The Exit Didn't Fix It

0:01Dr. Jim Arnold My guest today is Dr. Eric Roman, a dentist, entrepreneur, former DSO CEO, and leadership systems builder who has experienced group dentistry from nearly every angle. He helped build Carolina's Dentist into a seven location organization approaching $30 million in annual revenue before its 2019 affiliation with Lightwave Dental Management. Today he co-leads Joyful Growth and Dental Associate Growth with Josie Sewell, helping dental organizations develop.

0:11Dr. Eric Roman Yeah. Yeah.

0:27Dr. Jim Arnold Associate dentist, strengthen clinical leadership, improve retention, and build sustainable systems for growth. Boy, that's a mouthful. He's also the co-finder of One Life System, created to help high performing leaders bring the same intentionality to their families and personal lives that they bring to their businesses, which is super important. So welcome to the show, Eric. It's great to see you, buddy.

0:34Dr. Eric Roman Angie. It's great to be here, Jim. Thanks for having me. What a really kind intro that was. Like, yeah, I've do you know what I heard when you said that was like this guy does this guy's done too many things. He needs to focus himself again. That's what

0:51Dr. Jim Arnold Hey man. What do you hear? No, man, it's just you've done so many cool things and and that's awesome. You know, a lot of dentists they kind of you know get into their practice and they do their thing for 30, 40 years and they're happy with that. And that's great. But so you know, I I do too in a lot of ways. But you know, some people like they want to go out and do more and be more and help those dentists do more and be more and have, you know, more fulfilled lives. And you're one of those guys.

1:12Dr. Eric Roman I envy them. Yeah. Well, thank you. I received that. You know, it's like I said, I I I there's a part of me many times that said, I wish I could be the dude that just plugs away and that does the same thing over and over again. I think that's who my wife thought she was marrying. And and and you know, I I didn't know who I was when I married her. She didn't know who I was. If I didn't know, she couldn't know. And so, you know, the I think inside the journey I I have a desire

1:40Dr. Jim Arnold Little did she know. Yeah.

1:55Dr. Eric Roman for trying new things and for doing different stuff. I've got a statute of limitations on stuff. I hit the wall. I live my life in five year chunks, you know? And it's not perfect. I still got 99 problems. And you know, my problems are they're probably authentic to the the the decisions I make. Right. And so yeah, kind of cool.

1:57Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. I love that. yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, you know, before we like really jump into that, I'd love to know what your kids think dad actually does all day. You know? I mean, my kids my kids hardly remember when I was like a practicing dentist these days. Yeah. What I mean

2:23Dr. Eric Roman That's a Mine don't either. Mine don't either. It's funny. It's funny that you say that. They have very it we have pictures that come up sometimes of me like taking out teeth with them in the office after hours. And they're like, my gosh, Dad, we forgot that you used to be a dentist and like have a dental practice. And that I because I mean I I sold I sold all my practices for good. And I went into the coaching world in 2019. My oldest at that point.

2:40Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. How old were you?

2:58Dr. Eric Roman I was, so I was 39. I was 39 then. And then my oldest kid was I guess she was 13. So my kids were 13 to 4 in that window. And my so my four year old didn't remember any of it, might have never even seen the inside of a dental office. And to your point, as years went on, people would ask my kids in school, like, well, what does your daddy do? And it's like, I don't know. He talks on the phone all, he talks on the phone all.

3:14Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

3:28Dr. Eric Roman That was that is literally the answer. When I ask now, you know, so now my kids are 19 to 11. And when I ask now, I think you get a I think you get a a spread of decisions. I think my kids see me. My dad's an entrepreneur, some of them say that and understand what it is. My son, who's 17, he gets that very well now. my dad helps other people build their businesses. My dad runs communities and and is a and is a business coach. So those are the things that they say now.

3:30Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah.

3:55Dr. Eric Roman But I have a sneaking suspicion. I I I'm gonna do it at the dinner table tonight. I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna one off them. I'm gonna pull them aside and be like, hey, without anybody else's input, what do you think I'd do? Got it, you got this, Jim.

4:06Dr. Jim Arnold I love that. Yeah, I know. My my kids very similarly. I mean, I sold eleven years ago and my kids were eight fourteen down to eight. So kinda very similar ages, similar situation where they're like, What what does dad actually do? Yeah. So nothing wrong with that though. But you know, yeah, go ahead.

4:18Dr. Eric Roman Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I'm just I'm I'm listening we only get our own stories, Jim. That's it. You can look at other people's stories and you can say whatever. But I really so I I sinned heavily against my kids during that phase. I was not present. I I I mean, and I did my best to make up for it. I was very intentional as a father, but it's like being intentional in 30 minutes a day. You know, I I that was not what I wanted. I left before they got up in the morning.

4:31Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah.

4:53Dr. Eric Roman I was already at the office grinding away. And I came home after they, after they were in bed a lot of nights. And then I traveled on the weekends speaking and doing other stuff. So I wasn't the dad I wanted to be. And you know what's intriguing, Jim? Is and that was a big reason why I made the decision to do what I did. I said, I want to work from home. I want to be present. We were we were just we were just spending a couple of weeks in Hawaii, and like what a gift that I get to be able to do that. And I and

5:03Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

5:22Dr. Eric Roman It was my birthday, and we do this, we do this thing on birthdays, my favorite things about you. And so we go around and the birthday person, and we everybody talks about some of their favorite things about that person. And I was really just bathed with love by my family. And you know what was interesting is that my kids don't remember or know at all how I sinned against them. In fact, they only see they have a recency bias, maybe, or they just didn't know. And they only see the later years and What a blessing, Jim, that my kids are all saying, Man, we we're so grateful that you're our dad because we see what other dads have to do. And the fact that we get to be around our dad all the time and you give us so much time and we spend so much time together and you're so present in our lives. We don't see that in other families. I'm like, man, like, did you remember how crappy a job? But they didn't care then. And it didn't matter. And so I mean, listen, if it's,

5:54Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah, right, right.

6:21Dr. Eric Roman I don't know if somebody's listening and thinks that's an interesting model to be able to tap out, you know, when your kids are in that window. Maybe your oldest is in the 13, 14 range. You can shift and make up for a lot of screw ups and

6:30Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah, no, I I agree. And when my kids were really little, I did a lot of that too. You know, I was running around teaching and doing a little speaking and had three practices and you know, life was kinda crazy. But when they got to an age where they would cry when I left h home on Thursday afternoon, I was like, man, I gotta I gotta shut this down. And so I so I did for for quite a while and I think it made a big difference in those kind of formative years, just like you.

6:48Dr. Eric Roman Yeah. Yep. Kudos to you, brother. You know, I've coached now for, I don't know, eight years. And there's two types of people that I coach. There's the people that see it. Well, I guess there's three people that don't see it and can't see it. There's the people that see it and won't make the change. And then there's the people that see it and make the change. And so you're clearly the latter. And and maybe in different spots in my life I could be any of those three. You know, I got my blind spots, but more more power to you.

7:24Dr. Jim Arnold Sure. yeah. Hey man. And and so much of it isn't even intentional. You know, you kinda stumble through life and you know, sometimes everything falls into place the way it's supposed to and you know, sometimes you figure it out later.

7:35Dr. Eric Roman Yeah, that's the that's the truth. And th I think one of the one of the thoughts that I've had that I've had that guides it is who at the end of the day, who do I want to say I was? Do I wanna say I was the guy that looked at it and I kept kept telling my kids there will be someday, there will be someday, there will be someday, no, it's too late? Or do I wanna be the dad that said there will be someday and it's today and let's frickin' do it, you know? So anyway, life's

8:00Dr. Jim Arnold So I you I was doing a little research getting ready for this, and you know, we've had some conversations, but I don't think I've ever heard you say this, you know, first person, like to me. But I read somewhere that you tried to get out of or thought about getting out of dentistry a few times, but kept coming back. Like why? Why'd you keep coming back, man?

8:18Dr. Eric Roman Well, I'll I'll say it even more directly. I have completely left dentistry three times. So yeah. Three times I have three times three different reasons, maybe would be the thing that I've that I'll say.

8:24Dr. Jim Arnold Really?

8:36Dr. Eric Roman First time post exit, gotta be honest with you, Jim. I was ashamed of tell people I was a dentist. Ashamed. I I don't know what created that. When I would be in mastermind groups, and so I joined a bunch of a bunch of like industry mastermind groups, or excuse me, non-dental industry, general entrepreneurs, you know, e-commerce bros, you know, men's groups, not you know, everything. I tried it all because I was looking for my people because I didn't think dentistry had my people.

8:47Dr. Jim Arnold Hm. Yeah, outside the industry. Yeah. She's good.

9:06Dr. Eric Roman I had not, I hadn't built healthy relationships. I had no friendships. In 2019 at the exit, I had people that I had worked with that were cordial with me, but they didn't call me after I was gone. Like they didn't care about how I was doing. They're like, I had no friends. And that was hard. And so I went searching everywhere else. And in all these groups, they're like, What do you do? I'm like, I'm I've been a multi location healthcare entrepreneur and coach. I didn't say I was a dentist. I didn't want to. And the shame inside of it, so

9:13Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. And I see. Huh.

9:36Dr. Eric Roman You can thank my therapist for this. as I went through it, my therapist like called out. She's like, Can I say that you're ashamed to tell people? I was I absolutely.

9:38Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

9:47Dr. Eric Roman And so we spent some time in Y. And I later discovered I was, call me out. I was ashamed for a lot of who I saw dentists to be. It I didn't like the behavior of other dentists. And so I didn't like being connected to them. And so, you know, like call it as you see it. It's not a rule, but I didn't want to be associated with it. The other thing that I felt like is that I wanted to be.

9:59Dr. Jim Arnold Okay. Yeah.

10:16Dr. Eric Roman I felt like saying I was a dentist was a devaluation of my entrepreneurial capability. I felt like it just made me into someone that I didn't want to be. Again, neither right nor wrong. But yeah, Jim, I you know, that was phase one. I went

10:33Dr. Jim Arnold That it surprised me. Like, I mean, the part about it like devaluing you as an entrepreneur, when I look at how successful you've been as a dental entrepreneur, the things that you've built, for you in your mind to feel like, Yeah, that's not enough, it it's really interesting.

10:51Dr. Eric Roman It's so intriguing. And, you know, I mean, again, perhaps it's my childhood, perhaps it's other stuff. But I will say this. I came back, I left again for maybe some, maybe the reasons weren't completely different, but maybe it was probab it was a different focus. I left one time because in exiting a partnership, I had some agreements that precluded me from working in dentistry for a little bit. Not a big deal.

11:09Dr. Jim Arnold Mm. Okay. Yeah.

11:20Dr. Eric Roman I was I was willing to accept that. And I was and there was a part of me that felt like I wanted the glory of

11:22Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

11:36Dr. Eric Roman Being a more generalized business person. And so I had for a long time all of my coaching clients were in a bunch of different industries. So I've coached multi-industry type stuff. That was cool. But Jim, all along that journey of me dealing with my baggage, let's just call it my baggage, because I don't think any of it was necessarily true. As I dealt with all of my baggage and through the third cycle of leaving dentistry again.

11:49Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

12:04Dr. Eric Roman I I was in a mastermind group with a bunch of really high performing individuals, some of them best selling authors and like people that people that we would know if I name dropped them right now. You say, my gosh. And we were sitting in a circle, you know, doing thing and checking in with each other. And I just I was honest. I said, Listen, I just want to be you guys. Like I'm trying to be you. I'm trying to get there and be that. I'm not satisfied with who I am and who I see when I look in the mirror. And it was interesting because This dude, who's a best selling author, he looked at me and he's like, and here I have for years wanted to be you.

12:42Dr. Jim Arnold Isn't that interesting?

12:43Dr. Eric Roman And said, you know I do is I sell, I sell a $12 book and I have to sell it to millions of people and I get a very small margin on it. And and so I've got to do so much volume on a cheap thing to be able to get there. And I've got to hoe myself up everywhere, forgive my terminology, but like I've like I can't turn it off or I have nothing. He's like, and he said, Do you and do you know what it took me to get there?

13:05Dr. Jim Arnold Wow.

13:08Dr. Eric Roman Was I slogged through making $25,000 and $35,000 a year on dead-end jobs and writing for no money whatsoever? I spent 15 years as a nobody to be able to get there. And he's like, brother, like, and he said, and I haven't even started a family because I've been so busy trying to get there and fighting uphill. He said, I look at you, Eric, and I've always wanted to be you. He said, You sell a high-ticket thing to people that value you with a very specific expertise and knowledge.

13:20Dr. Jim Arnold Wow.

13:37Dr. Eric Roman And you have the ability to make money in like your fallback is making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year very easily. And you've been doing it for a long time. It's like you've had a high standard of living for a really long time. And you have lived with a security that I took 20 years to encounter. 20 years to encounter the ability, the security of knowing that you can go make money any day, anywhere. I've never, I didn't have that for a really long time. And I might.

13:50Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Yeah.

14:05Dr. Eric Roman And I live with the fear that I could still lose it. And you've always had it. And last but not least, you've had the thing that matters more than any of it because you built a family along the way. And so he said, so, and then we went around the room and all of us started saying, Yeah, I've always wanted to be you. Yeah, I've always wanted to be you. And then we all realize everybody else wanted to be us. And so it's like this. And so the reason I say this, Jim, is I reframed a lot of it and I thought about, I thought about when when people are talking about general business, I've got value that I can create.

14:23Dr. Jim Arnold That's wild. Mm-hmm.

14:35Dr. Eric Roman But when people get into dentistry, baby, I am at my strength. I just I've got, I don't have 10,000 hours anymore. I've got 25 or 30,000 hours. And it just flows like honey. It's so simple for me to provide value inside of that. I I mean, the truth is, I can walk into any dental room and know that there's a value that I can create. And I had to reframe what I was created for. And there was a portion of me that was saying,

14:39Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Absolutely. Mm. What?

15:05Dr. Eric Roman You're created for this. And I decided, no, I don't want to be creative for that. I want to be creative for something else. Now I've just been sitting there and saying, thank you, God, for what you've created me specifically for. And I, what better way would you speak to me than the gifts that you've given me in this vertical and this? And I've had to reframe how grateful I am to serve in this industry. That I might not like a lot of the psyche things and other stuff that we as dentists have. Incorporated and the things that we've done to damage our own industry. But that's not for me to be upset with. That's my opportunity to serve. That's the reason. That's the reason that my message matters. And so, Jim, I would like to tell you today that Eric Roman is back and he's here forever, baby. Like, I'm never leaving this freaking industry. It has been a gift for me.

15:38Dr. Jim Arnold Sure. hell yeah. Good. What what a great change of perspective that you might not have gotten had you not gone outside the industry like you did. You know, you may have gone through the rest of your career, maybe in dentistry, maybe not, but feel maybe feeling the same way. But to to change perspective by hearing the what others had to say. I mean, it's like the human condition. The grass is always greener. It's like, I I want what they have. why aren't why don't I do this? And there's always somebody who's making more money or seems more

16:15Dr. Eric Roman Yeah, it's

16:22Dr. Jim Arnold glamorous or or whatever it is. But at the end of the day, I mean, we're so fortunate and we are in such a great industry. And when you get those tens of thousands of hours of reps and all the amazing conversations and experiences you've had, you the beautiful thing though is now all of this experience you've gotten outside of dentistry brings even more value back into it and changes your perspective as a coach and builder.

16:48Dr. Eric Roman That's it's so true. you know, the I re I just finished if a trillion dollar coach, Bill Campbell. Have you heard of this yet? I I thought, okay, come on. Seriously, another like I've heard million dollar coach talking more, trillion dollar coach, a bazillion dollar coach is next. I had somebody recommend that to me that I really trust. I was like, really? I didn't know. And

17:01Dr. Jim Arnold I haven't actually. Yeah.

17:15Dr. Eric Roman It's all about the joy. This guy coached Silicon Valley. And just the stories, it's the best book I have read in years. And a story that I didn't know existed. And so I sat in that just giving a lot of thanks. Just giving a ton of thanks, Jim, and really thinking through what it means to be able to coach. And coaching means that we go through crap. Coaching means that.

17:24Dr. Jim Arnold Wow. Yeah.

17:39Dr. Eric Roman Coaching doesn't mean just watching what other people do and deciding. It means going through the fire and like incorporating the right knowledge. I think I spend a lot of time now thinking, failing just as much as I've ever failed, but making sure that when I fail, I'm learning the right story, not the wrong one. The right story, the wrong story is I'll never do that again. The right story is, well, what were the real variables? What did I learn? Was it really a bad decision or was it bad circumstances? What did I like about who I became in it? Because anyway, I just I'm thankful for the journey.

18:16Dr. Jim Arnold It's important to have that reframe, you know, sometimes. It it's sometimes it's just circumstances and it's not necessarily a bad decision. It's just like some things are out of our control. And, you know, as as type A personalities and entrepreneurs, we do want to control everything. And unfortunately, we can't do it. So hey man.

18:36Dr. Eric Roman Can't man. It's so true, dude.

18:38Dr. Jim Arnold So many people have seen you on so many stages, you know. I mean, you've done so much. I mean, really at a young age you got to do a lot of that stuff and and built a lot of cool things. But, you know, people who have never like talked to you off the stage, you know, what surprises them most when you get into conversation with just, you know, some people who, you know, don't know you.

18:57Dr. Eric Roman Permission, permission to speak candidly without seem seeming like an egotistical like debag, right? Is that okay? if there is one thing that I hear, it's funny because I've had the gift of working closely with teams for many years. one other thing that I have discovered about myself, maybe what are the stories that are true after you look back for many years? I'm a big game player, baby. Like more lights, more people in the stands.

19:03Dr. Jim Arnold yeah, hey man. Tell like it is. Mm-hmm.

19:27Dr. Eric Roman I since I was an athlete, that was what I lived for. I was a closer as a baseball player. That's what I wanted. If the Jim

19:32Dr. Jim Arnold nice. man. Dude, that's the highest pressure thing you can possibly do. The closer.

19:37Dr. Eric Roman And if there was no pressure, I sucked. The last thing you wanted to do was get me into the game with a seven run lead. I was horrible. But if I had the bases loaded and one run lead, baby, that was my that was my place. Let me add it. So I learned like in in and my team has reflected some of these back to me. And and you know, Josie, Josie, who I've worked with for now almost a decade, it's funny because people come up to her all the time. And the thing they'll say is like, is he really like this?

19:50Dr. Jim Arnold Interesting, huh?

20:07Dr. Eric Roman And the and what they mean by that, am I really as am I really as real and as genuine? And because I I have an extraordinary amount of love to give. It's just something I've quantified. People are like, you really seem like you care about me when I talk to you, but you've just met me. No, I really do. God has given me all this love that I just take joy in being able to share with other people. It is me at my truest essence. People say, you

20:18Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

20:36Dr. Eric Roman I've met so many people in this industry that aren't really who they say they are. And you know, you're just you're good with words, Eric Roman, or you just, but you really seem like you genuinely care about what's happening in me. I just do. And I think that's the I take joy when people reflect that back and they're like, I didn't really think you were really who you you say you are, that you're honest and that you tell vulnerable stories and that like maybe you'll cry.

20:39Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Well look, man. Without a real one on one, you know, it's hard. You know, sometimes it looks like that's too good to be true. You know, 'cause we've both seen plenty of people on stage who are one thing on stage and then they get off and they're complete assholes. You know, I mean Exactly, exactly.

21:05Dr. Eric Roman And that you really care. I mean instantaneously. Instantaneously. They walk off stage, I try to shake their hand and they're like

21:21Dr. Jim Arnold I I know, right? And I it's so funny because I figured that out fairly early in my career and and like look, I had a bunch of mentors. I'm sure you did too. And and I I gravitated towards the ones who were just like real people, you know, not the ones who are up there saying, Yeah, I've done forty thousand veneers, what never they've never broken, never had a problem on you know, all the bullshit, you know, the ones who are are credible are the ones who are just authentic and transparent and share their failures as much as they share their successes.

21:50Dr. Eric Roman And I aspire to that. It's intriguing because now in this day and age, we run every transcript of our coaching back through our AI agents. And we ask it to break it down and talk about the persona. And so once once a month, once a month, we do an all day session with our clinical leadership teams in our dental associate growth program, teaching them clinical, clinical leadership systems.

22:03Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

22:19Dr. Eric Roman And what's intriguing is as it's it found something in me that I didn't know was in me. And it said, Eric Roman, your style is abundantly sharing your failures. And the more that you do that, the better that the audience resonates with it and the more candid discussion it creates. It's funny. I didn't know I was doing it. And so when we have a topic come up, I would always start with, let me tell you about.

22:40Dr. Jim Arnold Absolutely. Mm.

22:48Dr. Eric Roman How I screwed this up thirty one times, you know, or let me tell you about how much it cost my company when it when this blew up.

22:50Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah. It makes you relatable, you know, it disarms people. They're they're like, my god, he's a real guy and he's been through this, and his experience is gonna prevent me from going through going through it too, right?

22:57Dr. Eric Roman It's true. Yeah. Theoretically. Or maybe like it'll lessen the damage when that take up. Or or maybe, do you know? I mean, maybe my favorite thing is when customers or people that have heard me speak, they're like, you know, you told me not to do this. I did it anyway, and it happened exactly the way that you would happen. I'm like, hey, I I that might be the greatest gift is that you got really quick recognition and you're like, crap. Yeah, I knew this the it it turns out Eric's not a total idiot, maybe just a partial idiot.

23:10Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, right, right. Yeah, yeah, right. So interesting. Yeah. You know, you built your your career out in North Carolina. I mean, you were there for quite a while. How how'd you end up in Utah?

23:42Dr. Eric Roman Dude, control alt delete, brother. when so my first life was in Florida. I was there until I was, till I was 21. And, you know, I I got my dental school acceptance, proposed to my wife in the same week and tore my rotator cuff. And and and I thought that was the sign. So it was gonna be, I was gonna have to do a year of surgery and rehab to continue my baseball career. And it looked good, but

24:02Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

24:12Dr. Eric Roman My heart wasn't in it. I wanted to get married. I wanted to move on to the next phase of life. Now it was like it was like my arm tour, but it was really my soul. And my my dental school acceptances were in the state of Florida and then the state of North Carolina where my were like where I wanted to be. And I felt like a theme in my life. I felt like if I stayed in Florida, it would be really hard to leave. Near family, the places I've known.

24:17Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Mm-hmm.

24:42Dr. Eric Roman The friends I've known. There's a part of me that has always said, let's go get crazy and let's go try something because we can always come back. We could always come back to Florida. And so courageously, my my wife and I, we got married. We went on a honeymoon to St. Lucia. We came back. We grabbed our stuff in Tallahassee, Florida. Bro, sandals, sandal, St. Lucia. That's it, man. That was like the thing. no, you got a better one. You were so crazy.

25:01Dr. Jim Arnold We went to St. Lucia. No, no, man. We didn't have any money. We we went someplace cheap.

25:09Dr. Eric Roman trust me, that was like that was cheapest. I got the cheapest room in that place. But we we went and we grabbed that moving truck and we drove straight to North Carolina and it sucked. It was hard, you know, a big transition, but it was rewarded. And so we did a total, we were in North Carolina from 2006 to 2019. So wow, two thousand no, no, no, I'm sorry. We were in North Carolina 2001.

25:12Dr. Jim Arnold Ha ha ha. Yeah.

25:38Dr. Eric Roman 2001 to 2019. So we did 18 years there between dental school and building a couple of groups. And North Carolina was so good to us. We were so comfortable there. But when we got to sale time, and you know, I always had trouble. You you heard the old adage well, like the dental, the dental like brokers and everything were like, Well, pick where you want to live and we'll find you the practice there. I that was always so hard for me. I'm like, dude, I don't know where I want to live. Give me the best opportunity.

25:48Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah.

26:08Dr. Eric Roman That's how I ended up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which is not where anybody wants to go. And I give thanks for how good North Carolina was to me. But when we were sitting there and we're like, well, what do we want to do next? And I said, you know.

26:08Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. So interesting.

26:22Dr. Eric Roman North Carolina's been great, but when I get off that airplane to the humidity and to the bugs, and I don't get the same feeling that I get when I'm in mountains. And I wanna try I wanna try a new life. And I challenged my wife with that. And she said, you know, it life has always been good to us when we've taken a big risk. And she said, So you tell me all the time we can always come back. We can always come right back to North Carolina if it doesn't work. Let's try mountains. And so there's only when you want to live in mountains, there's only so many cities. So my criteria was pretty specific. Number one, had to have great nonstop travel because I travel a ton. So I don't no more connecting through second rate cities or having to drive two hours to get to a good airport. That was I had to be near an airport that I could travel nonstop from. Number two, I needed to be living a mountain life, which means like 30 minutes to hiking, biking, all the stuff, skiing. I wanted to experience the best part of mountain.

27:03Dr. Jim Arnold Mm. Yeah.

27:22Dr. Eric Roman And then number three, I really wanted to be near my customers and my future business stuff. And

27:28Dr. Jim Arnold Okay.

27:32Dr. Eric Roman Colorado, maybe Salt Lake, Phoenix is a different type of mountains. Bend, Oregon's got mountains, but isn't really travelable. Boise's a little bit off the grade. You don't have many cities when you want to be in the mountains. And I didn't want to go all the way to California. And so Salt Lake ticked the boxes and we pulled the trigger. It's been good to us.

27:56Dr. Jim Arnold Dude, I you guys have such a good life out there. I've been to I've been out to your house and and it's just it's such a beautiful development, such a beautiful town and community. And just you look around and it's like you're just in a different world. I mean, I'm in the Midwest. We don't have views like that anywhere. And it's it's just spectacular. I'm so happy for you guys.

28:00Dr. Eric Roman Yes. Well, well, I'm I it's a gift that I don't deserve. But I will say w there's a problem also in a gym. And once you open that door, you can't close it. And so the fact that I I mean, and I've been here almost seven years now, and it's funny, people like, do you ever get tired? No, every day when I see those mountains in the morning, I'm like, Hey ladies, there you are. You look as be every time that that airplane turns the valley on final approach.

28:28Dr. Jim Arnold Okay.

28:45Dr. Eric Roman Into the Salt Lake Airport. I look out that window and I see the mountains. I'm like, gosh, I freaking love this place. And every morning, like I have my coffee and I sit right there on my porch. Or I walk and I like I just you can't. I'm I'm in trouble because now I have a I accelerated my standard of living and I can't undo it, bro. I know, I know, but now do you know what I did is I increased my taste forever more.

28:48Dr. Jim Arnold Wow. Dude, nothing wrong with that. Hey, hey.

29:14Dr. Eric Roman You know, I I you know, like there is no there is no livery there is no no easy way or cheap way for me to live anymore. I gotta have that view. I gotta have those those things and to love my space. So, you know, for better or worse, yeah.

29:14Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. You know what, you work hard, you create value, and you know, d you develop to the life that you want to live and and more power to you. And again, that just you you're in a position to help others find find that path, whatever that path is for them. And you know, one of the things you're doing now, I know you're in joyful growth. Tell tell us about that. Like who's gr joyful growth for and what is it?

29:51Dr. Eric Roman Yeah. For many years, first, great relationships, things that click are just hard to come by. Josie Sewell was a gift from God to me when I was building my dental group. She worked for a company that that that did consulting work for us. And we just we just really connected. She was on the opposite side of the country. She was in Portland, Oregon at the time. We were in the Carolina, in the backwoods of the And I convinced her to come be full-time with us. And I I just thought I was getting good capability because she was she was extraordinary at the different things she did. She was one of those jack of all trades. She was just an exceptional human being that could rise to every occasion and grew incredibly fast. And so she moved her c her her family across the country to come work with us. And she excelled at everything she did. But that was a working relationship.

30:43Dr. Jim Arnold Amazing.

30:48Dr. Eric Roman You know, that was, hey, I'm the CEO. Like you're growing through all the roles in our team. And it is what it is. We know it's good. In the years after I exited, she went on to her own life. She stayed in the company for a period of time. She went, she worked through some roles as a VP at Dental Intel and and some other stuff. And when COVID hit and the world went upside down, we were sitting in my basement one that like just visiting, like, how's everything going? And we thought, well,

31:13Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

31:16Dr. Eric Roman Could we work together again? Because it worked really well, well when we were portion of a team. But now what would it look like for us to coach together and to build other things together? And you don't know how that's gonna go. I've tried that with a bunch of other people and it hasn't worked. And with her, it just clicked. We we were able we're able to be a really great team together. You know, another gift is that both of our spouses, they they see the same thing and they're like, actually, we're grateful when you guys work together.

31:36Dr. Jim Arnold So that's okay.

31:43Dr. Eric Roman Because it gives us a confidence and there's a safety inside of it's hard for a male and a female to work together and in in a professional life. And so all the things just worked. And over the past decade, we have tried working together and not working together. We've tried speaking together and not speaking together. And we just got to a point where we realized we're most effective and it's most fun when we work together on stuff. So don't be idiots and do it any different. Joyful growth.

31:46Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. It's amazing.

32:11Dr. Eric Roman Joyful growth, it's the essence of what listen, it's it's a holding company for us to have a place to coach that is ours. We do a lot of things for a lot of people as key opinion leaders. One of our products inside there is dental associate growth. How do we elevate clinical leadership teams and groups? And how do we elevate the doctors and the teams that work there? But the whole principle of joyful growth, our alignment, what we've always done together since we were building a group. It starts with purpose, people, and playbooks. Like the per why do we get up every day and do what we do? Our purpose is rooted in love. Call me a hippie. That's what people a lot of people joke I'm just a modern hippie. But love is the essence. Well, love is what we think is the thing that's missing in the way that we operate inside of our industry. We think dentistry has become a loveless environment. We should love our customers, even though like they can be really hard to love and not show us any. We should love each other.

32:53Dr. Jim Arnold Ha ha ha. Wait, Dennis? What are you talking about? How Dennis, hard to love? I've never I've never encountered that. Come on, man.

33:13Dr. Eric Roman Hell yeah. I know, I know. No matter how hard we are to love, we still, we still should show it. But we should have, we should see what it looks like to have love inside of our teams and how we interact with each other. And we should honestly, I've left this industry three times. And when you leave it, you realize what there how many things there are to love about it. And so we should love what we get to do every day. And, you know, the last part of of maybe our cornerstone of beliefs inside of inside of joyful growth.

33:18Dr. Jim Arnold Ha ha ha. Yeah. Absolutely. Hmm.

33:44Dr. Eric Roman There's a lot of support out there for owners and CEOs and stuff like that. There's a lot of support for the people sitting at the top. And we have coached now, I guess we've coached over three billion in annual revenue of groups. Like we have done, we got a lot of time and retention. We got a lot of notches on that bed post. What's funny is that we've had a fur a like front row seat to so many people's failures. Yeah, the a lot of these companies that are on top of the world, crushing it, you know.

33:49Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

34:14Dr. Eric Roman We would just finish doing a quarterly meeting for him, like, yeah, we're crushing it, we're gonna exit, everybody's doing it. And then six weeks later we'd get a phone call and it's like, Hey, we have we have three weeks of cash remaining before our company goes under. We don't

34:26Dr. Jim Arnold Wow. Yeah.

34:28Dr. Eric Roman Indeed, Jim, if I had a dollar for every time I've gotten those phone calls, either from single practices or groups or whatever, it's too common. So if that's you right now, friends, it's okay. Like you're not alone. But what we realized is that every time things broke, there was a general theme. You could blame a lot of stuff, but the the simplification was that as we grow our our as leaders, what made us good originally and gave us the ability to be great.

34:37Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

34:58Dr. Eric Roman Was the fundamental execution of great dentistry? What does that look like? Just healthy practice level operations, doing great dentistry, great case acceptance, patients that love it, and teams working together. And that's how anybody becomes great. But as we grow and we multiply, all of a sudden our vision and our perspective, instead of looking down to the practice level operations and the simplicity of it, it looks up to all this other crap. RCM and like, you know, and capital structure and like all this.

35:01Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah, right.

35:26Dr. Eric Roman Dumb. I don't sorry, it's not dumb. But when we watched people fail, the failure always happened at the unis level level. It always, when all of your focus shifts up and none of it's down, guess what goes? And so we realize that what was what has always been missing is an is the is the intentional, consistent, and never-ending development of the people that are sitting right there face to face with the patients.

35:36Dr. Jim Arnold Right. Boots on the ground, man. Yep.

35:55Dr. Eric Roman That is like loving the dentists, loving the hygienists, loving the teams, loving the managers. And so a lot of what we do in Joyful Growth is serving those people in a way that they just haven't been served and making it simple for them, giving them a purpose, right? Aligning them with purpose, helping them see the value of them and the others that are their people, and then giving a playbook for success. So how'd I do, how'd I do explaining what?

36:14Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. that's that's very clear, you know. What's not clear though is what the hell is recipe and rhythm? I mean it sounds like a a musical cooking show, but tell me about that. What what does that mean in a practice?

36:33Dr. Eric Roman Yeah. Simple methodology, Jim. Yeah, we use it over and over again. It's how we remember, it's how we remember our basic execution with people. Number one, you have to have a recipe. No matter what it is. So say it's period. Say it's how you say it's how you answer the new patient phone call. If there is not a recipe that is written down and documented, you got none. And no, no, no. But like Tina's been doing this for 20 years. She knows, no, no, no, no, no. Like it is no system.

37:03Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

37:05Dr. Eric Roman Document it, write it down. The recipe has to be there. And then you have to have the rhythm of cooking the recipe the same way over and over and over again. And we, and so if you don't have the rhythm of coming back to the recipe, making sure you've got to have a way to measure. Did we cook the recipe the way it's supposed to be cooked every single time? Jim, none of us would go to any restaurant that we loved if the outcome was different every single time. The restaurant has to have the recipe dialed in and then the rhythm of making sure it's the exact same quality and output.

37:13Dr. Jim Arnold There you go. Right.

37:35Dr. Eric Roman every single time or you lose your customer base. And

37:37Dr. Jim Arnold And and you know what? The the thing that makes us successful in practice are the same things that buyers are looking at down the road. You know, they're they're buying your systems and your team. And if you don't have that recipe and if you don't have that repeatability, when Sally leaves, well, guess what? You just lost a huge chunk of what was working, right?

37:59Dr. Eric Roman Actually, I think our industry is a lot worse today than it was 15 years ago. And the reason is that Sally left. Sally probably left in COVID, or she just left last week because she's tired of the new boss or like the DSO or whatever. But when we let all of the Sally's, you know, and I have employed probably 40 Sally's, when we let all the Sally's disappear, they law, they left with all of the knowledge because we didn't write down the recipe.

38:29Dr. Jim Arnold Right.

38:29Dr. Eric Roman And then our industry was starting from like from nothing. And so Jim, I and I don't think that the I don't think that I don't think we ever recover from losing all the Sally's. And that's a lot of our perspective on stuff. And I know that Sally was asking for $40 an hour. I get all the things. But the world would be better, our product would be better, our patients would be better if we figured out a way to.

38:49Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

38:58Dr. Eric Roman to do this together with Sally for the long term. And so yeah, man. Like that's me.

39:01Dr. Jim Arnold No doubt about it. Hey man, so many DSOs don't get that either. You know, I mean there there's some that are really running great. They've got their systems down and they've got their operations down, everything's awesome. But too many times, man, they don't they don't have that alignment with practices. Teams boots on the ground, they talk about, we can backfill that position without taking into account the relationship capital that they're losing. The relationship isn't just with one another and the patients, but with the practice itself and the systems and things that are in her head. And so it's just so short-sighted. And so what you're doing is filling a huge gap for some of these groups who just don't have it together when it comes to those things.

39:43Dr. Eric Roman We're trying. You know, I mean, it you know, a lot of a lot of this, I guess, for better or for worse, Jim, a lot of them know the terminology. A lot of the people sitting in the ivory towers who we work with every day, they know the words, they say the words, they say the things, but the truth and the reality of operations at the practice level isn't what they said. And so maybe it's the disconnect sometimes too. They say all the right things, they go to the same events, they know.

40:08Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

40:11Dr. Eric Roman What are they saying? Like cult our culture is everything, Jim. Like the culture is everything that matters in this company. And yet then the teams are like, We ain't got like our culture is horse crap. Like we hate you. Like, you know, it's it's not every day.

40:22Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Dude, I saw it, man. I spent a year as a as a corporate exec in a two hundred and fifty practice group and it it seemed like every week I'm trying to translate what they're saying in the Ivory Tower to the the boots on the ground who d have no idea what the hell they're doing up there. And and then I take it back up to them. They're like, they've never been there. They have no idea what's going on. And that's why it's so important, I think, to have dentists and dental people in positions that are actually making decisions as opposed to people who are.

40:34Dr. Eric Roman Yeah.

40:52Dr. Jim Arnold only looking at spreadsheets. Because guess what? When we're the ones making decisions, we know what's going on. We know what makes the teams tick and what makes the culture actually hum. That's when the spreadsheets start looking better. Not when you're counting paper clips and backfilling great people.

41:06Dr. Eric Roman No, and if there is one thing that I've learned, it's that I I my weakness was the paperclips, was the, you know, the the great fiscal responsibility was never been my strength. I've always had to have great financial support. I've come to appreciate a lot of what I've learned from that about about those things, but I see what you're saying more clearly than ever. And I do think that that's

41:24Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

41:34Dr. Eric Roman This disconnected that we live with, we're, I think we're at a very big turning point right now too. And I think we have, you know, pressure creates diamonds and our industry's under a lot of pressure right now because our DSOs, like the market has figured out what they're really worth and they're not worth what we've been paying for years. And so we have, we are to we are living in the great reckoning. And the reckoning is that you built a business model on being worth 14x and it turns out you're worth eight.

41:42Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

42:03Dr. Eric Roman And you know,

42:05Dr. Jim Arnold And that means the individual dentist, you're not worth eight, you're worth four or five, maybe.

42:08Dr. Eric Roman That's right. That's exactly right. And you know, it's funny, it's funny that you say that. A lot of, you know, a lot of people point fingers at like who's to blame. Listen, we're guilty as Dennis because we fell for it hook, line, and sinker. We got greedy as we got greedy as hell, Jim. I remember like, you know, when you had a practice generating a million dollars of revenue, like you had a million dollar producing practice, you were lucky to be worth

42:20Dr. Jim Arnold We did. god yeah.

42:33Dr. Eric Roman 80% of that, if it was brand new and like new equipment and everything was incredible. That was like when I started practicing, that was a great valuation. The truth was, it was like 30 to 70% was the average. And so 80% was like, man, is it really worth that? And then the DSOs came in and started like ratcheting up. And so now, now I see guys that are they've got a million-dollar practice, and they're like, if you won't pay me three million dollars, I'll find somebody that will.

42:42Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Mm-hmm. exactly. Exactly.

43:03Dr. Eric Roman So guess what? Like our greed, I mean, you know, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Was it our greed or was it that somebody was willing to pay that? The our greed helped drive the scenario that we're in, and now now we're all paying the piper, you know? So

43:05Dr. Jim Arnold Sorry, man. Yeah. Well Well, the reality is that the truth lays somewhere in the middle. You know, I mean, er most practices, unless they're really, really poorly run, are gonna be worth as much as they collect or more. In reality, as a business, because as an industry, our profitability is so high compared to restaurants and every other industry there is. So, you know, these really smart business people came in and realized, well, hell, we're gonna give double what they could have gotten from another dentist and they're gonna go.

43:20Dr. Eric Roman Yeah, it does.

43:46Dr. Jim Arnold reality maybe it was worth triple or quadruple. But you know, with economies of scale, they're buying it three or four times and selling it ten or fifteen times and it worked out until it didn't. So as that merry go round stopped, it's like, holy shit, things have changed big time now.

43:55Dr. Eric Roman Until it didn't. And a lot of people are filing lawsuits and are angry and pissed off and woe to me. I have the gift of having been through cycles like this before. I mean, I built, I built in a down cycle. I built when all the crap was hitting the fan and DSOs were shutting down in 06 and 07. And you know, this is a great time because it forces, if you do this right, it forces us back to basic principles.

44:28Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

44:29Dr. Eric Roman It forces us back to what's really important? How do we really deliver? How do we really execute? Cash is really king. It's funny because someone was asking me after the you know big dykum event, somebody was saying, yeah, in a mastermind group, they're like, So what's the word? I'm like, well, what do our valuations look like right now? Like, well, I are you printing cash out of your practice? Or like, well, no. I'm like, well, if you're cash flowing like crazy.

44:47Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

44:58Dr. Eric Roman out of your business and your business is on cruise control, you're exceptionally valuable. And if you're not, you're not. And so, you know, if you're if you're if your value is if because I mean, and I was like this, all of my value was on my balance sheet. My value was hypothetical because we were just breaking even on a lot of our cash. All of our cash was going into new investments and new growth and other stuff. We were not, we were not cash flow heavy.

45:07Dr. Jim Arnold Wow. That's really profound.

45:26Dr. Eric Roman Our valuation was like the multiples, the e but all this stuff. It was on the balance sheet. So I had all my equity was on my balance sheet, not in my bank account every month. And if that were my if that were my business today, we would not be valuable. We would not we would not be the value that we sold for in twenty nineteen and twenty in twenty twenty six. So bro.

45:35Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah. Right before the bubble burst. I mean, you couldn't have plant you couldn't have timed that any better, man, really.

45:52Dr. Eric Roman Pimped it, pimped it, and walked away. I am so, I'm so grateful. You know, I don't know. We always run comparisons. There was, there was a window of time in 23 and 24 when there were still some people that were paying multiples and stuff that deals that blew my mind. And I was honestly really envious because everybody always asks me to review their deals. Where am I getting? Is this a good one? And I saw some of these deals and was like, I this can't be real because this is the best deal I've ever seen.

46:14Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

46:21Dr. Eric Roman And a bunch of my friends ended up getting those and well now a lot of them are in lawsuits over it, but whatever, you know, like so we

46:21Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. well, you know, and and look, I've been I've been through about sixty transitions, you know, just a few of my own and then a lot with other dentists and friends and stuff. And I helped build a few DSOs. But when I started seeing some of those insane offers, I was like, Holy shit, you better get it all in cash because whatever you're taking in equity, if they're giving this much to everybody, they're screwed.

46:39Dr. Eric Roman Yeah. I know.

46:48Dr. Jim Arnold I mean, they're gonna be out of business in a couple of years or doing a major financial restructure. So don't take too much equity. And guess what? Every single one of those scenarios, it was so predictable. When you're an undisciplined buyer, guess what? You're not gonna last very long in that position.

47:04Dr. Eric Roman And yet that's not what everybody said when they were signing the deals. When the deals were coming across, they're like, yeah, you know, some of my friends were like, yeah, somebody's giving me the value I'm really worth. Like, okay, when nine out of ten said you're worth this, and this one said you're worth that, just because you sign it, just because it looked good at closing, doesn't mean it's gonna look good in three years, and you're tied to a lot more than that.

47:09Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, but exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Hey man, you and I have both been through situations. You know, you know, I lost the 15 million six years ago. You know, and that was one of those deals where holy crap, the first the first roll, I got nine point one six times my equity. I went, my God, this is incredible. Even if I want to get three to five times the next time, I'm gonna have like twenty five million dollars for my this is incredible. And and it should have been. And COVID hit, and that's when the merry-go-round stopped. You know, and I was the one without a chair. And you know what? It's it's dumb luck and it sucks, but it things came back to Yeah, right. It wasn't in my bank account.

47:56Dr. Eric Roman bro. It's monopoly money though. You know, I mean it's we it you and I both learned that it's all monopoly money until it's actually in your bank account under your complete control. And you know, I was at at an event we recently did at my house, you know, we had some we had some executives who were at turning points inside of their careers, and they're talking about that. They're like, gosh.

48:12Dr. Jim Arnold You got it.

48:28Dr. Eric Roman I really don't feel aligned like where I am anymore. And yet at the same time, like I got a lot of monop monopoly money tied up in this. And like, how do I how do I differentiate it? It is a really hard, there's no right answers when you're in that scenario. It's hard because

48:32Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. There isn't. It it comes down to management and timing and and sometimes just luck, you know? That equity could be worth tens of millions, it could be worth zero. It's it's it's a gamble.

48:49Dr. Eric Roman It is. Dude, and and and I have enough friends that rolled the dice and won the gamble that it makes it appealing, you know? We all have those friends that bought Bitcoin at 300 bucks or that did whatever and they're just, you know, and actually, did you see the I think it was a Wall Street Journal article that talked about recently about how dentists, more than other comparable professions, have a tendency to make stupid decisions financially.

49:23Dr. Eric Roman Did you see that article? And it was, it's super intriguing. It's this psychological profile of a dentist. And it's talking about how more than others that look like dentists in earnings, dentists tend to speculatively blow crap. And what and the question was what is that all about? And I see it every day, dude. And I'm like, I'm victim to it inside. I'm like, man, I gotta get in on the next Bitcoin.

49:25Dr. Jim Arnold You know, I didn't, but it doesn't surprise me. Yeah. Mm.

49:52Dr. Eric Roman I gotta get in and then the next, I gotta get it. And what like when you have it so good, why do you why do you why is that your mindset? I don't know.

49:54Dr. Jim Arnold Mo. yeah. And you know what? My I remember our financial planners a million years ago. You know, we were we were crushing it. We're doing really well. And they're like, all you need are singles and doubles. Singles and doubles for the rest of your career. And you are golden. You know what we wanted to take big swings though. Or well, my wife is probably more conservative than me, but I always want to take big swings. And every big swing has been a really bad decision. And you know

50:08Dr. Eric Roman Yes. That's it. Thank you. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. the bigger the the bigger the swing.

50:26Dr. Jim Arnold I love I love other people learning from my mistakes though. You know, I I it's great for them to learn from the things I did really well, 'cause I did a lot well, but it's also good for them to hear like, you know what, don't do this, 'cause this is really stupid.

50:39Dr. Eric Roman Man, like, the I'm trying to think of. I think I hadn't exited the the money was still fresh in my bank account. And I lost $250,000 in 14 days with taking the big swing. I had a friend who was starting this comp or who was buying this company, sure thing, done deal. And I hadn't even celebrated how much money I was planning to make yet. And the company was gone. Thinking, did we just get scammed? And like maybe kind of. I don't know. I'm like, okay. Well, here we are. So anyway.

51:21Dr. Jim Arnold ow. Well, you know what? At least it happened on the other side of that great exit. So, you know.

51:27Dr. Eric Roman Yeah, it's like that was a quick that was a quick lesson, but dude, I am so I'm so guilty of all those thoughts. You know the worst part, Jim? I have often gone back and I have said, listen, could I have saved $3,000 a month and dollar cost average putting it into an index fund from the moment I graduated dental school in 2007? And if I like when I run the numbers on that, and could I have done it, I could have done it super easily. That that $3,000 probably wouldn't have changed my life.

51:44Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Mm. So easily. Dowler costs everything. Yeah. Right. Yeah. no. Yeah, absolutely.

51:58Dr. Eric Roman at least at least in my quality of living. But it would be worth it would be worth like I I think the math is over twelve million dollars right now. Had I done that, twelve million bucks, all I would have had to do

52:07Dr. Jim Arnold gee. Yeah. I read that book. I read that book. Wasn't it a barber? I don't remember the book, but it was it was a book that talked about dollar cost averaging with index funds and you know, when it's high you buy l you're buying less and when it's low you're buying more. And it just Exactly. That's right. Right.

52:23Dr. Eric Roman Just shut up and don't think about it. Don't check it. Don't check it. Don't look at the account balance. Don't do any of those things. Put your put your X thousand dollars a month away. And just I mean, that's that would be functionally fifteen. I think in fifteen years it would have ended up and and that's through market cycles. That's big wins and big losses and COVID.

52:29Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. yeah, yeah. Because again you're buying more when it's low and you're buying less when it's high because you're s you're investing the same exact number every single month. Brilliant. It is. It is.

52:50Dr. Eric Roman Yep. It's monkey money, right? And so now I'm like and now I'm like, well, I missed out on that. Should I start doing that again now? Is that not my is that is that is that

52:59Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. I start calculating how many years am I gonna be alive and will I actually be able to do anything with it? Yeah. So

53:03Dr. Eric Roman That's right. And so then I decide to just make dumb decisions again.

53:08Dr. Jim Arnold So Eric, you talk about management theater. Tell me about that. Like what what do you see as management theater in a practice?

53:14Dr. Eric Roman Gosh, you know, so theater, you know, it's acting and it's all the things on stage. And you know, it's people playing roles that are supposed to look a certain way, but aren't really that. And I I did it. I certainly did it. And by the gift that I have, Josie and I have just had this we are really honored.

53:20Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Right, right. We've probably all done it at some point, but we see it a lot. Yeah. absolutely.

53:40Dr. Eric Roman That people would choose to allow us into their companies to sit through their meetings and their quarterly meetings and their brainstorming and their strategy and their darkest days inside there. And we see so much of the management theater. Like, this is what we're supposed to say, and this is what we're supposed to do. And these are all of our initiatives. And yet then we we've learned to ask, show us the ROI. And they can't. In fact, I think there's probably a greater affliction.

53:54Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Yeah.

54:10Dr. Eric Roman And we are very busy doing the things that we think are the right things, but we never figure out if those things actually worked or actually followed through. We finish the project. So the the I love serving the emerging market. I think the emerging market of groups, that's my wheelhouse. When they start getting mid market, they become, I don't know, a little bit funkier. They start getting bigger sins and problems. And the large cap, like I don't, I could care less. I love the emerging market, but in the emerging market.

54:25Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

54:40Dr. Eric Roman We're we're doing all this stuff. We're building our team, we're building our executive leadership structure. We're we're like fighting and like getting our our rocks, our projects, all the things getting completed. But we ever, when we ask, hey, show me all the projects you completed this year, can you actually show me if any of them worked and provide our and nobody can? And so that's what I mean by management theater. It's done we would be far better off, Jim.

54:59Dr. Jim Arnold Wow. Wow.

55:08Dr. Eric Roman Doing far fewer things, but truly learning a project isn't finished the quarter that you built it and executed it. The project is finished two or three quarters later when number one, you've ensured that you're executing on what was built. Two, you've measured the quantifiable results positively, neutrally, or negatively. And three, you've taken away the knowledge.

55:18Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

55:37Dr. Eric Roman And on what you would do different afterwards. And I, I up my first phase of Eric Roman as a CEO was all management theater. It was just get the things done. You know, I remember I would finish my project three hours before it was due or 30 seconds before it was due and say, done, done, I did it. Nobody ever challenged me enough to be like, Eric, okay, like you finished part one of four. Now let's see if it actually works.

55:40Dr. Jim Arnold Hmm. Right.

56:06Dr. Eric Roman And I was in management theater, we're doing things as a performance. And I don't care about that anymore. I just care about crap that works.

56:16Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, man, I love that. And you know, I saw that as at the collective event that I went to at your house last year and just you brought together some really interesting people, some people with big hearts, entrepreneurs in the dental industry. Tell tell us about that a little bit. Like what what why you guys started it and what what you're all about now.

56:38Dr. Eric Roman When in one of my journeys outside of dentistry, I started building communities for people that were trying to build healthy lives. And successful entrepreneurs that weren't as successful at home as their business was on the balance sheet and in the and in the world, that whose glory was in the business realm, but maybe they were failing in their in their home. And

57:05Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

57:08Dr. Eric Roman As much fun as that was to be to be supporting entrepreneurs in other industries, what was really interesting is I kind of longed for the people in dentistry. And

57:17Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

57:21Dr. Eric Roman As I sunset some of that and pivoted back towards dentistry, I just have learned my recipe and rhythm. My recipe is that every 90 days I do this thing. The rhythm is that I do it over and over and over again, right? And so we started to invite people into it inside of the industry, just as kind of a quiet, semi-secret, like it's not really advertised. It's if you know somebody that knew somebody and said, Hey, you'd be a really good fit for that.

57:33Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

57:47Dr. Eric Roman Kind of trusting the system. We build a container and people walk into it. It just seems like it's always the right people at the right time. And it in a self-centered manner, it's just about it's just about me having that rhythm and me being able to share something that matters to me that I've learned along the journey. That this journey and all the money in the world ain't worth crap if you blow up your home life. And if you blow up, and if you are, if you don't like who you are when you look in the mirror, and if you're

57:53Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

58:17Dr. Eric Roman And if you're not healthy, and if you're not sleeping, and if you're not aligned with your purpose, and if you're not showing up as the parent or the partner that you want to be. So all is for naught if those things aren't there. And the idea, the idea of the collective was to gather people together and to give us a space to be real authentic people, see each other as humans first, and dental business folks second. And it just works. It just works.

58:28Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

58:47Dr. Eric Roman works and I give so much thanks for that. that's where it came from. who knows where it'll go. So far, it's nice. We gather, we gather somewhere between 25 and 40 people at a time at my house every 90 days.

59:03Dr. Jim Arnold I think yeah, I think there were thirty when I was there last year and it was just a a great group of people. I mean, there were no assholes. They're always just great people. Yeah, and everybody had a very giving mentality and everybody was really interested in helping one another and I love that.

59:08Dr. Eric Roman Always the right people. There's Yeah. You know, to date we've had about two hundred and some people that have wandered through the collective. And it really, it really is kind of cool. Do you know one of the reasons, one of the things too, when I bought this home out here in Utah, you know, one one of my prayers was I want this to be a space that I share that I share the energy that that is here inside my home with other people. And the collective is one of the ways that I've had the ability to do that. And it won't it we've had

59:20Dr. Jim Arnold Holy crap. That's amazing. Yeah.

59:45Dr. Eric Roman We've had a couple of events where we're like, crap, this thing is too big for my dang home. And it's been it's been, you know, so at some point it probably outgrows it. I don't know when, I don't know how, but I'm really just thankful. It's it's a labor of love in a sense. And and yeah, it it it just keeps happening.

59:48Dr. Jim Arnold Ha ha ha. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Love it. Good, good. Hey man, I'm gonna change gears a little bit. I'm gonna go back in time to when you were nine years old in a picket line, the day your parents lost their airline industry jobs. What do you remember about that, if anything?

1:00:13Dr. Eric Roman cool. Dude, so we lived in Orlando, Florida. Both of my parents were in the airline industry. My mom was a flight attendant, my dad was a pilot. And the airline industry is all about seniority. Your worth isn't, it has nothing to do with how good you fly or how good you serve, or even that you have a good attitude. Your worth is the day you signed up and how long you've been.

1:00:30Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Right. I've seen that.

1:00:49Dr. Eric Roman They had, they had I don't know, one of them had like 20 years, the other had 28 years of seniority. And that was and that meant they got to be on the biggest planes, book the stuff they wanted to do, go where they wanted to, fly the schedule they wanted to fly, all that sort of stuff. And we had a wonderful life, a very stable life, a great life. I'm really thankful. And Airline was bankrupt. And you know, there's unions. I'm learning about what unions are at this point. The unions are picketing against striking against the airline and a bunch of other stuff. The airline's saying, well, if you strike, we're gonna go bankrupt. And so nobody's gonna win here. And my parents have let me know we're probably gonna have to move. We can't, we aren't gonna be able to live in Orlando anymore. We're gonna have to move. We're gonna have to get on with another airline. And when we do, we start the seniority schedule all over again. So now we're now we're now we're nobody, which means you know how you always have one of your parents home or both your parents home. Now we're not gonna be able to do that anymore. We're gonna be gone a lot more. We're gonna probably need to move to Miami, party in the city where he is on. And I didn't want to go to Miami. And my life was getting turned over.

1:01:43Dr. Jim Arnold Okay. boy. Brutal. Mm.

1:02:08Dr. Eric Roman And what I was acutely aware of was that my parents had nothing to do with it. That was, I didn't know what I was learning at that point. But I come from a long line of non-entrepreneurs. My my parents were my parents were airline industry, my grandparents were airline industry. My grandparents, you know, worked in the field in the factory. There were no entrepreneurs in my lineage.

1:02:13Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm. Interesting.

1:02:38Dr. Eric Roman And I just realized in that moment. I just realized my life was getting upset because of other people's decisions and not because of my parents. And I just wanted to have control. And, you know, by grace, we were able to stay in our home and things worked. I didn't really end up with my life upset, but man, it hurt in the moment. Man, it hurt when we're like, hey, we can't do the things we used to like to do anymore. We've got to just we're eating pretty much just like.

1:02:47Dr. Jim Arnold Mm. Yeah.

1:03:06Dr. Eric Roman Pasta out of a box for the next 16 months. And that was a, I was at a very formative point in my life as nine years old, you know? And so when I went, when I went through that, a seed was planted that I didn't know was being planted. And for better or for worse, I give thanks for the story, but I knew that I knew that.

1:03:15Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, right, right. Mm.

1:03:34Dr. Eric Roman I needed a measure of control over my own journey. And golly, Jim, have I executed and maybe back to our original conversations, I've I've exercised a crap ton of control over the journey. I have changed my mind about what I want to do over and over again. And it's it's always been under my discretion to be able to do that. So I'm thankful.

1:03:40Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah, right. But how'd you get into dentistry in the first place with that kind of a background? Why why dentistry with all the different things you could have done?

1:03:58Dr. Eric Roman Yeah. Yeah. think. So my stupid general dentist that I went to for all the years was constantly beating me up about it. He was always like, he's like, Eric, you're such a smart kid. You'd be such a great dentist. Don't you want to do this? I'm like, no, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do this. I I want to be a dermatologist or a physician or like I didn't know, like something, something out there that sounded like the type of thing. I want to do something science-y. And cause that was fun. And I when I was 17.

1:04:26Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

1:04:33Dr. Eric Roman I had my wisdom teeth taken out. And I was like, I don't need my wisdom teeth out. This seems stupid. I've never had to have any dental work done. I've only had cleanings done. You're telling me I'm gonna have to get put under and somebody's gonna rip teeth out. This is stupid. No. And the oral surgeon's like, Eric, trust me on this one. And he had it done. And I was at my post stop. And I told him I was like, you know, this is actually really cool. I just thought it was a cool experience. He said, Well, do you wanna come work with me this summer? I was like,

1:04:39Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

1:05:00Dr. Eric Roman Okay, I got nothing else to do. I can make some money. No 17. And so I spent I just became, I learned how to be an oral surgery assistant. I got to go to OR with him occasionally. He gave me far more discretion than he ever ever could have. A shout out to John Hardeman in Orlando for changing my life. And I had the best time. And I thought, this seems like it'd be really cool life for me. And and so we were out there. He took me boating one day.

1:05:01Dr. Jim Arnold You're seventeen.

1:05:27Dr. Eric Roman And I was asking him about the journey. And he's like, you know, Eric, if I had to do it all over again, I love my life. It's really great. I would have either just been a general surgeon or I would have been a general dentist. If I had to go back in time, I'm grateful for my life as an oral surgeon. Now I don't know that he still feels this way. But he said, I just feel like maybe just being a general surgeon or being a general dentist would have been better. It would have been a f it would have been a theoretically faster path to the same general outcome, you know? And so I thought, huh.

1:05:40Dr. Jim Arnold Interesting. Yeah. Mm. Interesting.

1:05:56Dr. Eric Roman And so I carried that when it when when I went through that experience, I knew several things. I like I like nasty stuff. When it comes to surgeries and crazy stuff, things like that. I know

1:06:04Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. No, kidding. That's interesting. Like right from day one you felt that way.

1:06:11Dr. Eric Roman boy, did I like I got ch you know, I got chills. And so it was funny because I had said, well, maybe if I did this, I would want to be an orthodontist. No, I don't want to be orthodontist because that ain't nasty enough for me. I like it nasty. And so I I am a sick puppy deep down inside. And so I knew that was the path I was gonna go on. And I just started, I built my life around being a dentist. And there so what was the plan? Number one.

1:06:28Dr. Jim Arnold Easy. Huh. Clearly. Huh.

1:06:41Dr. Eric Roman The other thing John taught me is he said, Eric, my success as an oral surgeon, yet, yeah, I mean, I'm a good oral surgeon. I like to believe I'm a really good oral surgeon, but it is about the success of the business that I built. And it's far it matters far more than whether I'm actually good at oral surgery or not. So my home, my experience, my life is a function of my business success, not really my oral surgery success. And

1:07:09Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

1:07:10Dr. Eric Roman Yeah, and yeah, he said you can split hairs about that, but that's the truth of it. So I knew several things at this point. Number one, dentists have the ability to have control. Number two, if I wasn't going to go into dentistry, I was probably going to go into business, medicine. I was with me business. And what I learned is that, okay, wait, when you're a dentist, you essentially step into being the CEO of a million-dollar business, which most businesses in America never make it there. So you get an

1:07:22Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Yeah. True.

1:07:38Dr. Eric Roman Automatic pathway to being a great business owner. Number three, the worst case scenario for me as a dentist is I was probably going to make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. You talk about great ins income security. Come hecker high water, zombie apocalypse. I got skills people need. I'm gonna make money. And so the way that I looked at this, I got my control. I had I have this business that I get to be the CEO of almost right away. So I get the business part and

1:07:41Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

1:08:07Dr. Eric Roman Number three, I have income security and very quick pathway. And maybe number four, if you got into dental school, it's pretty much a guarantee. And so I got into dental school and it's like, well, I mean, it was almost like saying, Congratulations, you're gonna be a multimillionaire. It just like, here you go. So those were the decisions that put me in to dentistry. What do you what do you think? What do you resonate with that? And I got to help people.

1:08:17Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, yeah, it's true. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know really big time. I I remember when I was in high school, my dentist was like, You gotta go to dentistry. I'm like, nah, I'm gonna be a doctor. You know, I thought that was more glamorous or they make more money, or I I mean, as a freaking teenager, you don't know anything about anything. And you know, he sat me down, Eric, and he said, Jim, like, trust me, insurance companies have taken over medicine. It's a terrible profession to be in, and their income's just gonna keep going down and they're gonna have less control. They're gonna have patients dying, they're gonna get called in the middle of the night. All this kind of stuff, but dentistry, you get to be the boss. You get to run your practice however you wanna run it. You get to do the procedures you wanna do. You're never gonna have like real emergencies that get you out of bed in the middle of the night. He said, Trust me, it's a better life. And you know what? I I took his advice and, you know, never really never looked back.

1:09:21Dr. Eric Roman Hmm. And here we are. And you know what's interesting too? I really admire the families with pedigrees of dentists now because I see a lot of other ones. My kids, my kids are all like, Nope, we ain't going in there.

1:09:22Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, here we are, man, all these years later. Mm, mm. mine, me too. I'm like, God. Back in the day I wanted to to aggregate practices so I'd have two practices for each kid someday, you know, that they would buy into like at half price or something just to, you know, earn their way. But I'd help them be successful from day one. I just thought this is amazing because I'm really good at this. I know how to run these things and we're profitable and this great life. And what happened? What did we do wrong, man?

1:09:43Dr. Eric Roman Here we are. Yeah. my my son, my son's gonna go to business school. I'm holding up maybe I I now aspire to this more than I ever have in the past. I never used to want to work together with my family. Now I really want my family to work together. And so maybe he'd maybe he'd like to play a business role inside of something that I'm building now. And so yeah.

1:10:04Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah. that's cool. man, I see it. I see it clearly for you guys. That's gonna come together.

1:10:21Dr. Eric Roman That'd be cool at the same time. He might not. And so to be determined.

1:10:25Dr. Jim Arnold You know, going back to the beginning though, you got out of school and you took a two million dollar practice to thirteen million in three years. How the hell did you do that? I mean, most seasoned dentists can't do that. And here you are, young pup, out of school, just crushed it right away. Like, what happened?

1:10:43Dr. Eric Roman It was a it was a scratch start. So, like, you know, carte blanche. Jim, a lot of my journey is about being in the right spot at the right time with the right people.

1:10:55Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

1:10:56Dr. Eric Roman When when I was in residency, I had been reading a lot of Dentaltown, you know, like and all the piss and venom in there. I came across I came across a bunch of posts by Scott Luna and Ryan Swain, the founder of Six Month Smiles. And they had just had really cool, they were they had both given us all the gift of documenting a very unique journey, unique perspective, unique journey of building things.

1:11:05Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, right. Mm. Mm hmm. Right.

1:11:24Dr. Eric Roman And they decided they were going to try and run a seminar together. And there were, it was in Tampa, Florida. There were 12 people in the room. I was one of the 12 people. And it was the very first of what became breakaway practice, which later became Scott Luna seminars. And I got the opportunity to be there day zero. And there were a lot of systems and a lot of concepts and things like that. But but I think more than anything else, I walked away with baby, I can do this. And

1:11:52Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

1:11:54Dr. Eric Roman It was, I learned that principles mattered a lot more than the details. The principle of why we do business and how we make decisions and how we see our patients and how we see our team was far more important than the details of what RCM company we used or what what composite it is and all that stuff. Dentists get lost in the latter and miss the former. And so what was being shaped was my perspective and my philosophy. And then the same time, what when it came to clinical philosophy. Same I was in residency and I I spent forty eight thousand dollars in CE when my residency and I think I my income was fifty thousand. So I took out a bunch of loans to survive. But I fast forwarded my learning and one of those things was the productive dentist academy with the late Bruce Baird. And

1:12:31Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah. man, that was so good. I w I took my team through that twice.

1:12:42Dr. Eric Roman Right. I think I went six times and I went before I had ever done a day of private practice dentistry. And and I sat in the I sat in the front row and Bruce even called it out. He's like, dude, I have no idea what's possible for you, you know, with you being here this point. And it was again, it will I couldn't execute on all the details, but it was the philosophies of care. And it was it was the philosophy of how I approached treatment and what I did. And so I just before I had even started practicing, I was building systems.

1:12:47Dr. Jim Arnold No kidding. my God, that's incredible. Mm.

1:13:12Dr. Eric Roman And I knew I knew I had a business model before the doors had even opened. I knew that we were going to operate 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. because nobody inside my market was doing it. And I trusted the system that it was going to drive patience in. And we decided, well, like we knew we had to have patience. And so I said, We're, you know what we're going to do is we're going to do a free whitening for life campaign because nobody's doing it in our market. Nobody's ever touched that regionally. And we're, and and

1:13:12Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Wow. It's incredible. Whitening for life. I've never even heard of that. That's incredible. Brilliant.

1:13:41Dr. Eric Roman Dude, it was it was basic. It was like, it was super simple. It didn't, it cost us $11. And and you know what happened? We were getting out of in 11 chairs, we were getting 380 new patients per month. And again, it was just and and everything that I was teaching my teams and my dentists was guys, our job is to remove the barriers that stand between our patients and getting into the office. And then saying yes to treatment. Barrier one is there's a million barriers that give them a they can choose somebody else, or they can choose us, or they can choose nobody. Remove those barriers, get their butts in here, and then give us a shot. Then number two, if we can get their butts in here, there are a million other barriers that stand between them and being able to say yes to something, remove those barriers. And that was that was our entire philosophy of care. Figure out how to just say yes. Find a way to say yes to your patients, meet them where they are.

1:14:34Dr. Jim Arnold Mm.

1:14:38Dr. Eric Roman As time went on, we realized we had to engineer our environment to be with the things that made us super marketable. And so, you know, I that it's kind of weird when you follow basic business principles. It really wasn't hard. I felt like we weren't doing anything super special, but

1:14:53Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. But to abandon those two rooms at such a formative time is just extraordinary. I mean, not just timing, but I mean you had to know like, hey, look, they've got something special that I really want to learn. I mean, you don't just stumble in there by accident. So you made some conscious decisions and said, Hey, they they know what they're talking about. And why don't I just instead of reinventing the wheel, why don't I take some of this brilliance and go make it happen? And you did.

1:15:02Dr. Eric Roman I know. I know. Calling. I took a I took a risk. But you know the other thing? I executed. And and you know so

1:15:30Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, that's right. You gotta all the knowledge in the world, but if you don't go and implement it and execute, you you got nothing.

1:15:39Dr. Eric Roman there were there were there were 11 other people that were in that room with me. I was the testimonial because I executed in a way that others didn't. And you know, it was another lesson inside of it. ideas are ideas are cheap. Ideas are dime a dozen. You can get them off TikTok today or anything else. Execution is the only thing that mattered. And so part of the sacrifice for me is that in the business of building, building.

1:15:50Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

1:16:08Dr. Eric Roman We operated 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., which means that I was there at 6 30 and I went home at 8 30. I got home at 8 30. I might have kissed my babies goodnight, or I went up and I kissed them while they're in bed. And then when, you know, I spent a few moments de deprogramming. And then when my wife went to bed from 10 30 until 2 a.m., I built the systems that I knew I needed from the day before. And at 6 30 a.m. the next day, I executed and I delivered on those systems. And that was

1:16:13Dr. Jim Arnold Oof. You paid the price, man. Yeah.

1:16:35Dr. Eric Roman System development implementation execution was the name of the game. And I mean, I screwed up 20x what I what I what I fulfilled, but that was it. That was it. And you know, and I would periodically like I would go back to basic principles. Every couple of months, I would go back to, you know, those handouts and those binders that Scott gave me. And I'd be like, okay, what what else could I do better? I forgot about this. Or I'd go back to basic principles with Bruce. Or then, I mean, I was.

1:16:43Dr. Jim Arnold Constant movement for fall forward. Yeah. Yeah.

1:17:05Dr. Eric Roman I was 18 months in and I was already start cutting back my clinical care because I'd already hired so many associates. I brought I brought in my first orthodontist at 18 months. I think we had at that point four doctors. And now I was cutting back to train our new doctors as they were coming in and to focus my energy on that. So it didn't work really well for long because I was stupid about how I did it. My income went down really fast. But but I was

1:17:17Dr. Jim Arnold Hmm.

1:17:30Dr. Eric Roman already positioning and saying, okay, the health of this business is actually based on the success that I can breed in these other doctors, which has really become the essence of my life. That like everything that I did in building groups was actually about the development of other people and their ability to be great.

1:17:36Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think a lot of people look at success like that and think, he just got lucky. But dude, it doesn't happen that way. You gotta put in the reps, you gotta put in the time, you gotta do the do the things that nobody else wants to do. You know, you had eleven other people in that room who could have done the same thing. Well, theoretically speaking, had they applied themselves, they would have at least had a shot at it. But no nobody does that. But you did. And Yeah. Well, there's always some luck involved.

1:18:06Dr. Eric Roman Correct. And I did get lucky. Let's not be wrong about that. I the more years that I've spent, you know, it's great telling all the accolades and the stories and boosting my ego. But the more I look back, I'm like, I listen. A lot of people say, my gosh, Eric Roman, you did so many things right. Yeah. Maybe, maybe the right thing that I did is I just picked the right market and it made everything else possible. Maybe one good decision could like offset it all. But there so listen, the luck. I'll take it every day of the week. We cannot separate the luck from the story. Maybe it was the right time and the right market, but I did pick that market. And so, you know, for better or worse, you know, we pick our luck. And and I didn't pick it, I didn't pick it by accident. I didn't say, well, you know, eeny meeny money mo. I said, listen, this seems like this would frickin' crush. And it did. Yep. Yeah.

1:18:47Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, you did. We create our own luck sometimes, you know. And you s and you chose to work, you know, you chose to work it and do something extraordinary. And you know, North Carolina was good to you 'cause then you built Carolina Dennis. And, you know, what did you do differently that second time?

1:19:10Dr. Eric Roman Yeah. Hmm. I did a lot different the second time, Jim. The not all of it good. The the first time the first time doesn't end quite the way I wanted it to. And what we have built, I ended up I ended up in a partnership with a large national DSO inside of those. And it ended up in several years of litigation over dental practice act stuff. and I ended up losing everything. And

1:19:24Dr. Jim Arnold Hmm. Yeah.

1:19:43Dr. Eric Roman You know what that story feels like. So all the assets I thought I had, now I had none and I had no job and I had no income. And I was cried on my pillow and I figured out I figured I'm gonna start from scratch and do this again. And

1:19:45Dr. Jim Arnold I do.

1:19:57Dr. Eric Roman Oftentimes when we learned hard lessons, we learn the wrong lessons. And so what I did is I tried to make the second journey look nothing like the first. And I threw out the baby with the bathwater. Everything, everything that we were doing, and I didn't know what the good pieces were of the first one. Our performance, our hours, the way we trained our doctors, the way we pushed performance in the second phase, because I was so embarrassed about the lawsuit I had been through for years and all this stuff. I just wanted

1:20:05Dr. Jim Arnold Interesting. man. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And I remember you told me this story. You were the dentist who was repping fourteen other dentists and going through hell for at least a couple of years, right?

1:20:34Dr. Eric Roman Yeah, it was two years I I led a bit of this doctor group through through litigation and and it was against people that I loved. And so that's even the harder part. People you've come to love and appreciate, respect, and work side by side with that now because of a private equity group's decisions, they're now your enemy. That's that just sucked. Like there was no there were no good guys and bad guys. I I still bear a lot of shame around it. But

1:20:50Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Hmm.

1:21:03Dr. Eric Roman When it was behind me, I wanted it, I wanted my future to look nothing like my past. And so all my business was now suckling at the teeth of my doctors. And so I just wanted to please them and say all the right things. And I wanted them to love me and I wanted them to to feel like I was never gonna do what happened in the first one. We wanted to be, we joked, we were the anti-DSO DSO. We were the anti-group group, which a lot of people say.

1:21:14Dr. Jim Arnold interesting. Yeah. Hear that all the time now. Yeah.

1:21:28Dr. Eric Roman And what we meant by anti is we meant we were anti-profit. That's what we were for a long time. And we just didn't know what we had had good in that first phase of the journey. And so we threw it all out. And the next thing you knew, we were almost underwater. We were about to go bankrupt. And I'm thankful for my team that went along with me on the ride, that called me out. You know, one of my old assistants is like, you what's wrong. Y'all about to go out of business. You know why. It's because you don't care about performance anymore. You don't care about doing you. And I was like, huh. Okay. Tell me more about that.

1:21:32Dr. Jim Arnold Ha ha ha. Mm-hmm. Was she with you on the first iteration of this? Did she so she saw the things that you did well and she saw the mistakes that you were making in the second time around? I I think that Yeah. man. And they gotta be able they gotta have the freedom to actually tell you what they think, you know? They they have you have to have that that give and take, you know?

1:21:59Dr. Eric Roman She was with me through the whole first journey. She was there from day zero. Yep. If you don't have those people in your life, you're screwed, you know? And Yep. She knew I wasn't gonna fire her. Yeah, more the more people you have that'll speak truth. She's the one that like when I when I you know, one of our standards is doing great handoffs, and when I would get up and go out without doing a handoff, she'd grab me by the shirt, she'd be like, You get your ass back in here and you're gonna do that great handoff because you know it matters. And like, I'm like, Yes, yes, ma'am, yes, yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am, I will do it. I'm sorry. And I was so thankful for that. And she made us all better. And so

1:22:30Dr. Jim Arnold I love that. That's beautiful. man. Yeah.

1:22:41Dr. Eric Roman You know, she called it out and I spent a lot of years making it look different. how do we carry this next journey was about me moving from pleasing people to serving them. And that was about me building the confidence. That was about me building the confidence to know what's the right way to to serve someone and to be okay with that if it doesn't please them in the moment.

1:22:55Dr. Jim Arnold Okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

1:23:09Dr. Eric Roman And that took a lot more confidence. That took a lot more time under tension. That really challenged my leadership a lot more. That was when I became an executive and moved to being a full-time CEO. And and so inside of that journey, yeah, we had a lot of new challenges, a lot of new stuff, a lot of new, a lot of new lessons that we learned inside of it. I am really thankful for it. I'm proud, I'm proud of what we built.

1:23:32Dr. Jim Arnold Well, look, you know, two completely different experiences and two completely different outcomes as well. Isn't it ironic? The first it just occurred to me, the first experience you did everything right for a long time and then you had a shitty outcome. The second experience you're screwing everything up and blah blah blah blah blah and then you get back to basics and boom, you end up with a great outcome. So isn't life crazy?

1:23:52Dr. Eric Roman Truer story's never been told. Yeah, that's a, that is really, and I mean, again, it's all just, it's all just a data set with a bunch of variables that you and I aren't even acknowledging. Timing, all the other stuff that could have been in our favor. I try not to learn any more than I needed to. The real story is of a leader that was forced to grow. Pain is a really good teacher for me. Success is a really poor teacher.

1:24:05Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

1:24:20Dr. Eric Roman And I invoked a crap ton of pain in the journey. I learned really fast. sometimes I learned the wrong thing, but I tried to learn the right thing. And you know, tomorrow is built off the foundations of today. And then the next day is built off the foundation of tomorrow. And you just have to stay focused in the right principles, the right stuff. You gotta be uncomfortable as hell. that's

1:24:20Dr. Jim Arnold Interesting. Yeah.

1:24:48Dr. Eric Roman You know, the I and that's one thing that I spend a lot of time teaching my kids. It's funny. I was as I'm getting back into it, I was just just messaging one of my doctors. And was he's he's in his first months of of working with our with our team, and he's like, Man, I think I screwed this up and I think I screwed that up. And I was like, bro, I'm so proud of you. That is exactly what you should be doing right now. First off, I want to give you the encouragement. You probably didn't screw either of those up. I know you would have wanted to turn out different with that membrane or whatever else, but this is fine. And I wanna I want to encourage you to enjoy the emotion that you're feeling inside of that because you are learning faster than anybody else learns. And your ceiling is beyond everybody else's. So invoke that, like get more of it, stay uncomfortable, stay teachable. And I'm proud of who you are. So, you know, that's what I try to teach now.

1:25:26Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. So I know you exited in two thousand nineteen. Like why why light wave? What what made them the right partner when it was time to go?

1:25:48Dr. Eric Roman They were not our best offer. They were not our highest offer. And Yet they valued things about our business that I wanted to be valued. They needed, they needed, they were as hungry for some of what we brought to the table. They were operating a model that was all acquisition of large practices. We were all de novo large practices. And so one of the things they talked about, it's like to have a de novo recipe as successful as ours.

1:26:03Dr. Jim Arnold Okay. Mm-hmm.

1:26:25Dr. Eric Roman But to have the type of practice be the same type of practice, they're they're building, their goal was three to seven million dollar practices. And that's all we ran. And so there was this alignment in the business model, which was not normal. Those are that's a weird business model. And they loved what we had invested heavily in in our operating structure. What we did inside of our teams, the doctor development structure, some of the things we'd done with partnership was highly Attractive to them because they didn't have it and they wanted it. And so what it really felt like was it felt like two pieces of the puzzle that were coming together. You know, for me, this was the end of the road. I was taking a hundred percent exit and moving on. But I wanted to feel great about the future partner because I was leaving behind my people and my team and like it is like a child, you know. So I

1:26:56Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Interesting. Absolutely.

1:27:22Dr. Eric Roman I wanted to feel like they were well cared for. And for whatever it was, I had that confidence in their team and in Justin Joey as a CEO. And I think they honored that. you know, the best thing that anybody can ever say about a transaction seven years later is the pe the buyers were who I thought they were, and they absolutely.

1:27:25Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

1:27:48Dr. Eric Roman And I and and light waves had hard days. They've had, they've had things that, like anybody, the whole industry, they've had hard days. And we see character and integrity through hard days. And they're exactly who I thought they were. And I'm grateful. yeah. So man, that's probably the best thing I could ever say in a million years. What I don't do is look back and say, I wish I'd done something different. I don't.

1:27:48Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Good. That's huge. That's huge. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You said though yeah. That that's great. I mean, to look back without regret and to feel really good about that and the partnership. And I love the fact that it wasn't the best offer, but it was the best partner. And I talk to Dennis about that all the time. You know, you can't just go for the highest. And you want to maximize your your life's work and all that sort of thing. But if you're miserable three to five years later because of who you chose to do it with, well, you know, what's what's that worth to you? But you you said that it's that transaction solved your business problem.

1:28:36Dr. Eric Roman Yeah.

1:28:40Dr. Jim Arnold but not your personal one. Tell me about that.

1:28:42Dr. Eric Roman So Remember my comment earlier. I I wasn't the dad I wanted to be at that point. My kids were getting big. I wasn't present. I had all this money on the balance sheet, but not in my bank account. And I wanted something different. I was living in a place I didn't want live. So I my decision to exit was to exit in total and to free me up to live a different life and to just go on the journey.

1:28:52Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

1:29:17Dr. Eric Roman And if there's one thing that I've learned, and now I've coached I've coached a lot of people through their own exits, and this rule is as true as it gets. I have worked with a ton of entrepreneurs. I've been in communities with a bunch of post exit people like me, and we all can agree on one thing. Exiting doesn't solve doesn't solve problems. It might solve some problems, but you're gonna have as many new ones that you didn't see coming and that you don't have to solve. And that's what I stepped into. Now I had a bunch of new problems. I exited a world where I knew what my problems were. And I'm I didn't like my problems, but I typically knew how to solve them. And I stepped into a world of a bunch of new problems that I had never seen before. And now I didn't know how to solve. How do you rebuild the relationships after you haven't been there? How do you figure out a good balance inside of your home after you've been gone for so long? All these things. Who am I really? Who am I really? What do I want to really do next? Am I

1:29:56Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Mm. Yeah.

1:30:14Dr. Eric Roman Am I actually a decent coach or do I suck at this or all the stuff? And maybe after many, many years of doing all these different things, one thing I know to be fully true, I have just as many problems today as I've ever had at any point in my life. In fact, I would say the problems are as, you know, of just as much magnitude as any other. I have investments that are failing where I've taken other people's money and that like we're having to deal with on a daily basis. I I have a bunch of high magnitude problems.

1:30:30Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm.

1:30:45Dr. Eric Roman The first phase of my life was often about trying to escape problems and get away from them. I believed that there was a day when we would be problem free sitting on a beach with a margarita forevermore, forever and ever and ever. Amen. Right.

1:30:50Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Isn't that crazy? God, it seems like it's always it's so close. Just Yeah.

1:30:59Dr. Eric Roman That was the sales proposition, right? That was what Forbes and Fortune and all the stuff said. And that is not a healthy outcome for me because I was created to solve problems. And so living in a world without problems doesn't do any good. And so as I've gone through the journey, I just realize Eric's not seeking anymore a life without problems. Eric is, it's not about having problems. It's about my relationship to them. It's to see them as opportunities and as things to deal with. And even though this is a really big problem, yep.

1:31:17Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

1:31:28Dr. Eric Roman I've been through a bunch of very big problems and we'll get to this. And there will be something, and there is joy. And so there's joy in having problems now. So I have as many problems, as big a problems today as I've ever had in my life. And now I'm not trying to get rid of them. I'm trying to receive them and appreciate

1:31:31Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What a what a healthy perspective. I don't think many people look at life like that. And you know, I think that reframe is something that helps you I don't know, find find that balance, maybe find that sense of peace, even when because of human condition, we're gonna have problems no matter what. But when you look at your kids, you know, all those beautiful kids, like what what rule? I mean, how do you enforce that like protecting that family time because you're still a busy guy. You got a lot of stuff going on. How do you protect that time?

1:32:15Dr. Eric Roman Funny, we've been this has been coming up a lot. I'm as busy as I've ever been in my life. Never and and by choice. And yet I'm showing up 100% in the relationships I have with my wife and every one of my kids. And it's it's it's all about my prioritization of time and energy. And I have learned over all of these years.

1:32:20Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Amazing. Mm-hmm.

1:32:40Dr. Eric Roman Number one, they don't need the amount. It's not about a volume of time or hours or anything like that. It's about an energy and a focus and an intention. And we built that. It's a very systematic thing. That's part of, that's part of companies that I built is to have that system for how I am connected with my kids, how I know what's going on, how we are intentional about our relationships together and we know what we're trying to achieve. And so, Jim, what I would what I would say is that I have bought myself when I I actually, my last three months have been really crappy.

1:33:01Dr. Jim Arnold Hm. Beautiful.

1:33:10Dr. Eric Roman And I've been burning the candle at all ends. And I have had some business setbacks that were really annoying. And and you know what's funny is when that happened to me in the first version of Eric, when those setbacks were happening, my my family paid a very big price. They paid the price. My family has no idea I'm having business setbacks or any of that stuff. In fact, they're like, We're having my marriage is probably the healthiest ever been. My kids are and listen, this could all change tomorrow, but

1:33:36Dr. Jim Arnold Good for you. Hey man.

1:33:39Dr. Eric Roman But my kids are like, we're in just like a really great place as a family. We love the time that we have. We almost we almost are having too much fun. And so what's interesting, yeah, I can have I can hold to things that my businesses like have had some duress and like just just hard decisions and big shifts and new me taking on too many things. That's really a problem. And yet my my family and my personal life hasn't paid the price. That's the system that we I've built internally.

1:33:46Dr. Jim Arnold Mm. Wow. That's a good problem to have. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Sure. Phenomenal.

1:34:10Dr. Eric Roman I'm really thankful for that. Yeah.

1:34:11Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Well you say love who you lead, love why you lead, love where it leads. Tell me about that, like in a hard conversation. What does that mean?

1:34:22Dr. Eric Roman Yeah, well, the who's are the the the who's are the things that I remember from the journey. The who is the people that I sat side by side. Those are the people I miss most, you know? the why is the why is like I just have to everything that I do has to be deeply connected to a purpose. When that purpose isn't there, when there's not a bigger reason for me doing something, and all people are this way. We know this to be true. This is what the data says. Humans, particularly our younger demographics, the purpose.

1:34:28Dr. Jim Arnold Hmm.

1:34:52Dr. Eric Roman has to be true and it has to be present and it has to be visible. So the why and why we're doing something, if it's not there, I'm not in. And we deserve to get what we want out of our businesses. We deserve success where it leads, whether it's just some measure of financial freedom or whether it's a certain quality of life or whether it's whatever that might be to you, you deserve that. You deserve to be able to get it. And so that's that that's kind of a very simple

1:34:53Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm.

1:35:21Dr. Eric Roman you know, moniker that I use. Who, why, and where. And and we shouldn't be embarrassed about any one of those things.

1:35:24Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Man, I love that. That's a that's a great answer. And you know, when you look at the industry and all the things you've done and, you know, you've been a leader in so many different ways, like how do you see leadership differently from the rest of the industry? Like what's the industry getting wrong these days? 'Cause there's a lot of stuff going wrong right now.

1:35:47Dr. Eric Roman Hmm, I I I I mentioned this a little bit earlier. I'm a hippie and I believe that the center of leadership is love. And we could spend a whole another two hours, you know, talking about what that means. But I I think that love, I think that all the business principles, that's only business, just business, whatever, it's a business decision. I think that we've lost sight of something that should be inherent to all of us. And

1:35:55Dr. Jim Arnold Mm.

1:36:16Dr. Eric Roman We should be able to have love at the center of what it is and how we do business. And so I think that's what the industry gets long gets wrong. We're we're we're focused on specific outcomes and we're not focused on the love that should be present inside of what we do every day. That's my simple answer.

1:36:33Dr. Jim Arnold Good for you, man. Well, I I know you've got a you've got a run here pretty soon. I got one last question for you. You know, when you look at joyful growth and, you know, what you and Josie are building together, like ten years from now, I mean, what do you want to have seen actually change in the industry through your efforts together?

1:36:39Dr. Eric Roman Get me. Yeah. Jim, it's just, it's just that joy and that love. I want, I don't want people running away from dentistry at the pace that they're running away from it. I want teams. I want more teams that can sit there and say, I'm just so freaking grateful to be where I am. I'm grateful for who I work with and for and who I serve. I want our people, Jim. This is about the people of the industry. I want the people, I want the people to say, gosh, dentistry's a

1:37:12Dr. Jim Arnold Mm. Yeah.

1:37:26Dr. Eric Roman Been a really healthy place for me. And it has filled my life with satisfaction and joy. And I've gotten a lot of what I've wanted because of my choice to stay inside of this industry. Instead of running to all the other crap we could run to, and we see people running to that's what, that's what I would like to see as a ripple effect that that people can, that people can just say, gosh, this this industry's been so good to me, and I'm so thankful.

1:37:40Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Wow, man. I I love it. Eric, I I really enjoy every time we have a chance to chat. We could go for hours more. And I I know that anybody who has the privilege of watching and listening to, you know, your words of wisdom is going to get a lot of value out of it. So thanks, man. Appreciate you taking the time and appreciate everything that you're doing in the industry, man. You've got a unique perspective, you've got a unique story, you've got some highs and lows, and those are the things that everybody's gonna get so much value from moving forward. And you're still so young, man. You got like a whole other extra career or two ahead of you, which is exciting. So

1:38:23Dr. Eric Roman We'll we'll see. My bald spot's coming in fast, but thank you, Jim. Thank you for It's just wisdom, right? Just wisdom. Yeah.

1:38:26Dr. Jim Arnold Well, fortunately the bald spot has nothing to do with your productivity and your heart. You know? The love you put out there is the love you get back. And I I it's it's fun to see that happening, man. I really I I'm I'm happy for you. So

1:38:40Dr. Eric Roman Well, I receive I receive you and your questions and your insight with a great deal of of gratitude, Jim, and I'm so thankful to have a relationship with a brother like you. So thank you.

1:38:50Dr. Jim Arnold Well, I feel feel the same. So well, to learn more about Eric, Josie, Joyful Growth, and Dental Associate Growth, visit joyfulgrowth.com and you know, reach out to Eric, reach out to Josie. They've got a lot of love to give and they've got a lot of knowledge to give and share. So you can find this episode and more conversations with dental leaders at foundation dental alliance dot com. Thanks for joining us. See you again next time.