In this first guest episode of Dental Wealth Multiplier, Jonathan Moffat sits down with Dr. Eric Roman for a candid conversation about why success in dentistry is often a matter of perspective—and how mindset, resilience, and real-world strategy can transform both your practice and your life. From burnout to breakthrough, they discuss what it means to build a robust, resilient life and why the so-called golden age of dentistry is still available to those willing to choose it.
Find Jonathan at jonathanmoffat.com
Learn more about Aligned Advisors at alignedadvisors.com
Connect with Dr. Eric Roman at https://drericjroman.com/
Jonathan’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanmoffat1/
Dr. Eric’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drericjroman/
Subscribe for new episodes every week and follow along as we help dentists multiply their wealth and freedom.
—
Watch the Episode here
Listen to the Podcast here
The Golden Age Of Dentistry: Why Success Is A Choice With Dr. Eric Roman
Dental world, I’m Jonathan Moffat.
I am Eric Roman.
We are doing a dental podcast.
First one ever, right? No, I bet you there’s a lot of them.
The Golden Age Of Dentistry
Why should they listen to us, and what’s different and what’s going to be exciting? I think I hope we answer that question. We can answer that question on our episode. We will talk a little bit of ourselves a little bit later, but Eric, I think as we were talking, this idea of the golden era of dental. Started coming up.
It’s all newly installed President Trump’s fault. By the way, this is not a political commentary. You don’t have to shut it off because we said Trump. Just yesterday. I was listening to pieces of the inauguration speech, and Trump says, “We’re ushering in the golden age of America.” It’s just an interesting thought because I bet you there are a lot of people that don’t feel like it’s a golden age right now.
I think you said it best, you were like, everybody’s on board in a sense. We do want a better life. We do want better things for our country. We do want better incomes, or we do want better health, and so how much might that be like what we’re experiencing in a sense in the dental industry? I’ll tell you what, Jonathan, from my perspective, this does not necessarily look like the golden era of dentistry. What are your thoughts?
I think as we were talking, Eric, it’s interesting, because when you have someone who stands up and says, “Look at all the opportunities.” We were talking a little bit for about when COVID hit, and it was like, there are people that, as COVID is happening, and all most of the world’s like scrambling, they’re like, “There’s opportunity here.” I think one of the lessons to take away from that is a large portion of whether you believe this is the golden era or not, or whether you see opportunity or not, or whether you believe the next 1, 2, 5, 10, 15 years is potentially going to be the most profitable and wealth transforming years in dentistry or not.
A lot has to do with your perspective and your attitude, and overall outlook. I’m not only yourself, but we talked a little bit about resilience. It’s like this decision that “I’m going to be resilient. The world, the economy, insurance companies, and competitors are going to throw a lot of stuff at me that I have no control over. I’m going to stand there, and I’m going to be resilient. I’m going to have this mindset that no matter what comes at me, we’re going to be successful.
We’re going to live our mission statement and our vision statement as a practice or as a group.” We’re not going to lose sight of that. “I’m not going to lose sight of the fact that one of the reasons I decided to be a dentist was to have a better quality of life or to care for my patients. I’m not going to lose sight of that.” I think as we unravel this show together, and as we’ve talked and done a lot of planning, and we’ve got 6 or 7 pages of notes of guests and topics and things we want to talk about all boils down to we’re in the golden age of dentistry.
Whether you believe it, see it, or not, we see it. I think you have everyone has this opportunity of really embracing the fact, whatever that means for them and whatever part of their dental journey they’re on, of saying, “I don’t see it, but I want to see it.” I think that’s where it starts. That little bit of like, “I want to see the golden age of dentistry either continue or begin or start. How can I contribute to that either in my little area ecosystem of the dental space, or my practice, or the team that I’m building, or whatever that is?”
That’s where we’ll spend a lot of time talking around resources, tools, talking to experts, people that have are seeing things from maybe their perspective, talking to doctors that are achieving these amazing goals and living these great lives and accomplishing some pretty amazing things. I think that’s what we hope to bring through this show. What are your thoughts, Eric?
What I heard you say, Jonathan, is that it’s a choice. Whether this is the golden age of dentistry, the bronze age, or the dark age, it’s a choice that we get to make. We’re going to talk about people that are making golden choices. Maybe that’s the idea. We’re going to talk about the golden choices that are on the table. A, you have to know where you’re making a choice. B, you have to make a golden choice. How can we, “You hit it on the head.”
I’m going to make a statement. I think 100% of dentists signed up to become dentists because of the quality of life. I think that if dentistry didn’t have a great quality of life, but was solely about helping people, you would have chosen something else. You chose dentistry because you expected a quality of life. You said that just a minute ago. I think it’s a 100% that if the quality of life in dentistry was known to suck, there wouldn’t be no dentists.
If the quality of life in dentistry was known to suck, there would be no dentists. Yet in reality, they are not getting the quality of life they expect. Share on XYet the reality is, I don’t think dentists are getting the quality of life they thought. I think we’ve got just as much or more of a mental health crisis than a dentist. I lost my first classmate this year. You and I both know and coach, and support so many people that are going through such difficult trials. It’s ever present, whether we choose to talk about it or not. Thankfully, we’re talking about it more. Society thinks less of dentists than it ever thought of dentists. Our status and the amount of trust that the public puts in us isn’t what it used to be. That sucks.
You couple that with the fact that people aren’t getting what they want. I’ve got dentists that haven’t even gotten out of school that are trying to get out of dentistry. Can you imagine, Jonathan, investing $750,000 in a career only to not want to do it because you realize it’s so miserable in some sense. I see it every day. We’ve got entire communities online and wonderful coaches that are solely there to help dentists find their side hustles so they can get out of dentistry.
The size of the community is growing. The size of the community for team members who are just trying to get out of dentistry is massive. There are tens of thousands of people in these communities. Looking at the dental industry, this used to be a space of pride. I used to hire great team members from Wendy’s in the drive-thru thru and there I’m like, “Would you like to not work at Wendy’s and work in an office?”
They’re like, “That would be my dream come true. I never thought I’d get out of the Wendy’s drive-thru.” Guess what’s happening now? They’re leaving my offices to work at the Wendy’s drive-thru because the quality of life is better. We’ve had a turn in just such a short period of time, Jonathan. I think that’s our conversation. Living in the golden age is a choice.
It’s absolutely a choice. I think there are a lot of reasons why I think people might be feeling like it’s not the golden age of dentistry. As you were talking, you reminded me, I was talking to a fourth-year dental student. He goes, “When I get out, I want to practice, and I’d like to be done practicing or like out of the chair clinically.” Before I’m 42 or whatever way, I can’t remember exactly the age he said, but I’m like, sitting here thinking, “You’re still a dental school. You’re already thinking about when you want to be out of the chair clinically.”
What To Change To Experience Positive Change
I’m like, “Man, that’s crazy.” It’s interesting because if you were to just take a step back and just look at that as like an outside person and go, because most people go into healthcare, I think, because they want to take on any service-based business, dentistry. They want to take care of people. They want to help people. They want to have control over their schedule, that quality of life, work-life balance.
They want to be able to make as much money as they want to be able to make again, have the ability. That’s why most business owners go into business for themselves. When you start to pile on the stress of the practice isn’t as profitable, you’re working longer hours than you expected, and you don’t have that time, and maybe some of the patients don’t feel as appreciative of you thought of the work and the clinical help that you’re giving them.
It’s pulling all those straws out from underneath you, right where you felt like this was my foundation going in, yet what’s interesting you reminded me to when you’re talking about reminded me of years ago. I’m sure it still happens, but just specifically remember this about 2 or 3 years ago. People would say, “XYZ location, you can never have a profitable practice in that city or that town. Yeah. X, Y, over here. I’ve never heard of it.”
I’m like, “No. A doctor is doing $4 million in that town. I know a doctor doing $3 million in that town.” It’s this idea of like, what’s the difference? The difference was that those individuals just made the decision. We’re going to have a successful practice no matter what happens. I think a large part of what our readers are going to get is number one, the stories and experiences that you and I are seeing and living every single day, interacting with hundreds of dentists all over the country.
That’s hugely powerful. Seeing the success stories, also what doesn’t work, but also seeing the success stories. Seeing what resilience brings, if you’re willing to stick with it and continue to persevere through what might seem like an impossible challenge. Whether it’s staff-related, patients, insurance, you name it.
Knowing that if I do just continue to stick it out and push through on the other end, is where ultimately I want to be, at least for the moment. That target moves. As we know, as entrepreneurs and visionaries, it moves. I think that’s a big piece of what we’ll be talking about. Hopefully, that hope and renewed hope as an industry that we get to take that back to our lives, our team members, our colleagues, our study clubs to say, “I hear what you guys are saying. However, I implemented X, Y, and Z, or I changed the way I thought about this particular thing. All of a sudden I noticed an impact or positive change or a different result than what I was getting from before, because I just approached it a little differently than I had prior.”
I think with hope comes like obviously, there has to be like I think you have to have some guidance, some understanding, some background. Again, that’s what you’ll be giving. That gives us a lot of us gives us hope is that first spark of like, “I see that. I see it. Now I see that we’re in this golden age of dentistry.”
It’s just a choice. It’s a robust and resilient practice, a robust and resilient life. That’s actually a choice. It’s a choice that everyone of us has available to us. If you’re listening to it, you’ve got the choice. It might seem like it’s far off. I’ve had times in my life where I thought there was no way in hell. There was no chance I was ever going to get through the darkness and be able to get there, but things changed.
I made choices. Everybody gets to make their choices. We’re going to give them new choices. How’s that sound? Like that’s what we’re going to do. What else we’re going to do, Jonathan? We’re going to, we’re going to put real people on here talking about real problems and real stuff and real crap. Let’s talk about crap. Let’s talk about the things that are. I’m so tired of hearing about everybody’s success stories and all the things they get right. How my armpits don’t smell and how everything’s perfect.” That’s all lies. Everybody knows. If you’re human, you’ve got skeletons in your closet. You’ve got skeletons in your practice.
You got skeletons under the X-ray machine. You’ve got skeletons everywhere. We just gotta open it up, put some light on those skeletons, them what they are, and give you some more choices. We’re going to talk about dental strategies. We’re going to talk about how to get more out of dentistry, how to get more out of operations, out of managing managers, out of managing yourself, out of specific tactical initiatives. Just do this, you’ll make more money.
Simple things to get real results, we’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about actions that create change. I like the hard. I talk about this all the time in my life, Jonathan. If change were easy, we’d have no problems. If it were easy to just like, “I’m doing this today, and do that tomorrow instead.” If that were a piece of cake, like life wouldn’t be an issue but change sucks and we fight it. We have a path of least resistance, we go back to it. We’re going to talk about how to do that. What we’re not going to do, Jonathan?
What’s that?
We’re not going to just overload people with the same content. They can get anywhere else. No, we had this idea. Maybe you don’t like listening to 30 minutes of podcasts or 45 minutes, or 6 hours. What if we just gave people a fast forward to the end, and we’ll every time we’ll give them a timestamp. We’ll give them some key takeaways from our time. You can be like, “That was awesome. I’m going to go back to that.” How’s that? You like that?
If you are human, you have skeletons in your closet. You need to open it up and put some light on those skeletons to gain some more choices in life. Share on XI love it. I mean, look, your time is valuable. We know that there are a lot of options and choices out there when it comes to content. Again, I think what we bring is a really unique perspective, as engulfed in the dental industry as possible. That being said, we also realize that people you may have been listening to this on the last two minutes of your jog or your run, or your treadmill walk. To be able to skip ahead and go, “What were the key points and takeaways?” I love it, Eric. I think that’s a great idea.
The podcast for dental people that may hate podcasts. I love that.
I was going to say we were talking about the golden age. It was like thinking like maybe this is the gold digger podcast, but then I might have some negative connotation to it.
Jonathan’s And Eric’s Career Journeys
Let’s add that to the perspective options. Jonathan, who are you to talk about this? Tell the audience about Jonathan Moffat and how you ended up here.
I’m not a dentist. As you’ll notice, my name does not include the words, the letters DR in front of it like Dr. Eric J. Roman does. I’ve been in the dental industry for a little over twenty years. The background basically was that my grandfather was a successful orthodontist. I watched him practice in his practice towards the end of his career, and he had a heart attack. A lot of you’ve heard me tell this story.
My grandfather had a heart attack, which forced him to stop practicing. He and my grandmother had not done a lot of planning for their future for retirement, for transitioning, whatever you want to call that. I watched he and my grandmother go through the remaining years of their life on very little money saved and put aside. That sparked my first initial passion for wanting to help. At first, it was just that people in general avoided making those same mistakes.
My background in finance, like I said, I’ve been in dentistry for over twenty years. In 2016, one of my clients came to me and said, “I’d like to start a DSO, or we didn’t know as a DSO, just let us start buying practices.” We bought our first practice in 2016, grew to eight locations by 2022, and sold that. Through that had made a lot of great connections, did a fair amount of speaking, like yourself. Did a lot of the circuits and study clubs, and things like that, and conferences.
We work only with dentists. That’s it. We only work with dentists. We work with dentists all over the country. Some have twenty locations, some have one location, and we’ve really seen it all. I think through that perspective and through those eyes, we get to give what not only what we see, but what we’re seeing, to your colleagues, other dentists. Just like you, wherever you are in your journey, we talked to them all.
Living in the golden age of dentistry is an option you have. Share on XI was telling you yesterday, I was talking to a fourth-year dental student. I also talked to a dentist who had sold their practice and wasn’t practicing anymore. You’re going to get this perspective of no matter where you are in the journey, understanding our hope is that we can bring you not only hope and insight, but actual tools, takeaways to be like, “I was stuck here. Eric and Jonathan, this is what they live and breathe, and do every single day. They gave me a tool that helped me get over that hump and keep going.”
That’s our ultimate goal. It’s we’re not sponsored by anyone. We’re not being paid by anyone to do this. This is a way for Eric and I to feel like we’re giving back to a community that we love and we’re passionate. I hope you can always look to us in that context of, “I know those guys are going to shoot me straight because they’re not getting paid.” I was even thinking it might be a cool episode to do, of all the shows and events, and conferences you could go to, what are you going to get out of each of these different conferences? What to expect of that? We go to those. We’re in that. That’s a little about me and my background. Eric, what about you? What’s your background?
Bro., I got the DR next to my name. I did it. I went to dental school. Not a normal dentist. Are any dentists normal? Maybe that’s like quantification. I spent my whole career in group practice. I built two different wildly different dental groups. I have been through the wringer on everything. I have had several thousand employees over time. I never had more than 300 at any point, which means my turnover statistics are just crap.
Over about 11 years or 12 years, my practice did several hundred million dollars worth of dentistry. We did a lot of stuff. In the process, I pretty much destroyed my life. I guess I would say I failed as a husband, I failed as a father. I now know that that’s pretty common for dentists. It’s almost like we’re set up for failure in our lives. What I had is I had all the money, I had cars, I had houses, I had the things that made me look successful in the eyes of the world. Inside, I was a total failure.
I was ashamed of who I was. I would have given it all back. In some sense, I did, because I blew it all. Jonathan, that was phase one of my life. Phase two is that I knew things had to be different. Since then, I’ll be honest, I don’t know that I’ve been as successful from a business perspective. I built a ton of value with those first companies. In the second phase, I’ve had a ton more impact. I have coached several billion dollars’ worth of dental companies at this point.
I might be the foremost expert. Some people say in the dental industry, on training clinical directors and how to take care of associate dentists. I built programs to help people have great employee relationships and have great lives. At the end of the day, Jonathan, in a weird sense, I’m still in the process of searching for me and still in a little bit of this journey to live in the golden age and just love today. Just be grateful for what’s going on.
Just be grateful for what’s waiting for me outside my door, my office. It’s funny and like in a very short period of time in the dental industry, have I done a lot of crap. Has a lot of it been group practice? Yeah, do I understand operations and multiplication and scaling and exits and all that other stuff as well as anybody, I might. I’m just a guy that’s trying to get the most out of life, to be a great person, to be a great father, to be a great husband, and to be a great friend.
That’s what I bring. That’s what I bring here. Hopefully, our shared perspectives create value. Between the two of us, I think we know everybody. I think we got a one-degree connection, pretty much everybody between the two of us, isn’t it? We have unique perspectives. I love when I get to talk with you, Jonathan, because we don’t talk about the same crap everybody else talks about. One thing I also really appreciate about you, Jonathan, is that you show up as a real guy.
You have days where, like, we hop on, actually today you’re like, “I just got to be honest with you. I got something heavy on my heart.” This is us. Here’s our podcast. That’s who Jonathan Moffat is. That’s who Eric Roman is. If you want to read between the lines, we’re going to talk about how you can have a robust and resilient life and a robust and resilient practice. That kicks butt. We’re going to tell you how to choose to live in the golden age of dentistry.
It’s an option that you have. We’re going to show you how to select it. We’re going to talk to real people that got real problems that have real solutions for a lot of those problems. Maybe by the end of it, you’ll feel a little bit less alone in this journey and a little bit more clear on what to do next. Jonathan has this feel for a podcast. Are you in?
I’m all in. Are you in?
I’m in too. For you, reader. Hopefully, that means you’re in as well, and we will hope to see you inside our show. Keep on clicking subscribe, and it will be ready for you around the corner.
Thanks everyone. Look forward to it.
Important Links
- Dr. Eric Roman
- Dr. Eric Roman on LinkedIn
- Dr. Eric Roman on Instagram
- Dr. Eric Roman on Facebook
- Dr. Eric Roman on YouTube
- Jonathan Moffat
- Jonathan Moffat on LinkedIn
- Aligned Advisors
About Dr. Eric Roman
Dr. Eric J. Roman started his professional journey as a dentist, but soon became the CEO of fast growing, multi-location dental groups that generated over $200m in care during his leadership. Eric strategically led his DSO through an exit in 2019, and chose to step out of DSO leadership to pursue a more balanced life.
His next growth phase came in the form of executive coaching and thought leadership, both inside and outside the dental industry. As one of the dental industry’s most esteemed experts on team dynamics, emerging DSO operations and associate dentist development, Eric spent several years coaching a community of more than $3B in annual revenue via the Dentist Entrepreneur Organization.
After his tenure at the DEO, Eric shifted his energy toward addressing an alarming trend: data is showing that, despite the success of our businesses, entrepreneurs and their teams are continually less fulfilled in their personal lives. To solve this, Eric developed the 1LifeSystem, a simple, recurring digital retreat that delivers personal fulfillment without sacrificing professional success. Whether it’s as a founder, operator, advisor, or investor, Eric loves to put his energy toward moving our industry forward.