In this episode, Casey shares his eye-opening experience at the Florida Dental Convention and delves into the critical role of quality sleep in a practice owner's health and mental well-being. Joined by Jarrod, they explore the impact of sleep on productivity, decision-making, and overall satisfaction in running a successful practice. Tune in to discover practical tips and strategies for improving sleep habits and enhancing your well-being as a practice owner.
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 and studio with co-host Jarrod Bridgeman.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Hey, good afternoon.
Casey Hiers:
What's shaking?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Not too much. Just kind of hanging out. I was excited to hear you just got back into town from a little something, didn't you?
Casey Hiers:
Had some travels, yeah. The Florida Dental Convention. That's their annual state meeting.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Which city is that in?
Casey Hiers:
Kissimmee, so it's just 10 minutes from Disney.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Nice.
Casey Hiers:
Gaylord Palms Resort. Beautiful. It's one of those conferences that it really is the resort is so big, with so many restaurants and so much to do, everybody just stays there.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Stays there.
Casey Hiers:
Which is nice because you're bumping into people and seeing people in the dentistry world that maybe you haven't seen for a while. It's a really, really nice conference.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Was it a pretty good turnout?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah, it was packed. The hotel was oversold. Great crowd. I mean, we do a fair amount of meetings. This one's really good. Now there's always those that are going to complain, right? You've got people that are never happy, but as far as meetings go, it was really, really good.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
When you were there, you're chatting with, well, with some clients that we have down there. You're talking to potential prospects and just people in the industry in general. When you were there, I know there are other speakers, did you sit in on anybody else's presentations?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah, I tried to peek into a couple. Actually the opening keynote speaker, Dr. Odiatu, I believe. Interesting guy. Dentist, but more of a motivational speaker. So I thought it was just going to be kind of a feel-good, cutesy thing. Ended up being a really good session, and he got into dentistry and the body and health.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Okay. In terms of the dentists themselves or what the health does for the patient?
Casey Hiers:
More of the dentist themselves. Some introspection, getting into... I learned we have 80 trillion cells in our body, and the point of sleeping is-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Seems like a lot.
Casey Hiers:
I would've taken the under on that. But sleeping helps you to regenerate. And without that, the domino effect is really, really intense. And so I went from, this is a cute talk to, this is actually really important for myself to hear, but then you could see all the other dentists and practice owners of all ages locked in.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
So sleep is important and it helps rejuvenate the body. I'm guessing then there are dentists out there and who have issues with sleep?
Casey Hiers:
Well, they were talking about how it's almost a badge of honor in our country that you just don't sleep. It's almost equated to being lazy. And he got into the science and the minutia of minimum seven to nine. Some of the highest performing athletes are on record for sleeping 9, 10, 11 hours a night in certain situations. And so that there is a, I think his word was a machismo to it, that if you need more sleep, that's weak and vice versa. And he really, really filtered through that and got into why it is so important. And dentists specifically, because he is one, you can have some restless nights, your sleep might get put to the back. And really encouraged people to understand your body and your cells need that regeneration. They need to flush out the bad.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Are there anything specifically he had mentioned or that you gleaned as well of what would be keeping dentists up at night?
Casey Hiers:
Well, a lot of that, ironically, ties into what our firm does and helps with people, but he was kind of joking, all the regulations. Am I going to get sued? That nightmare of you're in the mouth and you forget how to do a procedure. Almost like-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Like a brain fart.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. A lot of folks will say, "I still have that dream where I'm late to my final exam and won't get my degree," or something. And so he joked about some of those things. But it really ties into us and what our firm does and the conversations I had there were, I mean, when it comes down to it, most practice owners, the things that we help practice owners with, that's truly what keeps a lot of them up at night.
Casey Hiers:
But he got into stress and then if cortisol is released, C-O-R-T-I-S-O-L. When cortisol is released, that's a negative chemical, that's not good, and too much of that and the damage it causes on the body and just how all of it is so linked, the mind, body, and soul. There was some yoga moves, perhaps, but I can touch my toes. I'm flexible.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
You can?
Casey Hiers:
It was a lot of up, down, up, down, to keep the crowd going. But it got me thinking how the areas that practice owners struggle with or the areas they don't like to talk about because it's personal and sensitive, ironically, those are the areas that we master for our clients. But ultimately if these don't get addressed, and maybe it's not with Four Quadrants Advisory, maybe it gets addressed because you motivate your existing team to do better, be better, whatever it is. But the constant was, if this isn't addressed, it doesn't get better.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
If you ignore it, it's just going to sit even in your subconscious for forever.
Casey Hiers:
Once you lose your health, it's really hard to get it back. And there's a lot of practice owners that can start to lose it sooner than they should. What's that quote they say, you'll spend your health to acquire wealth, and then you'll end up spending all of your wealth to try to get your health back because you've shot it. I probably butchered that a little bit, but that kind of ties in-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I mean, I get it. I get what you're going for on that one.
Casey Hiers:
But that ties in what they were-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's a Casey original, right there.
Casey Hiers:
No, I'm the messenger. But that kind of gets to the core of it. But it was an excellent speaker, an excellent meeting. We had the privilege of presenting two hours of continuing education on Saturday, had a full house. And I mean, this is real stuff. And I mean, there's people coming up afterward, literally showing me their profit and loss statement, their incomes, and saying, "I am stressed, I need help." And I looked at them and just said, "Well, you have to be committed to it. The timing has to be right. And I don't know if we can help you, but we'll certainly engage in a process to see." But it really bookended the conference with that was the opening keynote and then our presentation was one of the last ones, and it truly was getting into the heart of what can stress out practice owners.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
So it kind of worked out well that there was almost like a bookend. [inaudible].
Casey Hiers:
It was serendipitous. Who knew it was going to be planned that way?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
When you did your presentation and people came and talked to you afterwards and showed you their profit and loss and all that, were there any specific areas that people had mentioned they were really stressed out? Obviously, we have a lot of services here, but what was a good handful of, "This is what keeps me up"?
Casey Hiers:
Jarrod. I think it's uncertainty. That big bucket, that's the umbrella of so much of this. It's uncertainty.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I mean, the unknown in almost all life aspects are a pretty scary thing.
Casey Hiers:
Right. And so as a practice owner, when your tax management is an unknown entity because you're not sure if you're going to get a refund or you're going to owe more and it's just so uncertain, that wears on people.
Casey Hiers:
Income. Skipping paychecks, taking what's left over erratic distributions, that's a stressor. Not making enough. Overhead's always a big one. But strategic practice direction. This can be a million-dollar practice or this can be a four or five location starting up their own little mini thing, to zig or to zag, what's the strategic practice direction? So many of them don't have that. That all falls under uncertainty in retirement.
Casey Hiers:
I mean, I talk to people with a little bit, I've talked to people with 10 or 15 million, and they still have a little bit of uncertainty, because nobody can tell them what they need to hear. They just keep hearing what they think they want to hear.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. And that's obviously a scary thought, especially as you said, people 10-$15 million saved up. At no point, I feel like, is anybody on their own super comfortable. It's always good to have that secondary team, a group of people who are looking at things without emotion behind it, who can say, these are the correct paths to take.
Casey Hiers:
Well, it's not how much you make, it's how much you spend. And if you're used to making a million dollars every year, you're going to probably figure out ways to spend that much money. And so ultimately when you get up to those bigger numbers, well, it sounds crazy that there's uncertainty, but there certainly is because people get used to certain lifestyles and certain things, and while they can take a little bit of a step back, most don't want to. And so that uncertainty really resonates throughout all of this.
Casey Hiers:
Then the whole point is, there's a lot of challenges out there. Life in general as a business owner or a practice owner, but if you're not taking care of yourself, and that was really neat with the opening keynote, but then ultimately figuring out how to improve on yourself. You're going to be stuck in this rut. You're going to be stuck on this hamster wheel. We talk about that a lot, but it was really the case here. Really resonated, and you could tell the general tone of the crowd, by addressing this, everybody felt better.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I was just going to ask you, how did it make them feel? Were they better or did they feel like crap? Maybe I'm not doing as well as I thought, but now I have a better idea of what is causing it.
Casey Hiers:
I position myself because I wanted to not only hear the speaker, I speak a little bit, so if I can pick up some things, but also wanted to see the audience and their reaction. And the trend line was, at the beginning, everybody was just trying to drink their coffee and get settled and figure out who this guy is. Then you could see they were a little guarded because he was touching on some subjects that were potentially sensitive, stress, sleep, taking care of yourself. But then once people got past themselves, you could see the engagement, and by the end, people were happy and encouraged. It was still early, but you could feel people had a pep in their step.
Casey Hiers:
There's power that comes from addressing things that are tough, and so for the practice owners out there who haven't really looked at the insurance situation, or your tax management situation or all the things that we talk about in these podcasts, that exercise is going to be helpful. Addressing it, think about it, talk about it. You can only keep your head in the sand for so long.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Is there anything that we help with, let's say before people even sign on as a client? If they enter our process, what do we do for them at the beginning?
Casey Hiers:
That's a good question. Obviously, there's 200,000 dentists in the country, we're not going to help them all. And our process is what it is. But what I would say, we're working on an assessment of sorts to try to help people address issues that they haven't maybe thought about, and provide some complementary information. Give people a little taste, kind of like this speaker. Dip your toe in this topic and let's see what happens. And ultimately our goal is that they dip their toe in the business side of dentistry, they get a little bit of help. Nobody's in business for free consulting. News flash.
Casey Hiers:
That being said, if you can get a little taste of it, it can almost snap people out of this haze of their day-to-day just doing dentistry and then being frustrated at home and then being tired when they woke up and then doing dentistry and complaining about their staff. If that's you, stop it. But we're going to try to give people a taste of, let's look at some things and-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
See if you can get any help with one area and seeing what a difference just that one thing can do, imagine changes throughout the practice.
Casey Hiers:
Absolutely. And I mean, that's a primary reason of why we present. We travel to present. We do our own events. It's a good lead generator, I mean, we want to talk to good practice owners. Again, shouldn't be breaking news. But people learn a lot. They get some complementary information. And in the dental world, it's important to our founder and to leadership that we are giving back and helping a little bit.
Casey Hiers:
And so you can do both. It helps us meet really good people that we will work with for decades that will change their life, but there's also people out there that they're going to get a nugget, they're going to get something that's going to help improve them.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Should we change our tagline to the sleep helpers? Give us a call, we'll help you sleep? Or if we can't get them on in our business, if they call you personally, will you sing them a song? Like a good lullaby?
Casey Hiers:
What's his name? Shane Mullins. [inaudible] Mullins, A Lullaby. Remember that song?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right.
Casey Hiers:
I hung up my karaoke days.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I would like to say, people coming and speaking to you at these events and hearing what you have to say, we've got several more events planned. I know we're going to be at the AGD Conference, and then we're going to be at a SmileCon as well, and then obviously we're hosting our own events, again. August 5th, we will be in Fisher's at the Topgolf there. And then August 12th, we'll be in Auburn Hills, which is just outside Detroit, Michigan, doing Topgolf. Coming November we're going to be in Colorado Springs. I mean, we've got a lot of things coming up where people can come and meet us and hear us speak.
Casey Hiers:
We try to make it comfortable. You don't have to be good at golf, but if you go hit the golf ball at Topgolf, it's a lot of fun.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
It's a lot more fun than I expected.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. And then if you hear a topic-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
And I'm terrible.
Casey Hiers:
You're better than you think. But if you hear a topic that's important to you, like the business side of dentistry, and you balance the fun with the serious, it seems to be time well spent. We've gotten a lot of good feedback, so we're going to continue to spread the good word.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Good. And if you want to see us come out to your area, shoot us a message.
Casey Hiers:
Bingo.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
You know what I mean? All right, thanks, Casey.
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.
