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EPISODE 100: Boring is Sexy

Our 100th episode! Casey and Jarrod celebrate this milestone with a discussion on how boring can be sexy. Listen and learn why practice owners are choosing boring.

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EPISODE 100 TRANSCRIPTION

Announcer:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Millionaire Dentist podcast brought to you by Four Quadrants Advisory. On this podcast, we break down the world of dentistry finances and business practices to help you become the millionaire dentist you deserve to be. Please be advised, we do speak with an honest tongue and may not be safe for work.

Casey Hiers:
Hello and welcome. This is Casey Hiers back at the Millionaire Dentist podcast. In-studio with me today is Mr. Jarrod Bridgeman. Happy New Year.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Hey, happy new year to you. Hey, I have some news for you. This is our 100th episode. Isn't that nice?

Casey Hiers:
Where's the champagne?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I drank it on the way to work.

Casey Hiers:
It is before noon.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's true.

Casey Hiers:
But we should be popping bottles or something.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, here's the deal. I did a vote with myself and I have two awards for us. Best host goes to Casey Hiers.

Casey Hiers:
Isn't that nice?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And most improved goes to me, Jarrod Bridgeman.

Casey Hiers:
Man, just nothing but winners on this podcast.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right, that's right. I'll get you that trophy as soon as I get a couple bucks together.

Casey Hiers:
Well, that makes me feel good because I didn't win the office fantasy football competition. And I actually purchased a trophy from Amazon that's inflatable that we use in the office so I want it to be called the Casey Hiers Trophy out of just pride. And that isn't going to happen apparently.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
We can get a Sharpie and write it on there.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Well hey, the award you just gave out on this.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It's perfect.

Casey Hiers:
Makes me feel better for not winning fantasy football.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah. I got obliterated, so nice.

Casey Hiers:
And I don't even care for the NFL or fantasy football, it's just a competition. I didn't want to get beat.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I just wanted to beat the people who knew what they were doing.

Casey Hiers:
2022.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes. Yes.

Casey Hiers:
People are back at it and having reflection. Or at least they probably had some reflection and some planning over the break. And did you do any of that personally?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
A little bit. A lot of it was kind of reassessing what should I do with my finances this year? How do I bit more money to savings? How do I work on my debt? Little things like that since I had the time and I was trying to ignore my children.

Casey Hiers:
Conversations I had with practice owners in December were typically around meeting with their CPAs and being very frustrated with the lack of proactive advice that they got and some of that news. Obviously, I think January 15th is a big day for practice owners where there's some money due or some information that's going to hit them. And so those were a lot of conversations I had with practice owners was just that frustration of, hey, I told my people I didn't want this and it happened again. Or there was just lack of proactive planning. I know in my personal life.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Say proactive and possibly even transparency, if these things are happening and they find out after the fact.

Casey Hiers:
Well, they just expect the practice owner to be aware because all the practice owners listening and you guys are smart. You're high achievers and guess what? Your CPAs probably put you at a different place where they expect you to know your business and shocker, you're producing dentistry.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep. And that's the tough part. You probably get the baselines of things but to know all the details, that's why you have a CPA, that's why you have other people to help you.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Yeah. But those conversations happen. And then obviously, what does everybody want? They want happy family, they want success and achievement for 2022. Then you got to go deeper. Well, how are you going to get there?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, and honestly I feel like 2022 is going to be just as bumpy as 2021.

Casey Hiers:
What?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah. It seems like new variants of COVID are popping up all the time. This is not going to go away as quickly as we thought. This time last year we were saying, "Yo, the quarantine's over. Things are going to get better." Things did get better. Don't get me wrong but there's still a lot of ups and downs, still a lot of uncertainty in a lot of areas.

Casey Hiers:
I have strong opinions that I'll keep to myself on some of these topics. I love going down the rabbit trails. Anyways. But regarding reflection, I've had some conversations even this week, Jarrod, where practice owners regarding planning, should I bring on an associate? Maybe have a partner. Maybe start a new location. Maybe just a two-operatory boutique fee for service.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Did these conversations spring from the growth from last year? Is that why a lot of these people you're speaking to are kind of thinking of different kinds of expansion?

Casey Hiers:
Generally speaking, those ideas come from people who are not satisfied with their financial situation. Because I asked that question, I was hearing a lot of DSO talk and multiples and EBITDA and multiple locations and all these things. And I said, "Let me ask you if the number for you that you could achieve is $13.5 million and you could get there having option A, which is one practice at this level, doing these things the right way or having multiple locations, DSO this, that and the other?" And I thought they were going to say, "No, I like the entrepreneurial part. I really want the moving and the shaking." And they said, "No, the boring one." Almost like, of course. And I said, "Well, I didn't want to assume." But here boring is sexy because boring is predictable and it's consistent. And that's what so many people need to hear.

Casey Hiers:
You can have nine, 12, $15 million in dentistry with a $1.4 million practice. We know that because our clients do that all the time. And for some reason, so many out there with one, two, three, $4 million who want to get to maybe eight to 10, they think they have to do all these things and they're 48, they're 50, they're 54. And what I try to get them to realize is all of those variables, the probability of success isn't high. Why don't we go for more of a sure thing? But people, they have a vision they have to get there on their own. But I'm actually surprised, more people would prefer the boring way, they just don't know how to do it themselves, therefore, they think that it's not possible.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
You're saying boring is sexy.

Casey Hiers:
Here it sure is.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
All right. I need you to call my wife and tell her just a heads up on that.

Casey Hiers:
You're not boring.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
No, but I agree with you. There is a certain.

Casey Hiers:
Allure.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Allure to stability and then growth from there. Going out there, as you said, there's so many variables when there's multiple offices, multiple employees. There's just so many more things getting thrown into the mix that all of a sudden you ruined your recipe.

Casey Hiers:
Well, and they have one friend from dental school that all this worked and they've got a bunch of money. What they don't hear about is the other seven who tried it and are basically starting over. We hear those things, we see those things. But we've had people that had so many ideas that they basically got stuck in which route to go, which was a good thing for them because then ultimately they found us and we were able to help them achieve a good goal in a very systematic, predictable way, ie. boring. But just some interesting conversations and again, frustrations with tax management and I want to do this, I want to have this growth. And again, growth is good but it's got to be done the right way. Done the wrong way, it's going to set you back.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah. Way more than where you started, a lot of the times. You can really, really hurt yourself.

Casey Hiers:
Well, and a lot of practice owners ultimately there's a lot of adult babysitting in their life. And so when it comes to more locations and more employees, what does that mean?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
More babysitting.

Casey Hiers:
Potentially more adult babysitting. Everybody's different but it's good to know reflection time. What do you want? And how do you want to get there? Because for us, there's more than one way to get to a financial goal at retirement that might seem unattainable but actually is very attainable with the right advice.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right. And so, talking about the reflection thing, we talked about finances. I wanted to bring up that since I started my diet thing about four or five weeks ago, I am down 10 pounds.

Casey Hiers:
Nice.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Which is nice. And so I would like to continue that. But that's also the same.

Casey Hiers:
Hit a plateau.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
You can kind of relate that to, I hit a plateau, so I needed to work out, which I don't want to do. But that made me think about, it's kind of related to overhead, a decrease in something instead of increasing other things.

Casey Hiers:
Ah, weight. Our chief operations officer, he likes to golf. He equates it to golf. For you, the first 10 pounds may have been easy, the next 10 pounds is going to be harder. In golf, if you have a 30 handicap, getting it down to 15 is not terribly difficult, going from a 15 to a seven, that's where the real work comes in. That's actually good. Look at us hitting analogies today.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Hey, I'm metaphorical.

Casey Hiers:
But no, a practice owner can spend a lot of time, blood, sweat, and tears, and effort to get their overhead down, I don't know, maybe 5%. And so many of them tell me, "Well, I could get it down 8% but I don't want to do X, Y, and Z." And so it's just.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
There's pain. There's pain involved a lot of times with that. That's the tough part. And so that's why it is nice and important to have an outside team to talk to because sometimes there are those emotional things such as well, I don't want to get rid of Lucy, even though she's 90 years old, she's been here forever, but maybe it's time for her to go.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. I just had the conversation where somebody, they brought on an associate and they wanted to make them partner but then they had an affair with an employee and it ended up making the whole, as you can imagine, the whole dental practice up in arms. Again, variables. Less variables, more variables, neither here nor there. But I want to challenge our listeners. A 100th episode, tell a friend, tell a colleague, tell a peer, tell somebody from your dental class about this podcast.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes, please.

Casey Hiers:
Ultimately this comes down to our firm doesn't help everybody but there's a lot of people that we can help. And it just comes down to, do you want to stay on that hamster wheel and do the same things? You want to have the same conversation in 23, 2024, 2025? Or do you want to consider something that can actually lower your overhead by 11%, increase your income by 25%? Know when you can retire, have a plan, that's life-changing things right there. And that's ultimately what this is about.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It really is. And that brings back sexy is boring. Having a plan in place and knowing how you're going to get there and achieve it is such a weight off your shoulders from worrying every day of am I doing enough? Can I do enough? What's next?

Casey Hiers:
That's what our clients tell us. What a weight. Ultimately they come here because they're ticked off at their tax management or they want to retire well and then they realize, oh my gosh, there's 18 other things that you guys help me with and I can actually enjoy myself.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Honestly, I'm really excited for 2022 and the things that we're going to be doing. There's a lot more events that you getting out there. Make sure you check out our website, fourquadrantsadvisory.com for any upcoming events.

Casey Hiers:
Let's go find that champagne.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
All right.

Casey Hiers:
Happy 100th.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
You too.

Announcer:
That's all the time we have today. Thank you to our guest for their insight and for sharing some really great information. And thank you to you, the listener, for tuning in. The Millionaire Dentist podcast is brought to you by Four Quadrants Advisory. To see if they might be a good fit for you and your practice, go on over to fourquadrantsadvisory.com and see why year after year, they retain over 95% of their clients. Thank you again for joining us and we'll see you next time.