Summary:
Burnout can manifest as both physical symptoms and emotional exhaustion, making it crucial to recognize and address it early on.
In this episode, Dr. Eric Recker, Owner and CEO of Win The Now, shares his personal journey through burnout and how he overcame it. Dr. Recker recounts his early experiences of feeling inadequate, which fueled a relentless drive for perfection in his career and personal life. This drive eventually led to severe burnout, characterized by physical symptoms and emotional exhaustion. After nearly selling his dental practice to escape the stress, Dr. Recker realized that running away wouldn’t solve the problem. Instead, he made significant changes, including selling half of his practice, reducing his workdays, and focusing on coaching and speaking about burnout and mindset. Throughout the interview, Eric emphasizes the importance of recognizing the signs of burnout, such as a lack of joy in daily activities and a sense of life becoming monotonous. He discusses how mindset and small, significant changes in daily routines can help combat burnout. Finally, Eric explains why he now dedicates part of his time to coaching other dentists, helping them identify the root causes of their burnout and develop strategies to regain control and find fulfillment in their lives.
Tune in and learn why seeking help from a coach or mentor can provide the guidance and support needed to navigate through burnout!
Secure Dental-Eric Recker.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
Secure Dental-Eric Recker.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Welcome to the Secure Dental Podcast. Through conversations with the brightest minds in the dental and business communities, we'll share practical tips you can use to scale your practice and create financial freedom for yourself and your family. My name is Dr. Noel Liu, CEO and Dentist at Secure Dental, and also co-founder of DentVia. I'm your host for the Secure Dental podcast, and I'm so glad you're joining in.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Hello. Hey, welcome everyone back to our Secure Dental podcast, where we bring in many different talents from both inside and outside our dental industry. Today we have a very, very special guest, Dr. Eric Recker. And Dr. Recker is practicing Dentist in Iowa. So before we dive into his details and his great story, I would just like to give a shout-out to my sponsor, which is DentVia. DentVia is a virtual dental assisting company that, you know, does all the back-end stuff, and they basically help the front desk office manager to take care of calls, scheduling, you know, like marketing leads and all that good stuff, all the front desk people they hate to do. So they do all the back end stuff and they help with our front staff. So definitely visit them at www.DentVia..com. That's DentVia.com. Now, let's get to the show. So I got Dr. Recker here. He is a motivational speaker, a dentist that practices in Iowa, and he has a great, great story to share with us. I'm not even going to try the intro. I will just let Dr. Recker go ahead and introduce himself, and just tell us a little bit about his history and how he got started. So, Dr. Recker, the floor is all yours.
Eric Recker:
Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Liu. I'm really excited to be here today. I can tell you the short version of my story. It'll only take about four hours. And so we'll just do that, and by then everybody will be well asleep and we'll have four episodes recorded, so we'll be all set. Right? I've been a practicing dentist for 22 years. So I graduated in 2002 from University of Iowa. But I have to go back way farther than that. So when I was in second and third grade, I was a little rough around the edges. I was a little husky, you could say. I was one of the youngest people in my class and where I grew up in central Iowa, recess kickball was life in the early 80s. And so at recess, we would go out and we'd form teams and we'd play kickball. Well, I was told that I wasn't good enough to play. It would have been one thing if I was picked last. But the problem was, I was told that I wasn't even good enough. So I would have to sit there and watch the people in my class play kickball while I stood on the sidelines. Well, after this happened enough, I remember steaming on the sidelines saying, I am going to be so good at everything I ever do in my life that no one's ever not going to pick me. Well, guess what that led to? It led to burnout, and it led to burnout in a huge, huge way. So what happened is everything in my life was not good enough. It wasn't good enough that I was in the top 15 in my dental class. I had to be in the top ten. It wasn't good enough that my practice was cranking. It had to crank more. It wasn't good enough that I was starting to run. I had to do more than that. So I went all the way through Ironman triathlon, mountain climbing; all this kind of stuff. And what it really led to was burnout. So pretty serious burnout. I had three what I would consider big seasons of burnout, where I had chest pain, heart palpitations, panic attacks, all that stuff, which ultimately led me to nearly selling my dental practice and walking away. The problem with that is that I would have just been running away from the burnout. And so when that fell through, I had to figure out what I really wanted to do with life. That was in 2021. And now at this point, I now have a partner in my dental practice. I've sold half of my practice, so are 50 over 50 partners. I see patients three days a week, and on the other days I coach and speak to people and groups about mindset, burnout, self-care, self-awareness, all of those kinds of things. So I'm in a great space right now, but it's been quite a road to get here.
Dr. Noel Liu:
That's such an amazing story. So how old were you when you first realize that okay, they keep saying, I'm not good enough; what I got to do, I got to be the best? Like, what was the age frame?
Eric Recker:
So the first time that I said that out loud and it's something that was, I guess, hidden in my subconscious somewhere, because I only remembered it a couple of years ago. But it started in elementary school when I was standing there saying on the recess playground, believing that I wasn't good enough. And I just, I heard those words all the time. Anytime I would get a grade back that wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be: You are not good enough. Anytime I wouldn't be able, anytime I wasn't as good athletically as I wanted to be: You are not good enough. And I just heard it, and I heard it, and I heard it. And I think so many of us have those things that were said over us when we were younger that impact the way we live our lives and the way we do our daily living. And those things need to be identified, and they need to be retired and they need to be replaced with something that's much more productive.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So would you say that was an emotion that actually got you fired up? And if that was the emotion that got you fired up, I mean, how did you figure out that was defined as a burnout?
Eric Recker:
Yeah. So it took a long time. I had to go through the burnout. And what would happen is every time I would get burned out, I felt like something was missing. So I'm obviously, doing something wrong. Something's missing in my life, so I have to add something. Well, that was part of the problem. I kept adding more and more things. So my first real season of burnout, the one that I really, now, in retrospect, I know that's what it was, I was buying my dental practice from my father. I was building a new clinic. I was coaching both of my kids in soccer. I was on five different boards. And I was training for two Ironman triathlons. I mean, that's crazy, right? Who does that? That is way, way, way too much. But like the frog that gets put in the water and then the heat is turned up, I didn't realize until it was too much. So what I've realized is when we really get to that burnout space, oftentimes we have to look at everything that we have going on in our lives, and instead of adding something else, something needs to go. So what are all the things that are going on in our lives, and how can we look at all of those objectively and say, Okay, might feel like something's missing, but really something probably needs to go. And that's kind of where I got to.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So when you speak to people and when you identify their issue, or they ask you to help them identify, what are some of the traits or some of those things or patterns that I would say that you look out for, like if somebody is about to enter like, you know, burn out phase?
Eric Recker:
Yeah. One of the things that I've definitely noticed, and it was very true in my life as well, now that I look back on it, is life just kind of seemed gray. It didn't seem like there was a lot of color in life. A lot of the things that gave me a lot of joy weren't giving me joy during that season. I was kind of pulling back from things. I was feeling very introspective with my thoughts. I wasn't doing a great job communicating with my wife. I was holding it, trying to hold it all together and holding it all in. So if the things that used to excite you aren't exciting you anymore, what's going on with that? We probably need to pull the thread on that. One of the examples that I like to use for this is the movie: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. We're big movie fans at our house, and what happens in this movie is the main character, Walter, lives a very grey existence, and the cinematography in the movie is masterful. And it just shows everything's grey, it's dull, it's monotone. He's not living a very exciting life, but as the movie goes on, the colors start to appear, adventure starts to appear, he starts stepping into exciting things and his life goes from grey to extremely vibrant. So noticing the grayness, like you wake up every day and it just feels the same. You go to work with kind of a low level or a high level angst towards your job. You can't get excited about things. You also maybe don't get as bummed about things. You're just kind of hanging out in that middle space, and that's a good reason to start sounding an alarm.
Dr. Noel Liu:
How much of it do you feel, its internal mindset, and how much do you feel like it's external?
Eric Recker:
Yeah, so I think a lot of it, a lot of it is internal. It really is. We get into these patterns, and Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Whether that quote is actually his or not, doesn't really matter. But we keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect things to change. So if something's not working, how can we switch that up? What can we add? What's a little thing that we can add to kind of disrupt the routine? Sometimes it's as much as changing our drive home from work. Maybe it only takes us five minutes to get home. What if we, and that's my situation. If I drive to work, it's only about five minutes to get home. Sometimes that's not enough. I have another route to get home that takes me more like 20 minutes. And sometimes once in a while we just need to do that and roll the windows down and let the breeze blow through and just be quiet and experience the moment. So what are some things if we're feeling life is grey, how can we add some colour to our lives? Can we add an ice cream date with our family at the end of our work week to celebrate that we made it through another week? Can we have a phone call with a good friend? Can we reward ourselves with a little bit of time to just listen to music, or just hang out for a little while without anything to do? What are some of those things we can do to add a little color in our life? There's always going to be external pressures; we're not always going to be able to control those. But if we work on the things that we can control and influence things like our mindset, our habits, our routines, then we're much more likely for the rest of it to work well.
Dr. Noel Liu:
That's amazing what you just said, because I believe strongly that that pattern that we have daily in our lives, it's got to be switched up. It's like working out at the gym, right? It's like you always have to have different routines. And what you just said, it just kind of resonated a little bit. So tell me something here. When you found out that you were burnt out and you kind of switched your mindset and now you started seeing things differently, was it one event or was it like a series of events that kind of got you to where you are today?
Eric Recker:
Yeah. So one of the reasons I am so passionate about helping other people is I went really far down that burnout journey, really far down it. And I believe if I hadn't done something about it, that there is a chance I might not be alive today, or there's a chance that at some point my life would be cut short because of the amount of stress that I had. So that's why it's something needed to happen. I mean, burnout almost made me sell my dental practice because I couldn't figure out any other way around it. I just figured that I had to leave it, and that's a pretty scary thought. And from talking to other dentists, I know that I am not the only one that is thinking right now. Man, this mountain of getting to a point where I actually enjoy my practice; that mountain's just too high. I never going to get to the top of that. I'm never going to get to the point where I enjoy what I'm doing. Well, yeah, you're never going to get there if you don't take the first step. So I went so far down that that it almost took me out. And boy, if I would have sold my dental practice and walked away, I don't know what the heck I was going to do. What was I going to do with myself? The burnout was going to follow me; that's the really tricky part. The burnout was going to follow me. It was going to be there wherever I was, and it was going to show up in different ways. So because I went through all of that, I thought, okay, I'm not alone here. I need to go to work figuring out what are the steps. How can we stop this along the way? How can we help other people move forward? And how can I really make a big impact? Because that's what I want to do. I love my practice. I love my patients. I love the relationships I've built with people over 20-plus years. That's amazing. But I believe that because of my burnout journey, I was made to leave a bigger impact, maybe on the dental community as a whole, or maybe just on different practices where people are going through those same issues. So I'm in that space where I'm fortunate to get to do both of those, but it's because I've done a lot of work trying to figure out, okay, what are other dentists struggling with? Wow, they're struggling with a lot of the same things that I was struggling with. Okay, how can we help people create a life that they don't want to get away from? That's really what motivates me.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Love it. Love it. You know, there's a subsequent questions that I would like to ask you. It's a two-part question. Number one is: What are you doing now to help dentists get out of burnout? And number two is: Once they identified some of the actionable items by hearing this podcast, what can they do like right away?
Eric Recker:
Yeah. So one of the things that I'm doing for dentists is one-on-one coaching. The thing about being a dentist is it can be very lonely, especially if you are a solo practice. If you own a practice by yourself, you have teammates, but there's a hierarchy there, and you can't share everything with your hygienist, or you can't share everything with your assistant. It's just, we don't feel comfortable doing that nor is that their burden to bear. Or even where I was, I had two dentists that worked for me, but I was the owner and it was, it felt very isolated at the top. So what I like to do is come alongside people as an ally, kind of a, Hey, you are not alone. Here's somebody else who's walked this journey. Let's see if we can walk it together and help you be able to come up with some better systems and habits and routines so that you can feel better so that you can feel like you're not alone, so that you can feel like you have a plan going forward. And yeah. And so people who are listening to this and hearing some of the actionable steps, I love the phrase small but significant. It's one of my favorite phrases. So oftentimes we can go to a dental CE class and okay, what are we going to implement? Oh man. We learned all this stuff. We got to implement it all Monday morning and our, we come back and our team's teams like, Oh my gosh, he's going to bring all these new ideas. And, you know, just leave him alone for a little while. He'll, it'll pass, and we'll get to move forward. Yeah. Right? Because I know you've been to a class before and you're like, I'm going to implement all this stuff and I'm going to do all these things. And then Monday morning hits and we're like, right back to the grind and oh, great idea, but that's not going to work for me. So when I say small but significant, what I mean by that is you can't cure burnout by snapping your fingers. You just can't. It's a process. It's a journey. And we also want to create things and add things into our lives that help it to not come back. So what is one small but significant thing you can do today to push back the hold of burnout in your life? What is one small but significant thing you can do in your routine to switch things up to maybe make a change a little bit? I always come to work at ten till eight. I always feel fried when I come in there and then I'm ready to go I feel like I'm, but I'm behind the eight ball every time. Okay. Would it be better if you came in at 20 till eight and you had a chance to maybe review and do a couple things before you started your day? Man, I always worked through lunch and I'm always shot at the end of the day. Okay, what if you took 15 minutes of that lunch period, that lunchtime that you have, and you just sat at your desk and you closed your eyes? What if you tried that? So that's what I'm getting at. I'm always trying to help people do that. And some people think, well, I don't have a clue. What are the small but significant things I can do? Well, one thing that I have on my website is a five-day knock-back burnout challenge because I know so many people are facing this, and it's basically five steps that you can take towards easing the hold of burnout in your life. And then at the end of that, I talk about some options of coaching. If you want to work, see if we can have a call and see if I might be a good fit to help walk alongside you. But I'm somebody who believes in giving out a lot of resources. So there's several things available on my website, ways to help take care of yourself. I have a newsletter that I put out: Three Ways to Win. Just lots of great resources because I want to help. I want to be a part of the solution for sure.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, that's great. We'll definitely share the link to your website as well as all your resources. That'd be awesome. How long does a journey take, like for someone in your, you know, experience that who you've helped like in the past? Like let's say you got started with them on a coaching program. Does it vary by individual or is there like a specific time goal that you give your clients?
Eric Recker:
Yeah, that's a great question. There's a couple different paths that we can take. There is a three-month version coaching package that we use sometimes, and basically in that we meet ten times. And what we do is we get clear on what you want, and then we work on some systems and habits to get you moving forward. Typically what happens is people want a little more than that. They want to go a little bit deeper and not only have that initial coaching relationship, but kind of an ongoing mentorship slash coaching. And then after that, oftentimes we'll just meet once a month going forward. So that would be more like a year package. So we'd meet fairly intensely for those first three months, once every week or every other week, and then the rest of the time it would just kind of be monthly check-ins, seeing how everything's going, and then adding in some new strategies as we go along. And I have one person that I've been working with for about two and a half years right now, and she just needs that ongoing check-in, and I'm happy to provide that. So it's different for everybody. It really depends what you want to get out of the relationship.
Dr. Noel Liu:
It's such a great service you're providing, doc. I mean, honestly, before you know, you and I, we met I used to hear about burnouts, but, you know, it was always like something in the back of my mind. I never thought it was like a real, real physical thing. And I always thought it was more like psychological in nature; and which is psychological in nature but I always felt like, you know, it would be like sheer willpower for somebody to just come over it themselves. But hearing from you, it seems like, you know, there's a huge population that needs help and what you're providing, I think it's amazing because once when you're stuck in that rat hole, that's the world you're living in, and it's really, really hard to even identify with you in that hole before somebody, you know, can, you can actually reach out for help. So love what you're doing. How would somebody reach you at, do you have a link?
Eric Recker:
Yeah, absolutely. So home base for me is just my website EricRecker.com and there are links to the hiring me as a coach or to in really the thing I like to make it a really easy onboarding process. First, we do a no-obligation call. We just talk. I hear about your story a little bit, see if what I do might be a good fit for you. And we have a conversation about that. And then I will send you some options for packages and we can talk through that. So I really like it to be a very low-pressure thing. If we're not a good fit, then I'm happy to help you find somebody that is a good fit for you. But I always want to be part of the good part of someone's story. I'm super passionate about that. That's what I want to do. And so if we can work together to help you get to a point where you I mean, we're not always going to look forward to going to work every single day. Some people say that they do that. It's rare. But I want to get to people who are dreading going to work every day and help them discover hope and belief that good days are ahead because they can be if we work on it.
Dr. Noel Liu:
I really love the fact that you said, like, the first time you meet somebody, you ask them that what is it that they want? Because so much times we are like always, always get caught in the daily trivia of life that we really forget our goals, our passion, and we really kind of get sidetracked. And I think, you know, that is one of those things, I think, you're the expert. Once you get that online, I think everything starts falling into places. It's just the noise in this social media world of ours that we live in now.
Eric Recker:
Yeah. You know, as dentists, we're high achievers, right? A lot of times own our own businesses. We manage teams, we do all these kind of things. So when it comes to goal setting, we do that in the high achiever way too. We set 50 goals and there's no way we can pay enough attention to all of those goals. So a big part of what I do is helping people, walking alongside people and helping them get clear on what they really want, because when they get clear on what they really want, it all starts to make a whole lot more sense.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Love it, love it. Last question for you, doc. What does success mean to you?
Eric Recker:
Oh, man. Success means to me. So when I talk about success, I talk about my why or my purpose. So my why is to make a difference in this world that's utterly disproportionate to who I am. And for me, that is walking alongside individuals and helping them find a life that they love because we're meant to enjoy the lives that we have here. We're meant to find happiness. We're meant to have hope. Sometimes we just need some help along the journey. And that's what I want to do.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Great, I love it. Well, Dr. Eric Recker, thank you so much for coming along. I mean, this was a huge, huge help to many listeners who are actually burnt out. So if you are one of them that's burnt out, definitely, look this man up. EricRecker.com. I mean you cannot go wrong. Like he said, just a simple phone call to see if you're a good fit. And I think that will definitely pay off for itself. So with that being said, any last-minute comments, Dr. Recker?
Eric Recker:
Yeah. You know, burnout is a, it's a tough word and a lot of people don't want to raise their hand because burnout is like, Oh, there's no way I could have let myself get burned out. You don't even have to use that term. If your life just feels a little gray, if you're not excited about life, if there aren't things in your life that, if you're just feeling like it's become dull, that's similar to burnout. It's a stage on the journey. So I don't only work with people who say they are full-on burned out. So if you just aren't living the life that you want to live, if you feel stuck, if you just need some hope, let's have a conversation. Because that's what I love to help people do. It is my goal after I work with someone that they will leave with faith, hope, and belief that good days are ahead and we all need some of that, right?
Dr. Noel Liu:
Every single day. Hey, Dr. Recker was such an honor to have you with such good information. Thank you so much once again for coming on board and sharing your wisdom. So with that being said, we are going to land the plane and make sure you guys like and subscribe. Definitely look him up. EricRecker.com. EricRecker.com. And if there's any questions, DM me. In the meanwhile, look out for our next episode. Be great and God bless!
Dr. Noel Liu:
Thanks for tuning in to the Secure Dental Podcast. We hope you found today's podcast inspiring and useful to your practice and financial growth. For show notes, resources, and ways to stay engaged with us, visit us at NoelLiuDDS.com. That's N O E L L I U D D S.com.
Sonix is the world’s most advanced automated transcription, translation, and subtitling platform. Fast, accurate, and affordable.
Automatically convert your mp3 files to text (txt file), Microsoft Word (docx file), and SubRip Subtitle (srt file) in minutes.
Sonix has many features that you'd love including world-class support, advanced search, upload many different filetypes, powerful integrations and APIs, and easily transcribe your Zoom meetings. Try Sonix for free today.
About Dr. Eric Recker:
Eric Recker is dedicated to helping others learn how to #WINtheNOW. Eric has taken on many roles throughout his life, including husband, father, dentist, elite success coach, pilot, speaker, author, mountain climber, and former triathlete. He has pushed himself to the edge, only to realize that what he truly sought wasn’t at the summit. Today, while managing a thriving dental practice he loves, Eric focuses on helping others learn to #WINtheNOW and uncover the life they are meant to live through his coaching and speaking engagements, through his coaching business. As a speaker and consultant, Eric shares stories and strategies that inspire audiences to live with hope, create a plan, and believe that brighter days are on the horizon. Eric and his wife, the amazing Amy, are now empty nesters. They, along with their two grown children, are proud residents of a small town in Iowa.
Things You’ll Learn:
- Burnout can manifest as both physical symptoms and emotional exhaustion, making it crucial to recognize and address it early on. Ignoring the signs can lead to more severe consequences, including the urge to abandon one’s career.
- Perfectionism often drives professionals to push themselves to the brink, but this mindset can be damaging in the long run. Shifting focus from perfection to progress can help prevent burnout.
- Small, intentional changes in daily routines can have a significant impact on reducing stress and improving overall well-being. These changes can include adjusting work hours, delegating tasks, and prioritizing self-care.
- The first step in overcoming burnout is recognizing the warning signs, such as a lack of joy in daily activities or feeling trapped by routines. Self-awareness is key to identifying when it’s time to make a change.
- Seeking help from a coach or mentor can provide the guidance and support needed to navigate through burnout. Having someone to offer perspective can be a crucial factor in making lasting changes.
