Episode #234: Dr. Eric Recker – The Importance Of Taking Care Of Yourself As A Dentist

Dr. Eric Block: Welcome to the Stress-Free Dentist Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Eric Block. As always, I want to inspire, entertain, and educate you on the best tools and technologies out there. My goal is to help make your practice and career more profitable, efficient, and most importantly, more enjoyable. And check out all of my nonfiction and children’s books on Amazon, and check out thestressfreedentist.com  for any upcoming events. And if you’re feeling you’re a dental professional that’s burnt out, or you just feel stuck or wanting to get to that next level, visit the International Academy of Dental Life Coaches or www.idlc.com,  and we’ll get you matched up with a life coach that understands dentistry.

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Alright, everyone, welcome back to another episode, and today I’m joined by Dr. Eric Recker, uh, who is a fellow dentist, uh, coach, and, uh, has a lot going on and, uh, has some really great value to add to any of the listeners out there, especially any dental professionals that have gone through burnout. Um, we’re gonna have a great conversation today. Uh, Eric, thanks so much for joining us.

Dr. Eric Recker: Thanks for having me, Eric. And I’m super excited. I found another person who spells their name the same way that I do, so we were a good fit right away. This is good.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah, this is, this is perfect. Your, uh, note taker popped up. It said Eric’s note taker. I thought it was mine, but it actually turned out to be yours. We have the same, same name, same spelling. Um, so love it. Um, and, um, you’re, you’re actually, you’re located in Iowa, correct?

Dr. Eric Recker: I am. I’m in a small town called Pella, which is southeast of Des Moines. So yeah, it’s a small town of about 10,000 people.

Dr. Eric Block: And is that where you’re from?

Dr. Eric Recker: Yes, it is. Yep. Hometown.

Dr. Eric Block: And how did you decide to go to dental school and where did you go?

Dr. Eric Recker: I went to University of Iowa. I wanted to be a physical therapist. Uh, my dad is a, was a dentist, and I didn’t really want to do what my dad did. So I went to Iowa and wanted to be a physical therapist. Found out through kind of a weird sort of circumstances that, uh, physical therapy is not the route that I wanted to go. And so I applied for, uh, or to dental school after I went home for a weekend and actually said to my dad, "Hey, what is it that you do? Like, explain dentistry to me a little bit more." ‘Cause I never really needed any dental treatment or anything like that.

He said, "Well, how about this? You got a break coming up. Why don’t you just shadow me for a couple days?" Man, I got to experience how my dad had this great effect on people, how they respected him. And then I looked retrospectively at how he was able to make it to some of my sporting events and have some flexibility with his schedule. And I started seeing that those were some of the things that I wanted for my life as well. So I applied for early admittance into dental school and then went, went for it from there.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah, not only do we have the same first name, but we have similar stories. My dad was a dentist. Uh, I did not want to be a dentist. I went to Tulane University thinking I was gonna be a, um, apply, uh, to the business school there. Um, that turned out not to be for me. And then I started thinking about physical therapy. I started thinking about, uh, maybe becoming a physician. Uh, broke my front tooth on a beer bottle, my number nine. Uh, and then went to a local dentist. They patched me up, loved how they took care of me. And then, like you, I went to my dad’s office. So very similar, um, situation there, um, minus the beer bottle for you.

But, um, now did, um, uh, did you, where’d you go to dental school? And then after dental school, um, what was your experience like? Did you do a residency? Did you specialize? Uh, did you go right in and open up your own practice?

Dr. Eric Recker: Yeah, so went to University of Iowa, uh, got done there, and my dad said he wanted me to join him, if that was okay with me. And I was super excited about that. His practice was not big enough to support both of us, so there was another dentist that was retiring in town. So he bought that practice, moved all of his stuff into there, and that’s where I started practicing.

It was amazing because I had a full slate of patients to start out with day one. It was not amazing because I had a full slate of patients to start out with day one. There was no onboarding or easing into things. My dad had been trying to hold this other practice together with his for a couple months after he bought it, before I was able to come back from school. And so he was very ready to hand it off to me when I started.

So from day one, I was booked out six weeks, and I had one chair to work in. And so any emergencies that came up just had to be squeezed in there. Other procedures had to be squeezed to try to fit people in there. And so I became very familiar with what it means to crank, uh, from day one.

Dr. Eric Block: And, uh, you’re, you’re still practicing, correct?

Dr. Eric Recker: I am, yep. 23 years later. Uh, actually be 23 years next month. So yeah, I am still practicing, but I now practice, uh, three days a week because I became dangerously close to selling my practice and walking away because of burnout about five years ago.

Dr. Eric Block: I, I definitely wanna get into that. Um, I just want to backtrack a little. And you went from that one chair, uh, location, you were cranking. Um, what happened from there? Did you, uh, did you continue on with that, that one chair practice for a while? Did you open up a new space? Did you combine with your dad’s practice? Uh, walk me through that.

Dr. Eric Recker: Yeah, so when he bought the practice, he merged the practices into that building. So he was practicing with me. I had a chair, he had a treatment chair, and then we had, uh, three hygienist chairs, and then one room that didn’t even have an x-ray unit. There was very little that you could do in that. You could triage, I guess, a little if you needed to.

And basically what happened is I funded my dad’s retirement for, uh, way longer than I really wanted to. Uh, so I was an associate for him, uh, for six years. And then it finally got to a point where I said, "You know what, Dad, I’m not gonna fund your retirement anymore. I appreciate that you went out on a limb and bought a practice for me, but, uh, it’s time for me to own the practice, or at least own half the practice."

And he said, "You know what? I’ll sell the whole thing to you. I’ll work for you." So we built a new office, and that’s been about 15 years ago, uh, actually 16 years ago that we moved into that office. And right away it was such a game changer. Just to have two treatment rooms that I could go back and forth between and not feel those kind of pressures was, was a game changer.

Um, but there are some days that I certainly look back to, and we actually practiced in a house. It was a house that had been converted to a dental office. And there are days that I look back to the simplicity of that house and how small our practice was, uh, and think, boy, was it really all bad there? Uh, but now we have, we have this beautiful office and it’s, uh, has a walkout basement. So we have elevated views, and it’s, uh, it’s great. I really like practicing there.

Dr. Eric Block: And what kind of office do you have? Is it, uh, do, do you practice all kinds of dentistry? Do you do your own implants or clear aligners? Do you stick to just general dentistry? Tell me about your practice.

Dr. Eric Recker: Yeah, I definitely do some clear aligners. Uh, but for the most part, it’s, it’s bread and butter restorative dentistry. I don’t place any of my own implants. Uh, we have an oral surgeon that’s, uh, less than half a mile away, endodontist less than half a mile away. We’re really fortunate for the size of our town that we have, uh, that we have those specialists—orthodontist half a mile away. So, uh, in that respect, it’s really nice.

But I, I, I have decided that I just want to be really, really good at the things that I know I can do. And I don’t think I would ever be good enough that I would feel like I was competent enough with the number of implants that I would place to really, really be able to do that. So it’s very much a restorative practice. Um, we have, uh, three docs and seven hygienists usually working, uh, on a normal day.

Dr. Eric Block: Now, tell me about the burnout. Uh, at what point in your career did that happen? Um, what were you feeling? Walk me through that whole thing.

Dr. Eric Recker: Yeah, so it’s always interesting to do kind of a forensic investigation of, of your life to say, you know, what, when did it really go wrong? So for me, and I talk to groups about this all the time, I can go way back to the recess kickball playground, uh, in second or third grade, and remember being told I couldn’t play because I wasn’t good enough. And that, when you hear "you are not good enough" over and over and over again, you start to wonder if there is something to that. And so I believed that I wasn’t good enough. Uh, and that whole memory was something that I stuffed. And I stuffed it, and it only came back to me within the last about four years.

But what that looked like for me is truly nothing was ever good enough. It wasn’t good enough that I was a dentist. I had to have advanced degrees. I had to do an insane amount of continuing education. I had to be the most productive dentist. And then I started getting into, uh, exercise and 5K, uh, 5K, 10K, half marathon, marathon. Then I started on triathlon, all the way through the Ironman distance, mountain climbing, all of these things. And I never believed that I was good enough.

There was a point in my career where I was buying the practice from my dad. I was building a new building. I was serving on five boards. I was training for two Ironman triathlons, and I was coaching both of my kids in soccer. And I had this practice that was booming and growing, and I was almost $3 million in debt.

So all of that stuff, as I look back on it, the biggest thing that I know now that I wasn’t doing is I wasn’t taking care of myself. And it’s hard to take care of yourself when you have that much on your plate, but I was… the equation that it always seems to come back to when I look at it is that I was overcommitted. I had way too much on my plate, and I wasn’t taking care of myself. I wasn’t putting my oxygen mask on first. I was not being selfish to be selfless. I wasn’t doing any of the things that I teach people to do now.

And so I started noticing that I was getting heart palpitations and then tension headaches. So anything—my schedule was always so delicate in the balance—if anything happened, it was just gonna go haywire. And it went haywire a lot. And as soon as that would happen, I would get this splitting headache. I was starting to get chest pain, and I just thought, this is normal. That this is what happens to dentists. This is what happens to business owners. This is… you just have to put your head down and you have to go. That’s… this is the way. This is the way.

And then I started having panic attacks—uh, crippling, paralyzed-on-the-floor, can’t-move panic attacks. And all of this went on for quite a while. And I didn’t tell anybody about it. I didn’t tell my dad about it. I didn’t tell my wife about it. I didn’t tell my family about it. I suffered in silence, uh, until it got to a point where I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

And then COVID hit, and we had to be closed for eight weeks. And while we were closed, I did some true soul searching as to what I want to do with the rest of my life. And I decided as I came out of it that I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.

Dr. Eric Recker: I thought I wanted to help other people. I wanted to make a bigger impact than what I thought I was making in my practice. I want to speak to thousands of people, and I want to write books, and I want to do all of this stuff. But I knew that dentistry wasn’t for me anymore. So I talked to my—one of my associates—and I said, "Hey, are you interested in buying the practice? I think I’m gonna leave dentistry." And he said, he said, "Yeah, yeah, I’m interested." And so we started working towards that, and we had, uh, we had a verbal agreement and were starting to get some things figured out.

The next month, our consultant was gonna come and he was going to broker the deal for us. And then on a Monday morning—which, Monday morning was ground zero for me—uh, he was in a horrible car accident, uh, within a mile from our office on his way to work. He survived, uh, but he was seriously injured. And it became very clear to me at that point that all I was trying to do was escape.

And when I sat down and decided, okay, what do you really want to do with your life, I realized that walking away from dentistry would’ve been the biggest mistake in my life. And so I looked to find someone to help me, because I think one thing that happens with us as dentists is that we become alone at the top. If we own our practices by ourselves, we really don’t have anybody in the office who has the skin in the game that we do. And so we have to make all these decisions and we have to be switched on all the time, and it just wears us out.

Dr. Eric Recker: So I was able to find a partner to buy half of my practice, and one of the big stipulations when he bought half the practice was, "Look, I almost walked away from dentistry. I, I need you to know that I’m gonna see patients three days a week because that’s the maximum that I can handle and handle well."

And then I’m gonna try to figure out what these other two days look like. And as I started working through my burnout and understanding a system to try to help other people with that, I decided that’s really where my passion is. I still love treating patients. I love my patients. I love my team. But my heart gets set on fire by trying to help other people with the burnout in their life, reduce chaos in their life, and, and those sorts of things.

So that was a really long answer to your question, but I hope that kind of explains my journey.

Dr. Eric Block: And now, would you consider yourself a coach or consultant or a, a, a mix of the two in helping other dentists?

Dr. Eric Recker: Yeah, I would say primarily a coach. Usually when I, when I work with a dentist, I start with working with the dentist, uh, because we want to make sure that the leader is in a good place first before we start working with the team. So that is my approach. I want to make sure that, uh, the owner of the practice or the dentist who’s in charge, that they are doing the right things to try to help with burnout.

Uh, I’m, I’m confident that I can help people get through that burnout, uh, and that’s where we start. And if we get to that point and there’s things to work on in the office as well, then I come alongside and, uh, help the doc with that. So primarily a coach, also a consultant.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah. I, it sounds like you and I also had, you know, a couple eureka moments in my life. It sounds like COVID and, uh, the associate’s car accident were some eureka moments for you. But, um, for me, um, my burnout looked like I just couldn’t wait to get outta the office. I, I regretted choosing the profession. I was so stressed. Uh, I was a hot mess. I was a prof—you know, suffered from, uh, being a perfectionist and would just beat myself up.

Um, and also the, the social aspect of the profession, which was just exhausting to me. Um, you know, being more introverted, the going from room to room to room and always being on, uh, really took its toll on me. And I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought, you know, this is just the way this is and I’m gonna have to grind this out for 40 years.

But I picked up the phone and I called a local therapist and, um, started, you know, turning the ship around. And then also, eureka moment for me during COVID. It was when I started to, um, do other things than just dentistry, um, which has been, you know, one of the best things I’ve ever done, um, in helping other dentists.

Um, now I just wanted to ask you about being a coach. Uh, ’cause I also have a coaching organization, the International Academy of Dental Life Coaches, where it’s a, a community of coaches. Um, and some coaches can fall under the same path as, as dentistry where they’re saying yes to everyone, they’re taking on too much. Um, what are your thoughts there? Could, could, you know, this changing career—being a coach—could you suffer from burnout in, as a coach as well?

Dr. Eric Recker: Yeah, that’s a great question, Eric. And, and the answer is absolutely yes. Um, the thing is, one of the big things I talk to people about is, as we get through burnout, as we work through that process, it’s very easy to go back to it. And anything that we do can get, uh, can lead us down that path. So we have to have guardrails in place. We have to have some systems in place to know, okay, I’m starting to be that person again.

Uh, one of the big guardrails for me is, uh, is my wife. And while she doesn’t love to call me out on stuff, uh, I have asked her and we have had these conversations, "Hey, if I’m starting to be like burnout Eric, we need to have a conversation, and preferably before you’re at a breaking point." So we need to have some of those things where we have to look ourselves in the mirror and say, you know what, how am I really doing today? Am I taking care of myself? What did I do today to take care of myself? Or am I just running around like a crazy person taking care of everybody else? Am I putting everybody else’s oxygen mask on first and then I’m turning blue because I’m gonna die?

You know, it’s all of it—it’s all of these little things that we can do. And yeah, I actually had a point a few months ago, uh, I had four speaking engagements in 10 days, which is nuts for me. I’m usually about once a month. Um, but it was just really busy. And then our town had a three-day festival that I help out with, uh, and I’m training for a big endurance event this summer. And I got back to that point where it was, I don’t like this. I don’t like who I am. I don’t like how short I am with my family. I don’t like who I’m becoming here.

And my wife and I had some really honest conversations, uh, and I had to put some things on the back burner for a little while until I could come back and give it my full energy. Uh, and I think that’s, I think that’s so important. We don’t do that as dentists. We don’t give ourselves, uh, a break. We have to be everything to everyone. We have to be switched on all the time. In my small town, I even have to be switched on when I go to get groceries because I never know when I’m gonna see somebody and they’re gonna say, "Hey, can you take a look at this? You see, I got this tooth over here…" You know? And it happens. And so we have to have an escape from that, or else we just keep going back to that same place.

Dr. Eric Block: And now you mentioned, when we were chatting before, you mentioned, uh, and let me know if I’m saying this right—the Parkinson’s Law—uh, regarding setting up, uh, you know, time management, uh, especially, you know, as dentists, we’re used to the schedule, the schedule, the schedule. You know, from eight to nine-thirty I have a crown prep, and then I have to do hygiene checks while the patient’s getting numb, and it’s a whole schedule and, and time management.

Um, talk to me about that in life in general.

Dr. Eric Recker: Yeah, I, I have found that a lot of dentists are terrible with time when they’re outside of the office because we’re told where to go all day long. You gotta be in this room, then you gotta be in this room, and boy, you better make sure you get into that room or your hygienist is gonna be barking at you, right? Uh, all those things that, that we have to deal with.

Well, when we get away from the office, a lot of times it’s the wild, wild west. And especially if you have a side hustle or you have something else that you’re interested in outside of the office, it can expand to fill whatever time you give it. And that’s what Parkinson’s Law says. It says a task will expand to whatever amount of time you give it.

So one of the things we’re bad at as dentists is, at the end of the day, a lot of times we sit down at our desk and we don’t really have a purpose for sitting down at our desk, but we’re just gonna get things done, right? If we don’t boundary that time, we will take as much time as we give ourselves to get things done.

And then when we get to a day off, if we have X, Y, and Z to do—well, if we’re not careful and say, "Alright, I’m gonna work on X from 8 to 10, then I’m gonna take a little break and I’m gonna work on Y from 10:30 to noon, and then have some lunch, and then I’m gonna work on Z from noon to one, and then I’m gonna quit at one"—if we just say, "I have the day to do these things," then you will take the whole day to do those things.

And so I think it is so important that we use principles like time blocking, uh, and scheduling, especially the time when we’re not in the office. My wife and I schedule date night. Wednesday nights, we go to our favorite restaurant. We actually have a standing reservation at the same table, and that is what we do on Wednesday nights. And people say, "Ah, it’s rigid, it’s not spontaneous." And I look at ’em and I say, "When’s the last time you had a date with your wife?"

So we have to be intentional. We’re so intentional when we’re in our practices. If we can be intentional with at least part of our days, then we get to create some more wide open space to do the other things we want to do.

Dr. Eric Block: Now, uh, tell me about utilization of micro resiliency in their practice.

Dr. Eric Recker: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a big one. Uh, I talk about this a lot with my team. We all have—we all get body blows throughout the day, right? We are doing procedures on people that they don’t want. You know, granted, we get to do some smile makeovers, and we get to do some fun stuff like that that people want. Nobody wants a crown on 18. Nobody wants a quadrant of composites. Nobody wants that. They need it, but they don’t want it. And so a lot of people are saying, "You know, my tooth hurts after you worked on it," or they’re mad at something your hygienist did, or they don’t want to pay their bill. Or you get all these things throughout the day where you just feel like a punching bag.

So we have to find out ways that we can have resilience throughout the day. It would be great if we could just take off and spend a week in the mountains or a week at the beach. That’s where I recharge, so I want to get to the mountains as often as I can. But the reality is, we have a whole lot more Tuesdays than we have week vacations.

So what can we do on a Tuesday at 10:00 AM when we’ve had a morning already? Well, we can sit in our chair in between patients and take three deep breaths—really slow, intentional deep breaths. If you have a window, look out the window. We can stand at the window in a Superman pose, put our hands on our hips, and spread our feet a little wider than shoulder width and just look outside. We can go outside and let the sun get on our forehead for a few minutes.

These little things—instead of every minute that we have picking up our phone and jumping into social media or other things that increase our anxiety—we can do these small things throughout the day to help us get back in the game. Because if we don’t, what happens is we’re a punching bag for the first three hours of the day, and then we actually have five minutes in between patients, which we could use for one of these micro-resilience strategies.

Instead, we pick up our phone and we go down a video rabbit hole, or we do something that makes us tense or anxious. It gets us a couple more minutes behind on schedule. And all of a sudden, that gift that we were given—we waste it. We’re more anxious, and now we go right back to getting more body blows. So it’s what can you do in the small margins of time to make your day better instead of being on your phone?

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah, I, I personally, uh, so I stand—I don’t sit anymore—and if I’ve got some time, I will do some sun salutations. And, you know, it’s five minutes and I’m stretching and just focusing on breathing, and you get a good stretch. And then I’m like, “I’ve—like three minutes, four minutes, five minutes—and I feel like a, you know, a new person.” I’m doing that constantly throughout the day. Um, so I totally agree.

Um, Eric, two final questions.

Number one, how do we find out more about what you’re up to? I see you got a book back there.

Um, and then number two, what advice would you give to the young dentists out there?

Dr. Eric Recker: Yeah, so I’ll go—I’ll go advice first. It is tough to be a new grad, and I can’t imagine the debt load and everything that is going on, the pressures that are being faced by young dentists right now. But I’ll go back to that equation—that when I looked back on how my burnout got so bad: overcommitted and not taking care of myself. So we have to make sure, especially as young dentists, that we’re saying yes to the right things.

Every yes that you say is a no to something else. And oftentimes that no is to family, to relationships, to stuff like that. If you’re—if you’re expanding your day to fit every single emergency in, you’re saying no to going home with your family, you’re saying no to time to yourself. And the other side of that equation is taking care of ourselves. We have to be extremely intentional about taking care of ourselves. We cannot borrow from sleep for a long term. We just can’t. There are things that we have to do to take care of ourselves.

So find out what the most efficient things you can do to take care of yourself—micro-resilience things, short getaways, taking an hour off, blocking an hour here or there in your schedule just to have a little open margin space—things like that. You just have to take care of yourself or else you’re gonna start facing the things that I was facing.

And then as far as where people can find me, uh, my website is just—it’s very simple: ericrecker.com.  Uh, I also post on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Uh, my goal is just to post encouraging things for people. Uh, I’m not a very salesy person. But if you are facing burnout, if you are feeling like this is just the way it has to be, but you’re wondering if it might possibly be able to be better—let’s have a conversation. You can reach me through my website. I would love to have a conversation, see if we can get you to a life where you don’t need a vacation from it.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah, that’s great. Eric Recker, thank you so much for joining us. Such a great episode.

Dr. Eric Recker: Thanks for having me, Eric.

Dr. Eric Block: Thanks again for listening to the Stress-Free Dentist Podcast. And don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at info@thestressfreedentist.com.  And if you haven’t already, please subscribe on your favorite platform and leave us a review. Until the next episode, I’m Dr. Eric Block, the Stress-Free Dentist.