Casey and Jarrod return this week with Dr. Brent Habecker. Dr. Habecker discusses why he decided he needed to change up his external finance team and how things have gotten better since the switch.
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. And we return this week with Dr. Brent Habecker.
Casey Hiers:
So let's fast forward a little bit. I'll try to not get on a soapbox too much, but I get to talk to practice owners all over the country, hundreds and hundreds of them, and a lot of them in their 40s and 50s, and 60s. They've experienced a lot of dentistry, but a lot of them aren't even to the place that you're at, and you're in your mid-30s. A lot of that is things that you've done, your pedigree, your skillset, your personality, but once you bought your practice, what was a catalyst for you to see if there was an external CFO team to help you on the business side of dentistry? That's one of those things that can be hard for people to potentially relinquish control. I remember you and I speaking early, and you had a curiosity about you and you just wanted to learn more. Walk me through that mindset.
Brent Habecker:
It really boiled down to I am very comfortable admitting what I don't know. It got to the point where the team I was working with, it felt like I had to be the go-between, but I had to use words I wasn't all that comfortable with. I wasn't quite understanding the way I wanted to. I wasn't getting really clear answers on a lot of questions. It was a lot of, "Yeah, sure. Do whatever you want." Well, "Is this a good idea or not?"
Brent Habecker:
"Maybe. We'll find out." I wasn't in love with that idea. Then from there, I've talked to a lot of dentists, I've talked to a lot of people in general that will think about the idea of having the CFO, and they're afraid either of it's going to cost too much or they're going to relinquish control of their finances. I try to think of it exactly the opposite way. The biggest, most successful companies in the world and some of the most successful people in the world, they have people for everything. They've got their own real estate lawyer, they've got their own banker, they've got their finance guy, they've got accountants, they've got the full team because that frees them up to do the things that they're actually good at. I found by working with you guys, that I was able to get something like that while not having to be worth 20 or 30 million, whatever it is to even get some of these companies to take your phone call.
Casey Hiers:
Well, you just hit on something. I did a podcast where I referenced the Ryder Cup, the golf tournament, and watching the top 24 golfers, 12 and 12, Europe and United States compete against each other. The one thing that stood out is on the driving range to putting green before and after the rounds, they were working on their craft, but they had four and five and six ... They had a team ... They had people with them. Again, these guys are worth tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars, and they have people for everything. But elite people, the best people, they know what they're good at, they monetize it, and then they find good people to delegate the details and the rest too. There's so much power in that. Why do you think it's hard for dentists and specialists to seek that out?
Brent Habecker:
Because of what it takes to get into and out of dental school. That's the easy answer.
Casey Hiers:
What do you mean by that?
Brent Habecker:
To get in ... So to give you a little bit of a background. When I applied to U of M for dental school, there were 2700 applications for 104 spots. There's a certain amount of luck there just to even get in the door. There's a lot of very qualified people and not a ton of space for them so you obviously have to be very self-sufficient. You have to know how to work hard, you have to learn how to learn things to get in. Then once you get into dental school, it's turn on the fire hose, here comes even more information kind of thing. So by the time you get out, certain parts of life maybe get a little more complicated if you're buying a practice, something along those lines, but you're also not necessarily stuck studying until 10:00 every night. So it almost feels like you're not using all that energy that you used to so it almost feels like you should be doing something else with it.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Kind of too controlling over your own time.
Brent Habecker:
Yeah. Yeah. You've just kind of got to get used to doing things that you want to do, not things that you have to do.
Casey Hiers:
Wow, there's power in that statement. A lot of times new practice owners don't mind being in QuickBooks at 9:30 at night for a little bit or doing some of those things. I'll tell you when that changes. When two or three kids come along, all of a sudden after eight, 10 years of this, the spouse says, "I want my husband or wife back. You're a dentist, but yet you're always on this computer looking at numbers. Why?" Would you relate to that or at least acknowledge that's probably true?
Brent Habecker:
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree that a lot of dentists, when they first become practice owners, they spend a lot of time on it, and frankly, I think they should. Before you can start handing over parts of your business, you really need to understand it. But once you understand it, how much, whether it's time or money or mental bandwidth, are you saving yourself by doing something that somebody else can do and frankly can probably do better?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I always had said, this might be a quote from somebody's smarter than me but, "There's a price to your sanity." At a certain point, is it worth me going crazy over these details instead of paying someone X amount of money to take care of it?
Brent Habecker:
Yeah. Exactly.
Casey Hiers:
There's a lot of do-it-yourselfers out there and there's folks that can piece it together, piece this together, and they can have nice careers. We were talking about this actually earlier today in another meeting. But having a good team, delegating, and having a good team ... It's a multimillion-dollar topic that isn't touched on too much. There's almost, I don't want to say shame, but there's a lot of ego that prevents people from getting help. What would you say are some of the other maybe blockades from people being all that they can be, maximizing the profitability of their practice, getting their team right, getting their financial house in order?
Brent Habecker:
I think it's the forest through the trees argument, especially when you take an office over. Let's be honest here, most of the times if you're a younger dentist and you're buying your first office, it's probably not the biggest office. It might be run very well, it might not be, but it's probably not big because there's only a certain amount of money a bank's going to be willing to give you, which means there's less money coming into you at the end of every week or month, whatever your timeframe is. You have to look very, very carefully at where is my overhead? What am I spending on trays? What am I spending on paper products and a lot of other things that maybe you're going to get much better at those very quickly, but then it becomes hard to stop doing those things.
Brent Habecker:
You just become so used to it and, "Hey, my profitability's up, things are going well. I'm good." For some people, great. But there's also the ability of, well, what if you took all that mental energy that you were spending on these things, and you let somebody who's better at it than you handle it? What could you use that energy for? That could be to grow your practice. It could be to get a second practice. It could be to just take a few days off. Nothing wrong with that.
Casey Hiers:
Incredibly astute right there. Having your hands in everything, and this goes beyond dentistry to your point, your time is best used helping patients and producing great dentistry, yet so many practice owners spend time doing so many of other things that they're not necessarily good at and it waters down ... If you look at how much you make an hour if you start to add four hours, five hours every other day on the administrative and business side of dentistry, I mean, it's kind of crazy. To your point, do what you want to do or use your time in other areas where you can make more of an impact.
Brent Habecker:
Yeah. Yeah. That impact can be multiple different things. You can spend some more time doing CE, bring in some more specialty procedures that maybe you were referring out. I know, at least where I live, getting patients into some of the specialists can take a good long time. So I'm not saying jump in and do stuff that you're not comfortable doing. But if you can keep a little bit in office, your patients are happier and your staff are happier and it works well for you. Or you can just take a Thursday afternoon off. There's something to be said for being fresh Monday morning.
Casey Hiers:
No doubt about it. What is it? Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, keeping your ax sharp. Somebody can be whacking away with a dull ax and they're exhausted, and they aren't really effective versus the person who takes some time, has the sharp ax, and is much more effective.
Brent Habecker:
Yeah. That one's hitting home a little too hard right now. I'm still having flashbacks. Been clearing my driveway for the umpteen time this year with a stupid plastic shovel.
Casey Hiers:
A plastic shovel. What are you doing? Just like we're talking about.
Brent Habecker:
No, I have a snowblower, but some of the snow froze and now it's a nightmare. We're supposed to get some rain tomorrow, and I've got my fingers crossed. I want this stupid snow gone.
Casey Hiers:
I went out and bought another one as well. We were supposed to have the blizzard of the century. I think we got seven or eight inches. But yeah, when it gets to the icy part, that is rough. Brent, you raised a very good point. Again, where is your time being spent? So many practices, they're referring things out where to go learn another procedure. Typically, the heart of dentistry, you all really enjoyed working with your hands and some of the artistry of dentistry. So learning more procedures is a really good use of time to your point, and it's going to be more efficient for your patients. If you don't have to study balance sheets, profit, and loss statements, yell at your CPA and be on QuickBooks all the time, you could learn another procedure.
Brent Habecker:
Every time you get comfortable adding something to the practice, you're going to see it. It might not be immediate. The joke I use with a bunch of dentists I know is, "The more implants I do, the more endo I do," because I have patients that say, "Okay, well, should we keep the tooth or should we get rid of the tooth?" If you're comfortable with both options, then obviously you can offer it to the patient. But you tell them, "Hey, it's going to be four months on the low end, eight months on the high end to get your implant ready to go," versus, "Well, how long for the root canal and the crown?"
Brent Habecker:
"Hour-and-a-half."
Brent Habecker:
"Okay, let's do that one." That's been a very efficient use of time in my practice doing the root canal, core, and the crown together. Patients are liking it. It's efficient for them, gets them out of pain, they don't have to wait a few weeks just to get into a specialist. It's win-win.
Casey Hiers:
Options. Options. It's great for you, it's great for your patient. I love that. So Brent, now that you've worked with us for over a year, what would you tell practice owners about your experience? Again, I want to set this up. Brent's a high achiever, Brent likes control. I like control. Most people like control. From your perspective, what would you tell practice owners who maybe want to keep things close to the chest about exploring getting help?
Brent Habecker:
You still have control. I still have all the control I want. I just don't have to dig deep into the minutiae of every single decision. The ability to have somebody ... You could think of it even as a team member in your office, if somebody came to you and said, "Hey, I think we have a much better way of doing X," and whatever that may be and they come to you with options, research on it, and they can show you this is going to be better, I think pretty much every dentist would cut off their left foot to be able to have somebody be able to do that for them within their practice.
Brent Habecker:
Working with a firm like yours, it's the exact same thing but your finances, you guys bring me ideas. I don't have to do any of them. I pretty much always say yes because they've been great ideas. But people bring me things that I don't have to bring to them, but I ultimately have the ability to veto if I don't like something.
Casey Hiers:
Such an astute point. So many folks I talk to that aren't clients, one of their chief complaints is, "I'm always reaching out to my external team," whoever those people are, "And I don't feel like it's proactive," where you kind of said it here ... We really try to make that standard of care where we're the proactive ones. We're coming to you, we've got different ideas. It's all for Team Habecker, but ultimately there's options.
Casey Hiers:
To that point, the practice owner that doesn't have that voice or that team ... Think about how many $5,000 and $10,000 decisions that you would be making on an annual basis. With no guidance, how many of those do you get right? How many of those do you get wrong? Touch on that part that now if there are things that maybe come across your plate that you are unsure of, that now you can actually brainstorm or kick some things off some people and get data and metrics involved.
Brent Habecker:
That's been a really big one for us in the last year or so. There's obviously some of those $5,000, $10,000 decisions that you just have to make. Our compressor went down last year. You're getting a new compressor because it's one of the two things that you physically cannot do our job without, so that was an easy one. But there's so many other ones, and I wouldn't say that necessarily getting them right or wrong. It's mostly the ones that are in that gray area. Should I do this now? Should I wait six months? Should I wait 12 months? Should I do it, but should I tweak it?
Brent Habecker:
All of those things that you're going to spend countless amount of time when you're supposed to be talking to your spouse at dinner, you're mulling it over in your head. Those answers come a lot quicker with somebody who brings data, who brings actual actionable information on it, and they say, "One, two and three, these are the pros. These are the cons. We recommend this one, but any one of them will work." That's a really nice feeling.
Casey Hiers:
Generally speaking, you making the decision to delegate some of the business and financial side of things to Four Quadrants Advisory ... As you look ahead, what do you think that impact's going to be? That can be financial, stress, mental, wherever you want to take it. But I'd love to hear how you think that decision may impact the next decade or two or the rest of your career.
Brent Habecker:
Overall it's just been fantastic. The future, the retirement planning, the knowing where we're sitting and to be able to every single year sit down and say, "The changes that we made this year have impacted your ability to retire by this amount, and we can show you exactly where every dollar came from," that's awesome. The ability to have, I think Brogan likes to call it, "I want to give you as many options as possible as soon as possible." That's been huge weight off of both my and my wife's shoulders. The ability to know that maybe I can do some different things if I want to or maybe I don't have to do this as long if I decide I want to do something else. Or maybe I'd love it and because things are going so smoothly, I can actually go a little longer and that's what it's going to look like financially for us. Mostly, we're just loving the ability to ... Put it this way ... We look forward to our yearly accountant meeting.
Casey Hiers:
No, that's sums-
Brent Habecker:
That's the best thing I can say. We are excited to come see you guys.
Casey Hiers:
That sums it up really well. You just said a few things there I want to touch on. Number one, knowing your numbers and knowing what they mean. Brent, there's a lot of practice owners who have a fair amount of assets in their back half of their career, and they don't really know their numbers very well, which is shocking to me. I appreciate you bringing that up.
Casey Hiers:
But we didn't even bring ... The spouse ... You mentioned your wife ... How has this helped her? Spouses are an integral part of the partnership, and so many times the stress that the dentist will have and bring home, it does bleed over into the relationship. So I wanted to just touch on that.
Brent Habecker:
That actually goes double for us. My wife is a team member here at the office, and she ends up kind of shouldering a lot of the load for me, which has made my life easier. But it also is a little bit harder on her, the last year especially with difficulties with staffing. She's wearing three different hats. We had our meeting a few weeks ago with you guys, and not only do we have an end in sight where she can start maybe relaxing a bit and not having to do so many things, we have a pretty darn good idea of how soon she doesn't have to come in every day. She can spend two days at home. She can spend two days at the office, stay busy, stay part of it. But things that we were kind of expecting would be five, seven, eight years down the line, they're about six months now.
Casey Hiers:
Right. Efficiency. No, that's good. Anything else you want to touch on or bring up as we wrap up here?
Brent Habecker:
I think we covered it pretty well. The main thing is my goal is to try to get more younger dentists into buying a practice. I was kind of thinking, knowing this meeting was coming up with you guys, how would I describe going from an associate to being an owner? Everything that you're probably doing a little bit of as an associate ... You have to understand the numbers anyway, you have to work with staff on things, all that fun stuff. It all ratchets up about 20%, but so will your income.
Casey Hiers:
Or at least it should.
Brent Habecker:
Yes.
Casey Hiers:
We've seen some-
Brent Habecker:
If you're doing it right, it should. Me personally, there are some people that really don't want to be a business owner and that's okay. But for me, I like having my control because it doesn't mean that you're absolutely stuck in here six days a week. It's just going to feel like it for the first few months. But after that, make it what you want it. That's the exciting part.
Casey Hiers:
Well, and maximize your efforts too. I think that's so important. Well, good. Well, Brent, thank you for joining us today. Again, just an impressive, impressive guy, impressive dentist, and at your age to have the awareness and to be able to make some of the decisions that you make is really going to propel you. Again, from our perspective, knowing what folks in their 50s, when we talk to them, where they're at financially, and then seeing someone who can delegate and help make the right decisions and do those things, it is a multi, multimillion-dollar decision and the stress that it could take off somebody. So thank you. Thank you for joining us, Brent. We appreciate you.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep. Thank you.
Brent Habecker:
Yep. Thanks a lot, guys. Had a blast.
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.
