THE MILLIONAIRE DENTIST PODCAST

EPISODE 73 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 it again, the Millionaire Dentist Podcast and studio. Co-host Jarrod Bridgeman.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Hey.

Casey Hiers:
Looking sharpen that light powder blue sport coat.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Thank you. I actually spilled some tomato sauce on it at lunch today.

Casey Hiers:
Minus the stain from lunch. I wasn't going to say anything, but to our listeners, it's a very sharp, stain-free jacket. Jarrod, today, let's talk about something that I think all of our listeners can probably agree happens to them as the practice-owning dentist. Chickenshit advice. I know you like profanity.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I do.

Casey Hiers:
This is really about, as a dentist or a specialist, you've got a lot of cheerleaders. You've got a team. You've got consultants and practice managements and payroll companies and insurance companies and bankers and accountants and financial planners and advisors and all these people. And ultimately, are they telling you what you need to hear, or are they telling you what you want to hear? We're going to dive into this a little bit and we'll substitute chickenshit for weak advice. So if you're listening, more people can hear you. We'll just substitute weak advice, but you know what we mean. Most of these people are giving you weak advice and it's self-serving. You kind of brought this topic up. What do you want to talk about?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, here's what I was thinking is that seems like a lot of practice owners out there, they may or may not have a team of advisors that help them, as you said, with finances, taxes, accountants, and things like that. The problem is a lot of them don't work together, don't communicate with each other, so what happens from that is you come to them with a problem. "Hey, I need help fixing this. This is what I'm paying you for." And they come back to you with a menu of options. "Oh, here are four or five different things you can do. Pick what you think is best." When to me, it seems like isn't that your role? Shouldn't you help me find the best answer instead of just laying it out there?

Casey Hiers:
Well, as I said, a lot of these folks are... They're just praying that the checks keep coming in. They don't want to ruffle anybody's feathers, so they tell you what you want to hear. They tell you the least invasive thing because they want to stay in favor, and they want those checks to keep coming for said service that they're doing. It's really a horrible value proposition if you think about it. If somebody comes to my house to work on my house and they see that the foundation's broken, but they don't want to say anything because they don't want to hurt my feelings, so they help me with all these other areas that ultimately my foundation is cracked. I'd rather somebody tell me, "Your foundation's cracked. You don't need to spend money on this part of your home. You need to get that fixed."

Jarrod Bridgeman:
"It's cracked and here's how we fix it."

Casey Hiers:
Right. Or if we don't fix it, "Here's somebody who can, and once you get that fixed, come back to us to do this other project." Analogies are fun. That one's probably one of the spot-on ones. "Tell me what I need to hear." To you practice owners out there, you're probably picturing people right now and it might be equipment reps, bankers. I mean, you go down the line. All of these people that you work with. And again, a lot of them are good people. They're not intentionally trying to hurt you or harm you, but are they giving you weak advice?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It boils down to fear. As you said, you mentioned they like that check coming, they'd like to stay a client of yours. They are afraid for their own business, but they're also afraid to hurt yours as well. So they tend to play it so safely that it ends up hurting you anyways.

Casey Hiers:
Well, we all like to be right. Nobody likes to be wrong. But a lot of these entities, they could be scared of being wrong. So they're great at coming up with a lot of ideas. They want you, the practice owner, to pick them so that if it doesn't go well, you only have yourself to blame. And they don't want to be wrong. They're scared of being wrong. They want to stay in your favor. It's a very immediate gratification mindset, versus delayed gratification. Tell me my foundation's cracked. I'm not going to be happy, but at least you're being honest with me. Delayed gratification down the road, if I have another project, I'm probably going to want the person that was honest with me and told me what I needed to hear.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
So would it be possibly because maybe the CPA's your buddy from school or someone you've known, or...

Casey Hiers:
Actually, I think you're on to something. I was talking to somebody the other day and they were... What's the best way to put this. The practice owner had a buddy, a drinking buddy, and activity buddy, and they were friends, they were pals. And they worked together in a small manner. This person got into another position where they could significantly help their quote-unquote buddy, drinking buddy, whatever you want to call it. But it got a little more real, it got a little more serious, and that relationship wasn't exactly what either of them thought it was. So there's a lot of surface relationships out there with all of the things that we just mentioned. Practice owners need a lot of help with a lot of different things, and you can have some fun people that you spend time with, and it's a jovial, cocktail party, surface relationship. But our point is as a practice owner with seven-digit practice, hopefully, you have plenty of friends. You don't need these service providers to act as that friendly person who doesn't want to give you bad news.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
There's an emotional tie.

Casey Hiers:
That's it. And again, you're in a position, as a practice owner, where you can have a lot of yes people around you, and let's pivot this, we don't do this often, but let's turn this into how we work with the clients that we work with. In our business model, we are very concierge boutique, but we tell our clients what they need to hear. And a lot of times they don't like it. "Hey, I want to build a $1.4 million house." That's great. Data says you should build about a $1 million house. And a lot of times they're not told that, because everybody's their cheerleader. The banker, all these people that are building, their builder, their banker, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're the dentist. You deserve it. You deserve it." They're not looking actually at your-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
At your numbers.

Casey Hiers:
Best interest. What's the best interest? To rah-rah the 1.4 or to tell you the million-dollar house is best for you? So again, when we get back to that weak advice, that's what we're talking about. Doing inventory, look at the folks that you work with.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I think it can also come from... If you hire just any... I'm want to say any Joe Schmo. Just hire a regular CPA. They may be really, really good at their job, but are they dental-specific? Are they a catch-all CPA, or are they someone who has worked with other businesses? But from what I have learned from being here is that being a practice owner is a very, very specialized thing, and it takes a lot of knowledge to be able to work out those kinks.

Casey Hiers:
And again, they have targets on their backs. We know that. But think about the people that you work with, buy from, utilize for different services, some big, some small. Would they tell you if you had... If you had something in your teeth? Would they tell you? Or would they be too embarrassed and so walk away and then you go to the restroom and see you've got a big piece of food in your teeth and you wish you would have told them. And when it comes down to the business side of dentistry, unfortunately, practice owners don't get that very often.

Casey Hiers:
For us, we feel like not only do you need to do that, we need to put our neck on the line and help direct you to not just your point, "Here's four options. Here's four options. These are the best two. Here's the pros and cons of the other ones. We advise you to pick A or B." We're putting our neck on the line to do that, but that helps our clients. And again, when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions, and millions of dollars over the course of your career, what's the right thing to do? To not hurt their feelings and to tiptoe around things, or to tell them what they need to hear? What's the opposite of weak advice, I guess? It's the right thing to do. It's high integrity. It's strong advice.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
They're going to be mad for 30 minutes, maybe a day at the most.

Casey Hiers:
They're going to respect you.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
But in the long run, they're going to be happy as hell. There's that profanity again.

Casey Hiers:
Every now and again, some people don't want to hear the truth, they get their feelings hurt. That's okay. We can live with ourselves because we've done the right thing by advising that way. But the point of this podcast is you all have a lot of folks that you have some sort of relationship with, again, if it's a small as your payroll company, to who does your taxes and some bigger things or smaller things, but when it comes down to it, would they tell you if you had food in your teeth? A bat in the cave, if you will? Would they tell you, "Hey, you got a stain on your sport coat, Jarrod." That's one of those-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
You know that does remind me of one little anecdote that I want to point out. My second day here on the job I was wearing these brand new pants that I had, and I got home later that day, was getting ready for bed, took my pants off, and realized I had a giant brown stain right on the butt of my pants. That was a pretty embarrassing. Now I sat on something, it wasn't any kind of bowel issues, but yeah... It was appreciated when it was pointed out to me at some point.

Casey Hiers:
You sure you didn't crap your pants? Now that you brought that up, that was day two. I tell people they've got something in their teeth. This was day two new new employee. I didn't know if you had had an accident or not, I'm going to be honest with you, Jarrod. So in that regard, I didn't take my own advice. Now we didn't know each other for years and you weren't paying me for a service like this podcast is about. Hey, touché, I did not ask you because I didn't know if you had IBS. I didn't know if you'd had an accident that day. I just knew that things didn't look right, and I figured I'd find out later.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Now I cleaned those pants up and got the stain out, but I've never worn them again.

Casey Hiers:
What do you think you sat on?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Chocolate from one of my kids.

Casey Hiers:
Okay. I can buy that.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I'm assuming my three-year-old... He's like a dog. Things fall out of his mouth. But getting back to the weak advice has there been-

Casey Hiers:
You want to pivot away from?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes. I know this answer is yes, but have you ever gotten weak advice?

Casey Hiers:
Have I ever gotten weak advice? I probably should've thought about this before the podcast. This sounds bad. If I ask for advice, I ask it from people who will give me the straight juice. I try to have a little self-awareness with myself to not have delusions of grandeur if you will. I don't know that I can answer that question. When you get weak advice, you can sniff it and you can smell it and you can still be friends with those people and what have you, but in terms of who do you respect to ask the tough questions to, hopefully, you have a handful of people in your life, but from a professional standpoint, if you're paying people for help and advice to propel you, that quality needs to be in place. And listen, everybody likes a simple and quick hack or help or whatever. Look at your folks that you work with. Look at your team, internal and external. Some people don't have the personality, and that's okay. But if you've got some products and services that are big-ticket items, hopefully, you're getting a big-ticket person to help give you advice.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And as a practice owner, if you realize, "Oh, this is terrible advice," call that person out on it.

Casey Hiers:
Right. Ask him why. "Hey, what's going on here?" I mean, that's a tough conversation. A lot of dentists and specialists are not confrontational. Again, broad strokes here. We know that. But yeah, that's something I would do. "Hey, why did you tell me that?"

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Or at least inquire. You don't have to come right out and say, "Wow, that's terrible." Why are you saying this? Maybe they know something you don't know.

Casey Hiers:
Well, I think what people need to do, let's bring it back in. If you get a $45,000 tax surprise, you might want to ask your accountant why, and you might want to ask them a couple of times and not let them give you the typical answer and peel that onion back a little bit. Help me understand why. Or if they didn't get the tax surprise, but they have a shareholder loan on the books, there's your answer. They didn't want to tell you and give you straight juice that they were a little chicken, so they created a shareholder loan for you. You need to weed those people out of your circle, at least from a professional standpoint for success.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And that's why you need, honestly, somebody like Four Quadrants.

Casey Hiers:
I was going to say, we don't even apologize anymore. I mean, when people go through our process, we prove either we can or can't help them. People always say, "How?" Do you want to lower your overhead? Do you want to make more money? "Well yeah. How?" The question is, is it a problem or do you want it fixed? We'll show you the how. That's something we'll actually show you. But for people that are faint of heart, our process isn't for them because we will point out things to them. And this is before we're even working with them. This is before money changes hands. If we're looking at something, people don't need to pay us to continue to do what they do. If they're going to work with us, we're going to point out where the issues are and how to improve them so that we're all pulling in the same direction.

Casey Hiers:
Again, strong advice. People you can trust. People who aren't afraid to tell you, "Why have you been..." Or maybe ask, "Why have you been doing it this way for so long?" A lot of times it's because they don't know any different. And nobody's told them any different, because again, weak advice everywhere. Big differentiator here. You will hear what you need to do, change, or adjust. We're not going to, we're not going to cheer you on to huge mistakes. And when decisions need to be made, we're going to tell people the truth. For example, somebody who gives away a ton of dentistry, well, they want to fix it, but they also want to keep giving away a ton of dentistry, tons of insurance, producing a lot.

Casey Hiers:
We've had podcasts on that and how it affects overhead and cash flow. We'll tell them the situation. Now they might not want to change. That's okay. At least somebody's told them. And I think for our audience, have people that will at least tell you what you need to hear. Whether you take that advice or not, that's up to you. Maybe I don't want to fix the foundation in my house because that's too painful. Maybe I'm just going to move and sell the house for less. That decision's fine. But somebody telling you what you need to hear is so important. That's our time for today, I think. Anything else you want to touch on?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
No, I'm good. I got nothing.

Casey Hiers:
Well in an odd way now I'm in the mood for some chicken salad. I don't know if there's a psychology to it or what, but...

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Is that in reference to my pants?

Casey Hiers:
No. No, I'm just in the mood for some chicken salad, maybe with some bacon in it, I don't know. All right, Jarrod-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well thanks, Casey.

Casey Hiers:
Thanks for joining. I think this is something that's not talked about and people need to do an inventory of their staff, their team, the people they work with, and ask themselves, "Am I getting honest and truthful advice to help me?"

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Or chickenshit advice.

Casey Hiers:
Or do I have a bunch of cheerleaders?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right.

Announcer:
That's all the time we have today. Thank you to our guests 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.