Casey and Jarrod are joined by Dr. Brent Habecker. Dr. Habecker owns a practice in Michigan and is highly successful. As a younger dentist, whose dad is also a dentist, he talks about how things are different now for people coming up through school.
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, we have co-host, Jarrod Bridgeman.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Hey, good afternoon.
Casey Hiers:
It's like a very like ski lodge sweater. I kind of dig it, man. It's looking good.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Thank you. I dug it out of the closet. I've had it for years, and I feel comfortable in it now.
Casey Hiers:
This old thing? I hear you.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right.
Casey Hiers:
For our audience, we also have joining us, Dr. Brent Habecker. Brent has received his Doctor of Dental Surgery from the University of Michigan. He became a practice owner around 2016, and he has a thriving practice in Southwest Michigan. Brent is what you would call a high achiever. He's an exceptional dentist. Full disclosure, Brent is a client of Four Quadrant Advisory. I asked him to join us for his perspective on dentistry, on practice ownership and really a whole bunch of topics that I think we're going to discuss. Brent is mid to late 30s. He's a younger man. He's experienced a lot. Brent, thanks for joining us.
Brent Habecker:
Happy to be here, guys. Thanks for having me.
Casey Hiers:
Now, I know, University of Michigan. You're just kind of a passive fan, all things sports with them?
Brent Habecker:
I think for most Michigan fans, things have gone in waves. Didn't care about basketball, then they got good while I was in school there. At the same time, they were terrible at football. So I stopped caring, and lo and behold, we were in the playoff this year. So we'll see what happens.
Casey Hiers:
I'm a Purdue Boilermaker. We go and beat Illinois, and then you guys just whipped us a couple days ago. I don't know if you paid attention.
Brent Habecker:
I actually got up the next morning and rewatched that.
Casey Hiers:
Well, you saw no defense-
Brent Habecker:
That one felt pretty good.
Casey Hiers:
You saw turnovers, you saw a lack of passion from the Purdue team. So Juwan Howard's doing something right. Let's jump in. We can take this wherever we want to go, but I just wanted to ask you ... You're 37. Is that right?
Brent Habecker:
34.
Casey Hiers:
34. I love it. Even better. So you have a kind of a unique perspective. Let's talk about dental students. Let's talk about recent graduates, folks that you're probably friends with and went to school with or you've experienced. In the old days the goal was to go to dental school, graduate, maybe be an associate for a couple years, and then buy your practice. Do recent graduates and dental students, do they still have the goal of practice ownership or has that changed?
Brent Habecker:
Overall, I'd say it's changed. The goal is still there. I've got plenty of classmates that own their own practices. Plenty of good friends that either have owned for about the same timeframe as me or are just getting into it. There's others that are really falling in love with the, "I want multiple practices. I want to be the big businessman or woman," kind of idea. But I'd say that the overall goal of ownership is less just because things are changing, people's goals are different, and then there's always the corporate thing, which has changed the landscape quite a bit in the last probably 10 to 15 years.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
For the students who aren't really focused on potentially owning their own practice, are they saying they want to do corporate, or is there another option? They just want to float to place to place as an associate?
Brent Habecker:
It's hard to tell. There's a lot of variation. The cool thing about being a dentist is that you can choose what you want to do with it. Obviously, the basics are the same. You work on teeth, but you can be the practice owner in one location, you can try to do multiple locations. Some people really only want and kind of treat it as a part-time gig and they find a way to do that. Other people are really into the new thing that seems to be in every ... Which I'm still getting emails for ... Of jobs as an associate somewhere corporate. You're in charge of your own schedule, have freedom and you don't have to deal with the business end of things. I think that's probably the biggest change is that people are really having a lot of internal talks or do they want to deal with that or not?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. They've got another option, which as you referenced is fairly new. You mentioned some of the upside that you see maybe the corporate dentistry folks as they're recruiting. Is there a downside? What's maybe the downside to that?
Brent Habecker:
I think it depends on personality obviously, but the grass is not always greener. The, "You are in charge of your own schedule," is true right up until you're not doing what they want you to do. Or, "You don't have to handle management," yet you're still getting complaints from staff type of thing. It can be good for the right personality. It can also not be good for the wrong personality.
Casey Hiers:
Some of the practice owners I've talked to that have been in corporate dentistry maybe for a couple years when they were younger, the one thing that they got out of it that I tend to respect is the work ethic was really good. Now, that's because that's kind of demanded. You don't have to deal with some of the business side of dentistry, but they're workhorses in corporate dentistry. Have you seen that too?
Brent Habecker:
Absolutely. Especially bigger groups, that kind of thing where they really have their systems in place, in lockdown. You're going to learn to produce whether you like it or not. There's others that are maybe not to that level where you're not really forced to do it as much, but yeah, the overarching theme is that if you're going to work corporate, you're going to learn to work fast.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I feel like a lot of the times that people who maybe start out there in the corporate world early very quickly come to realize, "Well shoot, maybe I should become my own boss."
Brent Habecker:
That's exactly what I did. I didn't really ever want to do the corporate thing. It's kind of one of those where it's hard to find a practice right out of dental school so you might as well get a job somewhere and learn some things. There's some benefit, but in my personal opinion, it's outweighed by the fact that you're not really in charge of as much as you'd really like to be.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah, no doubt. Talk to us about your ownership journey. Did you always know that was going to be the case? The timing. Walk us through that a little bit.
Brent Habecker:
Sure. Always wanted to own my own practice. Full disclosure, I don't play well with other dentists as a general rule. We get along outside of work, but I don't really love having somebody else in the practice where we have to mesh too much, especially as an associate where it's more of a, you do what they say type of situation. Wanted to get a practice as soon as possible. Just had quite a bear of a time finding one, hence it was a little over two years before I could really get into my own practice.
Casey Hiers:
Do you think that was a blessing? What I mean by that is all too often we do find dentists who, the first practice they see, they just want to buy and they don't look at a lot of details. Did you learn something from a two-year journey to buy or was it just from a patience perspective you just wanted one?"
Brent Habecker:
If I could go backwards or back in time and do it again, I would greatly prefer to have just gotten my own practice sooner. Yes, you always learn things, whether it's what to look for or what to really avoid, just getting a feel for the way the office works or the town or whatever that case may be. Useful, but you learn a lot more your first six to 12 months owning the practice than you're ever going to learn looking at them from the outside even if you're very serious about them.
Casey Hiers:
I definitely want to touch on that here in a bit. But for you, what was the catalyst that ... You said you always wanted to own and you are an owner relatively young ... What was the catalyst? Internal drive? Other? What was it?
Brent Habecker:
People always ask me that, "How'd you become a dentist?" I'm kind of the archetype for it. Dad's a dentist. I always wanted to be like dad so I wanted to be a dentist too. One of the big benefits of this line of work versus a lot of other ones, including medicine, is that you have the opportunity to be your own boss. You can make your business into what you see fit. That was probably the biggest thing for me is that I know what I want, I know what I want my day to look like, I know what I want my business to feel like both to myself, my staff and my patients, and the only way for me to get it was to go out there and do it on my own.
Casey Hiers:
Now, when going from an associate to an owner in dentistry, you just mentioned, listen, in those first six, 12, maybe even 18 months, you learned a ton, you learned a lot across the board. What were some of the things that maybe surprised you or that you didn't expect going from an associate to now you're the owner, there's payroll, there's overhead. It's yours.
Brent Habecker:
Probably not the stuff that most people would say. Like I said, my dad's a dentist, so I grew up in dental offices. My parents did their best not to make a dinner-time talk, but you hear. So the payroll, the taxes, all that fun stuff, I kind of knew what I was getting into. To be honest, it's been pretty much exactly what I expected. The biggest thing for me was having the idea in my head of what things were supposed to look like, and then I could see where we are now, and I could see a relatively smooth way of getting from one to the other. It's never as smooth as it is in your head.
Casey Hiers:
What was one or two things that you still remember that kind of burnt you?
Brent Habecker:
I'd say the biggest things were taking an office that was relatively insurance-driven and the only thing anybody cared about was, "What's insurance going to cover," or, "Patients won't want to do this because insurance doesn't cover it," and getting it to a place where we present to people what we think is best for them. We give them options if they're available and it's their choice. I'm not here to assume somebody doesn't have the money or doesn't want to pay for something. Then the other big one was kind of getting the right people in place to help me with that. You can teach some people some things, but other times you just have to learn that, "Hey, best thing here is for both of us to have a fresh start."
Casey Hiers:
You just touched on something, courage, and confidence. It's not your role to assume somebody can't afford something or doesn't want a procedure. It seems like a lot of times by personality, maybe dentists or specialists, there can be a discomfort with case acceptance in the communicating with the patients. I like what you just said.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
If you don't even offer it to them, how are they going to take you up on it?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Yeah. So for you, was that just natural or did you have to work on that a little bit and then with your team as well?
Brent Habecker:
Both. Again, growing up in it, I've learned dental words since I was 10 so I can communicate with those pretty easily. I was okay at starting the conversation, but I was by no means great at getting people to say yes to treatment or to be comfortable with it at first. It just takes practice. You've got to learn what your way of doing thing is. I think the line from Tommy Boy, "Sometimes it just takes a little bit of time for a salesman to find his way." I think that's definitely the case in everything in life, not just my line of work.
Brent Habecker:
But we got used to it, we got more comfortable with it, and the thing that I found at least for me was that when you can say things calmly, confidently and not interject your own opinions on things and then you just present them to people, they're going to choose what they want. That's okay, but you don't have to feel bad. Where I think a lot of dental students come out because, in dental school, it's obviously very cheap treatment because it takes forever to get done and things along those lines, you're terrified to suggest things that are costly for a lot of people when, as a rule, people will surprise you. Not everybody, but more than you think.
Casey Hiers:
Fear can be a boogieman. I love that you referenced Tommy Boy. I was envisioning the late great Chris Farley just pulverizing his muffin or his piece of bread to finally get some chicken wings.
Brent Habecker:
Exactly.
Casey Hiers:
Tommy like wingy. Brent, I want to thank you for being here today and we will continue on with this conversation next week in part two.
Announcer:
That's all the time we have today. Thank you to our guests for their insight and for sharing some really great information. 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 fouruadrantsadvisory.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.
