If you’ve ever felt like the glue holding your practice together, this conversation will challenge that belief and give you a new playbook for freedom. We unpack a counterintuitive idea—the Void Principle—where you stop filling every gap so your team has to step in, decisions spread, and systems mature. Through the story of Dr. Lance, a high-output dentist who cut his clinical days and raised income yet still feared taking more time off, we show how real autonomy arrives only when the owner steps back on purpose.
Ready to trade heroics for a practice that runs without you? Subscribe, share this with a colleague who needs it, and leave a quick five-star review to help more owners find the show. Want personalized help designing your freedom plan? Book a strategy call at dentalpracticeheroes.com/strategy.
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We help dentists take more time off while making more money through systematization, team empowerment, and creating leadership teams.
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Episode Transcript
Now, I want to share a story about a client
that I'm currently working with.
His name is Dr.
Lance, an incredible dentist,hard worker, awesome clinician,
just a great dude.
I really, really like workingwith him.
But when I first met him, hewas a solo doc working at a
practice, doing clinical fivedays a week, taking three weeks
(03:12):
of vacation off a year.
He had two kids, a third one onthe way, and he was wearing
every single hat in thepractice.
So we started working together.
In less than a year, we hadsystematized everything.
We were able to increase hisproduction per hour so he was
able to cut his days back.
We delegated stuff like crazyso that he wasn't doing
(03:32):
everything.
And eventually we added anassociate for him.
So, and suddenly, less than ayear, Lance is working three
days a week and making 35% moremoney than he was.
So he's working less, he'smaking more money, but he's
still only taking off threeweeks per year.
So he asked me, he said, Whatis next?
(03:53):
And I said, Man, you're doingso well.
We're looking at what is hismonthly burn?
How much money is he spending?
He's making way more money thanhe's spending, but still just
three weeks off per year.
So we're trying to build thispractice.
That's what we do at DPH.
We're creating practices thatgive you a lot of time off where
you make more money and lesstime.
We can do that.
That's what we do.
(04:13):
But he wasn't taking off anymore time.
So I asked him, I said, Lance,why aren't you taking off more
weeks?
Like, why don't you take somevacations?
Or just even if you're not eventaking a vacation, just take
time off from the practice.
Enjoy all of your hard work.
And he said, Paul, if I'm gonetoo much, I just think this
whole place is gonna fall apart.
He was fearful that if he leftthe practice too much, that all
(04:37):
this stuff, all this hard work,it was gonna fall apart.
And that's a valid concern.
But I told him, I'm like,Lance, it's not gonna fall apart
if you truly want freedom.
Now you put all this effort inyour practice and you created
this freedom, but you're nottaking it.
We've got to take it.
And I get the fear.
But here's the truth, allright?
If you are a practice owner andyou start to build this freedom
(05:00):
into your practice, if you'realways available to your team,
your team never has to step upand you truly never get full
freedom.
When you are the safety net, noone else has to lead at the
practice.
And when you fill every gapyourself, nobody else on your
team has the chance to grow.
So today I want to teach youhow to get comfortable creating
(05:22):
what I call voids in yourpractice on purpose so that your
team can rise to the occasion,your stress can drop, and your
practice can grow without youbeing glued to it.
Now, you are listening to theDental Practice Heroes podcast,
where we teach you how to builda team-driven practice that
gives you more money in lessdays and gives you the freedom
(05:46):
that you deserve being apractice owner.
Now, I'm your host, Dr.
Paul Edgeson, the author of twobooks on dental practice
management.
I'm a dental coach and theowner of a large five-doctor
practice in the south suburbs ofChicago.
If you want a practice and alife that allows you to make
more profit while taking off aninsane amount of time to do your
hobbies, spend time with yourfamily, or do whatever it is
(06:09):
that you like, you have come tothe right place.
All right, let's dive in.
Now, my first point I want toexpress to you is that it is the
fear that keeps the ownerstrapped.
Owners like yourself, you'llthink that if you don't do it,
it won't get done right.
Or if you take time off, thepractice is going to fall apart.
Or if you let other people onyour team handle the big tasks,
(06:32):
they're going to mess it up.
Maybe if you're not available,the patients will be upset that
you're not there as much.
Or if you let your associatesstart to see all your patients,
that you will lose them aspatients in your practice.
But here's the truth thepractice will not fall apart.
It's only you that are fallingapart.
(06:52):
And it's because of yourmindset.
You are not the glue of thepractice.
I promise you're not the glue.
You're the bottleneck.
I assure you that things can bedone correctly without you.
And if you built your systemscorrectly, the practice is not
going to fall apart.
You can let the others handlethe big tasks.
Now, they might mess up, sure,right?
(07:14):
But they're going to learn fromthat mistake and they're not
going to mess it up next time.
And if you're not available forall of your existing patients
as much as you have been in thepast, sure, your patients might
be upset, but they're not goingto be so upset that they're
going to switch dental offices.
And if you let your associatessee all of your patients, you're
(07:34):
not going to lose them at thepractice.
As long as you put the propertraining into your associates
and you train your team on howthey endorse that person to the
associates.
So you as the practice owner,unfortunately, well, you're not
as important as you think.
I am so sorry to tell you that.
Now, my second point I want toget across to you is that there
(07:57):
is like this paradox ofleadership, is that your
presence as the leader preventsthe growth of your team.
When you always step up, nobodyelse has to.
When you always solve theproblem, nobody else learns to.
When you're always available,no one else becomes resourceful.
Your presence as the owner ispreventing your team's
(08:20):
potential.
You're not protecting thepractice, you're actually
suffocating it.
You can't always be there.
If you're trying to create apractice that runs without you,
you need to let your practiceactually be without you, which
brings us to what I call thevoid principle.
Okay, this is my big teachingconcepts for this episode is
(08:40):
that when you stop filling everygap, you start creating
intentional voids in the wayyour practice runs.
Someone on your team is goingto step in.
You know, in every office,there are someone on your team
is going to step in, but we haveto do a few things first to set
(09:00):
up a type of team that's goingto do this.
Now, in every office, there'sthese hidden leaders.
Now, you have them.
You might look at your team andsay, I have no leaders on my
team.
I promised you, you've got themon your team.
Every team has them.
You have people on your teamthat want to do what's right for
the team.
They want to do what's rightfor the patients.
They are capable of handlingmore responsibility than they're
(09:21):
handling right now.
And they have the skills, theyhave the motivation.
They just won't step up untilyou give them a void to step
into.
Voids create opportunity, andopportunity creates ownership,
and ownership createsleadership.
But you need to create thatsort of culture.
(09:42):
You have to, as the practiceowner, encourage the acts of
stepping up.
You've got to encourage peoplehandling issues without
consulting you or consultingtheir managers.
You have to tell your team thatyou trust them, that you
believe in them, and that you'recomfortable with failure.
You want your team tounderstand that failure is
(10:03):
expected.
They are expected to messthings up.
We know that things are goingto get messed up.
I don't care how good you areat your practice and how special
of a person you are, you aregoing to mess things up.
And that's okay as long as welearn from our mistake.
So you want to create a culturelike that at your practice, and
that starts with you talkingabout you wanting that type of
(10:25):
culture.
So I love explaining to my teamthe culture of coachability.
We are always getting better.
We never reach a point wherewe're perfect.
There's always something thatwe can learn and we will learn
from our mistakes.
Another thing I like to say atmy practice is grace over guilt.
And what I mean is that I wantto hear about as the owner, I
(10:48):
want to hear about when thingsgo wrong.
I want us to be comfortablesharing when we screw things up
because we want to offer grace.
We're not going to make peoplefeel guilty because when we mess
something up, that is ablessing to us.
That is an opportunity fortraining.
It's an opportunity forcreating a new system to look at
a new way of doing things.
We've got to expect failure.
(11:10):
We need to expect it and learnfrom it.
There's no finger pointing,there's no blaming, just an
objective look at failure with afocus on solutions, not on the
mistake itself or who made thatmistake.
And if you can create that typeof culture where it becomes
safe to fail, where it's safe tomess up, and you express your
confidence in the team and yourteam's abilities, and you also
(11:33):
express the wish that you haveas a leader for them that you
want people on your team to stepup, you will create all the
necessary elements for people tofill the voids that you create.
Now, I want you to think aboutthis.
If you never step out, if younever create the voids, no one's
ever gonna step in.
Now, growth in itself requiresdiscomfort, right?
(11:56):
We all know that we need tohave some discomfort for growth.
We need to get out of ourcomfort zone.
And that's for you and theteam.
So when you step back and youcreate these voids as an owner,
you allow your team to stretch.
You give them room to makedecisions without you.
You show them that you trustthem, you push them into
leadership and you force thesystems in your practice to
(12:19):
start evolving.
As opposed to when you're thereall the time and you're doing
everything, they always defaultto you.
They always stay dependent onyou and they never build that
confidence in themselves tohandle what's in front of them.
And then the worst part is thatyou'll never get that freedom
that you desire that comes frombuilding a DPH practice.
Now, when I say DPH practice,I'm talking about a practice
(12:42):
that runs without you, the kindof practice that allows you to
only do the procedures only whenyou want to do them, that
allows you to take off so muchtime doing the things that you
love, spending time with yourfamily so much that your friends
are gonna ask you, dude, do youeven work at all?
And it might even feel likepersonally, you feel like you
(13:03):
don't work enough, that you'renot doing enough, but that's
good.
And you're gonna know in yourheart that you put in the extra
work up front to create thattype of leverage, to create that
type of practice that you couldwork less.
So it is work, but it pays off.
It's an investment in yourfuture.
So I want you, as the practiceowner, to start looking for
(13:24):
areas in your practice that youcan create a void.
And here's the magical part youcreate the void, you create the
culture, and somebody steps upto fill it.
And often they're gonna havebetter ideas than you have.
Your team wants responsibility,they want to help, they want to
feel important, but if you'realways there, they never get the
chance.
So here are your tacticaltakeaways for this episode.
(13:48):
How do we create voidsintentionally?
I want you to choose one majorthing that you're gonna stop
doing for the next 30 days.
Just say one thing, I'm notdoing this, I'm gonna let
someone else do it.
Someone else is gonna step upand do it, or you're delegating
it to someone.
Now, the other thing I want youto do, I want you to schedule
some unavailability windows inyour life.
Tell the team when you'reavailable.
And for example, I'll sharewith mine.
(14:10):
I'm not personally available ifI'm at the office and my door
is closed.
If it's cracked open, come onin.
If it is closed, don't you dareeven knock on that thing.
I want alone time.
I'm doing something important.
Now, also, my team knows thatthey can only contact me on
certain days of the week.
I am not available to my teamFriday through Monday.
(14:31):
Okay.
If it's Friday, Saturday,Sunday, Monday, do not call me.
If it is Tuesday, Wednesday, orThursday, I am available to
you.
But my team knows I don't wantto be bothered unless it's
something very, very important.
So even if they do call me inthose days, it has to be pretty
freaking important because I'veexpressed that that's the way I
want.
Those are my boundaries with myteam.
(14:52):
Now, during theseunavailability windows that
you're creating, you are notanswering questions, you're not
solving problems, you're notbeing the office hero.
Your team is going to have tolearn how to solve their own
issues.
So I want you to adopt this newmantra in the way that you're
operating as an owner.
Don't answer it, ask it.
(15:13):
Okay.
When a team member asks you,hey, what should I do about
this?
I want you to say, what do youthink you should do?
They will surprise you.
Okay.
When you prompt them and forcethem to think on their own, they
will surprise you.
They do have brains, they'revery smart, they're very
capable.
And the last thing I want youto do, which comes back to our
(15:33):
initial story about my coachingclient, Lance, is I want you to
build a practice that allows youto take time off.
Choose a reasonable amount ofweeks to take off.
So think about okay, what is areasonable amount of weeks I can
take off as a dentist this nextyear coming up?
And then when you have thatnumber, I want you to double it.
Just do it.
Trust me.
(15:54):
Now, you don't have to leavethe country.
You don't even have to go onvacation.
You just have to take yourselfoff the schedule.
You're not seeing patients,you're not planning on being in
the practice that week.
Now, if you want to go in andbe a leader and coach your team
and talk to people, that's cool.
But I want you to take a lot ofweeks off.
And obviously, I'm talkingabout when you have a practice
(16:16):
that allows you to do that.
That's what we're trying tocreate on this podcast.
That's what we're teaching youhow to do with dental practice
heroes.
I want you to take weeks off.
I want you to remove yourselffrom patient care.
And if you're one of mycoaching clients, I know that we
put in the systems.
I know that we have made surethat every provider is hitting
their dollar per hour goal.
I know that we have theprofitability already to do
(16:38):
this.
I know you probably alreadyhave an associate.
So, how many weeks should youtake off at that point?
I want you to take off everyfourth week, and I want you to
not think twice about it.
Okay.
That's what I told Dr.
Lance.
I said, dude, we're taking off13 weeks this year.
Let's do it.
He was scared, but he jumped inand he's so happy that he did.
(17:00):
Because now his team islearning how to operate without
him.
He already put the systems inplace, but now they're filling
the voids that he's creating bynot being there as much.
And that's the benefit ofcreating a DPH practice.
You get that freedom, and damn,is that freedom palpable?
You can feel it.
It is life changing.
So if that sounds likesomething that you want to do in
(17:21):
your practice and you want somehelp getting that going, please
go todentalpracticeheroes.com/slash
strategy, set up a strategy callwith me.
I'm happy to talk you throughwhat is possible and talk to you
about what coaching options wehave available.
It will be a no pressure call.
And at the bare minimum, you'regoing to walk away that call
with some action items, knowingwhat the next steps for you to
(17:42):
do as a practice owner are.
So wrapping up, most owners arenot trapped by their teams.
They are trapped by their ownfear.
The fear of letting go, thefear of handing things off, the
fear of trusting other people todo the job, and sometimes the
fear of being less needed.
But freedom, it only comes fromone place.
(18:03):
You got to set up the systems,you got to create the culture,
you got to develop the leaders,and then you've got to create
the voids so other people canfill them.
Your team is way more capablethan you think.
And the moment that you stepback, you're finally going to
see how strong they really are.
So thank you so much forlistening.
I really appreciate it.
Hey, and if you get a chance,could you please leave a five
(18:24):
star review for the podcast?
Sometimes I look at the reviewsand I say, man, I haven't got
one in a really long time.
I got so many listeners.
I see the numbers.
I would just love if you guystook a little bit, maybe 20
seconds out of your day, to hitthat five star thing and write
something nice about thepodcast.
Hey, thanks so much forlistening, and we'll talk to you
next time.
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