOS journal. I’m trying to map that out and figure that out. That’s what I’m in the middle of and what’s pretty real and in my face. What about you?

First, I want you to know that we could talk about solving crap, but sometimes, it’s great for us to hold it and let it be there. What you’re expressing reminds me of how many times inside the journey. I know that feeling, and I know how hard that is. It’s an existential journey. I want to tell you I hear you, I feel that, and I acknowledge what you’re saying. In some ways, it’s the thing we all signed up for that nobody told us. If you eat McDonald’s every day, it might taste good, but you will get obese. This is like entrepreneurial obesity. You get to have all this fun and you get to build stuff, but you also get to suffer in the mire of crap. It’s ever-present. I see you.

I appreciate that.

As we were sitting here earlier recording, I got an email. I am a dentist, but I don’t practice anymore, so they have to go to another dentist. I get an email with, “Your child has interproximal caries.” I would say that was my raw, but it’s not that raw because it’s not my problem. It’s theirs. I’m going to let them have that problem. Woe to the dentist that has to deal with that crap.

I have times in my life when I’m in darkness. I’m in the pit. It’s like I don’t have any energy. I have a lot of energy, and I have a lot of stuff I’m excited about doing, but I have too much. There are so many things that I have to get done. That’s a stupid phrase all by itself. There are so many things I want to do. I’m in a target-rich environment. What I’m sitting in is resting, and saying I wish I felt like I was making a little bit more progress. That’s what’s raw for me. It could have been my personal life. It could have been anything else, but that’s my emotion as I was sitting down.

Thank you. I appreciate you sharing that as well. Something that came to mind is that a lot of times, our spouses or people who are outside are in the area of our orbit. Maybe they’re not always in our orbit. It’s also important to remind ourselves, as I often forget, to look back and reflect on where you’ve come from, and even appreciate times when maybe you didn’t have a lot going on.

In my case, it is seeing the past and where the business can go and can get to, and seeing the potential of the business only comes from a sense of stability in the business. You’re taking the business and saying, “What can we do to build it, grow it, make it better, or improve it to move forward? It took you sharing to remind me that it’s important to reflect back on where we’ve come and those times that maybe when we had different things and different obstacles we were facing. That, hopefully, gives us confidence and clarity in knowing that we got through those, so we can get through whatever is in our face now.

As you said that to me, it had never even occurred to me. That’s the thing. When you’re in your own crap, you’re in your own crap and you don’t see the truth. I’m a coach. I coach people. One of the hardest things about being a coach is you coach people, but you have all the same problems every single fricking day. I’m coaching people, and they’re like, “This is so unbelievably effective. Thank you so much.” I’m like, “Don’t make me look in the mirror on this one because my house is an absolute nut job right now.”

The Rule Of Marginal Gains

Thanks. I appreciate that reflection. Talking about having a ton on your plate and thinking about what to do about it is a nice segue to our topic for this episode. You had mentioned the rule of marginal gains, and I freaking love it. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the rule of marginal gains? I’m sure people have heard pieces of it, but you’ve got a better story than that.

I heard this years ago. I’ll never forget when I heard it. I was like, “That makes so much sense.” What’s the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

I’d prefer not to eat an elephant, but that’s fine. I get it.

Fill an elephant with a triple-layered chocolate cake. The point is one bite at a time. I’m going to do a little bit of reading here because I forgot some of the names. What it is is the British cycling team, which I believe was called the Sky Cycling Team, was not a great team.

They brought in this guy named Sir David Brailsford. He was the Performance Director of British Cycling. They brought him in. He looked at their whole program and was like, “We are one of the worst cycling teams.” They hadn’t won the Olympics in forever and performed horribly in the Tour de France.

He goes, “We’re going to do something called the law of marginal gains. What we’re going to do is we’re going to focus on improving 1% across several different things.” What would be some examples of that? He goes, “Instead of trying this muscle relaxant gel, let’s try a different one, maybe one that induces heat. Let’s do some performance monitors to track what cadences on a pedal are cyclists hitting certain heart rate percentages. Let’s maybe switch up something in the diet. Not everything in the diet, but let’s take out 2 bananas and eat 1 banana.”

It was 1% in all these different areas. What they noticed was a massive improvement over time. They went on to win multiple Olympics and multiple Tour de Frances. There’s a YouTube documentary on it. It’s a very interesting story. If you want to go watch it, you should. There are a lot of things that they talk about in there that are directly applicable to the dental space, but our businesses as well.

It is also applicable to what you and I both said is in our faces, these challenges that we’re facing. The example that we were talking about before was one of the most common goals we hear from doctors is they want to step away. They’re like, “I want to have freedom and step away from the chair.” It is this idea of going from practicing clinically 4 days or 5 days a week, which most of you are probably 4 days a week, and going to 0. That probably isn’t realistic.

There are probably a lot of you thinking, “I don’t want to do zero. I want to do less or do certain procedures that I love doing. I want to see those patients that I love to see, or walk into the practice and deal with the procedures or the parts of the business that I enjoy doing.” Going from where you are and getting to where you want to be seems like a lot.

It’s the elephant.

We focus on chipping away 1%. The example I came up with, and there are lots of examples, was like, “As of Monday, I’m no longer the person to talk to. If you have an issue with your paycheck, overtime, sick pay, or vacation pay, I’m not that person anymore. That person is Veronica, the office manager,” or whoever. If you are already doing that, like, “When I walk into the morning huddle and I hear, ‘The computer in room two isn’t working, doctor,’ I’m not that computer-in-room-two-not-working guy anymore. Call this number. Here’s a solution to that.”

If you start to chip away at those and identify those 1%, you’ll start to notice, “I went from having the ability to see the option and see practice clinically less days or do the procedure I want to do to having more time. I’ve created more space over time, implementing this 1%, to where that is a reality. I can come in and be like, “My schedule is only filled with the types of procedures I like doing,” or, “I am only practicing three half days a week now because I was able to do all these other things that allowed me to get to that point.”

What I heard, when you were saying this 1%, these marginal gains, were teeny incremental steps that multiply. I don’t know if anybody has ever heard of Dan Sullivan, the greatest educator of entrepreneurs. Dan Sullivan’s thing is that we can accomplish a lot less than we think in 6 weeks or 90 days, but a lot more than we think in 10 years. I’m paraphrasing. He says, “You have too many goals for the next 3 months and too few goals and too little belief in yourself for what you can do over the next 10 years.” That hits so much.

One of the things that I do, too, when I train young dentists is I would tell them, “Could you be 1% more productive next month?” They’re like, “I produced 40,000, so could I hit 40,400? That’s 1%.” No-brainer. $400 additional. I’m like, “Could you do an additional 1% every month?” It’s like, “That seems easy.” What is that? You think it’s 12% growth, but it’s not because it compounds, to your point.

We get that compounding effect. I forgot what it is. It’s fourteen. I did the math and I built a calculator. Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to pull it up because it was so unbelievably ridiculous. The question was, if you were a dentist and you did a 1% improvement every month, is it that hard to improve by 1%? It’s nothing. $400. You could do that in your sleep with your eyes closed.

On 100,000 a month, it’s $1,000, right?

Yes. You got it. I said, “What would happen if you did that for over 40 years?”

It’s going to be a massive number.

You would be producing something like your total lifetime earnings. Let’s go with that. You’d produce $335 million over your career. Do the math on your take-home income. That’s ridiculous. That shows the ridiculous compounding effect. If you were to produce, you would be a $20,000-an-hour dentist. That is what you would be. That’s after 420 months. What’s the math on that? It’s not even 40 years. It’s pretty crazy. How would you apply that in your life? What would you say to Jonathan about applying the law of marginal gains?

For all of us, my first thought is that we take personal inventory, and then you take inventory in your business or your practice. We then start to see, “What is the one thing that’s keeping me from achieving X?” If the goal were to say, “I want to go from 4 days clinical to 3 days, or 4 to 3 and a half days,” first of all, I’d say maybe don’t shoot for 4 to 3, but maybe shoot for 4 and maybe knock an hour off the back end of one of those days.

You could take an hour and a half lunch and see what obstacles come up when you do that. There will be obstacles. The team is going to freak out a little bit, like, “What do you mean you’re leaving at 4:00 instead of 5:00? You’re always here until 5:00. What are we going to do about so-and-so?” You start to say, “Let’s talk about that.”

I was talking with a client. They have four practices on the East Coast. They’re getting ready to go to Montana to ski. We’re on the call, and he goes, “I’ve got these three doctors. This one’s going on vacation, this one’s on maternity leave, and this one’s Dad’s sick. We’re going to have to cancel our trip.” I said, “Hold on. What if you empowered your team to come up with a solution or a plan that said, “We have to allow our doctor to still go on this trip and not stress them out.” What would they do?” I don’t know. To be continued, I’ll let you know. Remind me in a future episode, and I’ll tell you what they ended up coming up with.

That was something where a lot of times, as business owners, and this is a whole other topic, we tend to put our families and ourselves last. Some might say that’s the nature of the business, but the reality, which you made a comment in our first episode, is that most of us go into business because we want a better quality of life. I can tell you that’s why I went into business.

People say, “Why are you doing what you’re doing?” I’d say, “I watched my dad. My dad was always at my soccer games. He was always on vacation. He was traveling the world, and he had this work. That’s why I’m doing what I want to do.” Yet, when we get lost in the thrashings that happen in all of our businesses, it takes it away.

For me, going back to answering your question, we have to identify what the biggest obstacle is that’s keeping us from X. In my case, I need to spend more time understanding what the biggest obstacle is keeping the team from feeling empowered to take over some of the day-to-day operations of the business, where I feel like I have to step in on a regular basis and carry that part of the business. I need to spend some time on that. What’s something I can do that would improve that by 1% and identify that? I don’t know that I know that off the top of my head. I have a few ideas, but I’m not sure. What about you? What would you say?

Putting Your Head Down

This is what I’m working on in my life. I’ve built a lot of fast-growing businesses, and I have high expectations for stuff. My past success is almost a deterrent to my future joy and my future satisfaction, in that if something’s not growing where I tried for twelve months and it’s not growing super fast, I’m out. It might even be making a decent income. I’m like, “It’s not good enough for me.” I recognize I need to have a greater long-term mindset of what it looks like to sit there, be content, and do my 1%.

It’s almost like everything that I try and do in my life is like an explosion. I was on a trip with my family to Costa Rica. Some of my team was like, “Send us some good pictures of the animals down there and pick out your spirit animal.” That was funny. It was comical. Spirit animal, I already got one. They texted me as we were having this super cool experience with a bull. It was the most beautiful freaking bull I’ve ever seen in my life. It was gorgeous. The color of it was incredible.

It came right over to the fence, and it was into me. Maybe I had some of that big bull energy coming out of me right then. He wanted to come over and curl. He was curling into my neck and sitting there. The dude was like, “He is not a mean bull, but he doesn’t do that to people. What are you doing?” I was like, “Your bull is feeling it for me.”

It was interesting. What I thought about is that I want this to be the year of the cow. I want it to be the year of the cow. One thing that I know is that I produce milk, and milk creates value for people. Yet, I don’t want to feel an obligation to run. I don’t want to feel an obligation to sprint. I want to put my head down, eat my grass, produce my milk, do it day after day, and take joy in the pasture that I get to be in.

I taught a group of 30 doctors about that law. A) I didn’t know the name, B) I didn’t know the background. Now, I do, but I didn’t sit there and say, “Eric, how are you applying that to your life?” I’m telling other people how they should be applying it to their lives. I’m not saying how it applies to mine. I’m going to put my head down, and I’m going to try and do my 1% every month. I’m going to do it for the next ten years, enjoy it, and be at peace. That’s mine. Where you’re thinking tactically, like many of our audience, I’m thinking of the big picture. It’s like, “Do your 1%, Roman, and enjoy it.” How does that sit?

I love that. As entrepreneurs, as visionaries, and there are so many names for the founder or the visionary, there’s a common trait that a lot of us have. My wife calls it paint the house. When we were first married, she’d say, “What are you going to do today? It’s Saturday.” I’m like, “I’m going to clean the garage, I’m going to wash the car, and then I’m going to take out the trash.” She’s like, “You’re going to paint the house.”

There’s this idea of, “I need to get in shape. I need to eat better.” It’s this big laundry list, and then what happens? Nothing happens because it’s too overwhelming. A big part of what we talk about is identifying those things and prioritizing set goals. You and I are both very goal-focused. Goals are important. It is reminding yourself of, “What’s this 1% I can do in all these different areas?” If it’s, “I need to get to the gym,” what’s the first thing you need to do, and what’s 1% better? Is it waking up five minutes earlier to then stand up and maybe go walk around your neighborhood? Is that what the 1% is? You guys all know what that 1% is.

We would love to hear from you guys what those goals or obstacles are, or how you’ll implement this 1% either in your personal or professional life. We’d love to hear that from you guys and hear what those are. We’d love to hear and see your success in implementing the 1%. There’s example after example. There’s Dan Sullivan and this cycling team. There are multiple people. Multiple books have been written around this idea of taking these marginal gains. Those marginal gains built up over 40 years are how much? $330 million?

Yeah. $330 million earnings off of $1 billion. That’s at 30% commissions. You produced $1 billion. You’re your own GDP.

You’re your own ecosystem at that point.

Full circle.

I love it. It’s focusing on those things and focusing on what we can control. I don’t know about you, but for me, 1% seems a lot more manageable than, “Go run a marathon next month.” Why don’t we start with running to the end of our street?

Isn’t that freaking us, the Americans? It’s like, “I haven’t worked out in a week, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to blow every muscle up.” What do you do then? You can’t walk for three months.

I’m going to injure myself, so I can’t work out for the next six months.

I should know. I did twelve years of CrossFit.

At least then, you have a valid excuse. You’re like, “I can’t work out because I’m hurt.”

What do we do with diets? We’re like, “I’m losing all the weight today. It’s all coming off now. Let’s freaking go. I’m not going to do it the slow way. Give me the shot. Do it.” I’m acknowledging that everything in society has trained us to be like, “You need it right now. Go get it and get it over with.” Everything has trained us against this rule or this law that freaking works. How do you eat an elephant? How do you become the first billion-dollar-producing dentist? You improve by 1% every month. That’s it. Improve 1% every month, and you are the first billion-dollar-producing dentist on earth in less than 40 years of practice. It’s stupid when you look at it.

It’s simple. Do you know what’s crazy about simple? Simple works. Consistent, simple works. As human beings, we have a tendency to overcomplicate things and make them more complicated. That’s probably how a lot of people have made a good living. They’re overcomplicating stuff. When you look at it, you’re like, “We can take it back to basics and simplify it.”

When you were saying that, I was thinking about P&Ls. One of the episodes we’re going to be releasing here is an interview that Eric and I did with a couple who have seven locations in Chicago with a 30% profit margin and 30% EBITDA. People read that and say, “That’s crazy.” You look at your financials and you’re like, “You should be at 5% this or 20%.”

It’s the idea of, “How do we cut back our cost of employment or some of these expenses?” Let’s start with 1%. What’s 1% better in these categories? What would that impact? What kind of impact would that have? I go back to an interview that we did with Areo Dental. You were like, “They’re doing the simple stuff, but they’re doing it consistently and doing it well. They’re focusing on, “Let’s review the credit card statements and see if there’s one thing that we can find on here that maybe shouldn’t be on here or should be better.” It’s focusing on that 1% and doing it consistently across those areas.

How many of us are at 5% or 0% on our EBITDA while we’re looking at our business? Go find all your friends. Some of them are losing money. I’m letting you know. Hug them all. If nobody says they’re losing money, that means at least one person’s lying. That’s the way it works. This is the business that we’re in. It’s business in general.

Let’s say you’re at 5% or 0% and you listen to the Areo Podcast. You’re like, “I’ll never be at 30%.” The point is, the American way or maybe the earthly way is, “What do I have to do to get from 5% or 0% to 30% next month?” Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.

There’s no way.

There’s not a chance. If you could take five to 5% to 5.05% and then add another percent onto that, and then you keep chipping away at this pony, that’s how they got to 30%. The other thing that I’ll tell you is if you’re at 5%, there’s a crap ton of low-hanging fruit. There’s low-hanging fruit everywhere. If you don’t see it, go find somebody who can that loves you and is willing to step in and say, “This is cool. The lowest-hanging fruit. Do this one.” Keep doing it until you get it right. That one freaking thing is what I’m hearing. Pick that one thing. Maybe it’s reducing the weight of our bicycle tire. It’s only a 1% benefit. We’re not going to win the Tour de France by 1%, but if we do 100 more of those, we will.

Let The Team Identify Their 1%

The last thought I have on that is to have your team chip in, too. Have your team identify what’s 1% they can do and help lift that. You’re not the only one doing 1%, but if you can have your team also doing 1% in areas that they can control and that they have oversight, you’re going to see that 1% across multiple areas in your practice.

If you have 5 people in your office and everybody does 1%, you get 5%. That sounds like my type of game. We hack the crap out of it. If you’ve got 50 people on your team and you get everybody to do 1%, come on. Hold up. That’s 51%. That’s enormous. What I’ll say also is that 1% is almost immeasurable in size in the realm of what we do.

All it comes down to is one patient. What if all you do is you do follow-ups until one patient who hadn’t accepted treatment comes in? You do that with just one patient. You get one patient to say yes to something, like fluoride. You use a script that moves somebody from, “I don’t like it,” to where you’re like, “Did you know it helps us in sensitivity?” They’re like, “I’ll take that one.” You’ve got more than 1%. The nice thing about our business in dentistry is that small things do make big differences. When we do our job right, people are healthier. I love that.

That’s great. I love it.

We are here to talk about real crap and real strategies and give people real tangible actions. We did that in this episode. Do you feel good about your delivery?

I feel like we did a good job. Remember, 1%. We’ll hit you with the takeaways. I’ll come back and sum that up with some takeaways. That was great.

I love sharing time with you. We got a show because we want people to have robust and resilient dental lives. We hope they’re amazing. We loved having you here. We’ll see you at the next one.

Thanks, everybody. Bye.

Bye.

Important Links

• Dr. Eric Roman
• Dr. Eric Roman on LinkedIn
• Dr. Eric Roman on Instagram

About Dr. Eric Roman

Dr. Eric J. Roman started his professional journey as a dentist, but soon became the CEO of several fast growing, multi-location dental groups that generated over $200m in care during his leadership. Despite the successes, the journey almost destroyed the things that mattered most to Eric in his life. He exited the company he founded to become one of the dental industry’s most esteemed experts on team dynamics, associate dentist development, and leadership as a clinical director. His coaching and training across the DSO industry has served several billion in annual dental revenue…and he’s just getting started. Eric has a lot of love to share and he believes the future of dentistry starts with healthy teams, healthy dentists, and healthy leaders.

Find out more at DrEricJRoman.com.