THE MILLIONAIRE DENTIST PODCAST

EPISODE 35 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 Hires:
Hello and welcome. This is Casey Hires. Jason Ewers is joining me today in studio as well. And here's a question I want to pose to our listeners: financially speaking, how are you doing compared to your peers? Other dentists in your city, your state, in the country? We know you ask that question because dentists will mention that to us all the time. And so today's podcast is while comparison is the thief of joy, today's podcast is about how do you compare to your peers? And we go to national meetings and state meetings and dental societies and study clubs and even dentists that we know and we work with, or their friends who we don't work with, you'll have one dentist who's providing great dentistry, their friend right next to them providing great dentistry. A lot of similarities. One will be making $400,000. The other one will be making maybe 200. Huge differences and discrepancies financially speaking for dentists and specialists.

Casey Hires:
So we thought, why not have a podcast about it and talk about that? Listen, putting your head in the sand and settling and not wanting to know, that's not the high achiever you were when you signed up for dental school and when you were working harder than everybody else. So why is it okay now as a practice owner that you're just sort of going along, wondering how am I doing? Could I be doing better? And we hear it all the time. Jason, you were just sharing a story with me.

Jason Ewers:
Yeah. I had a call with one of your guys' peers just last week and he collects one eight.

Casey Hires:
One eight. The world's in the palm of his hand, right?

Jason Ewers:
He just didn't know we kept talking about his practice and his goals and he didn't know. I could just hear the confusion, like, I don't know if I'm doing as well as I can do or if I am. That was one of the reasons why he called us and he didn't know about his retirement. He didn't know if his practice could be producing more. He didn't know even where his income stands to where it should be. It was just a lot of questions that he had.

Casey Hires:
And he is not alone. We hear that so often. Should I be doing better? Am I on track for retirement? Could I be making more? And that work life balance, we hear that a lot. That's where the frustration manifests, when it goes from the financial uncertainty to the work life balance and the stress, and it bleeds over to the family. A lot of times that is when you see some action.

Jason Ewers:
And that's why we always talk to the spouses and that's one of the questions that we have with the spouses like, what stresses your significant other out as a dentist? And I would say 80 to 90% of the time, it's about running the business side of the practice and really trying to be that overachiever that you guys are, and really trying to make as much money as you can.

Casey Hires:
All too often, we hear that people think their income is just not reflected by their hard work. And so I'll pose the question to our listeners: wouldn't you love to know? Wouldn't you like to have the ability to confirm the questions of income and how's my overhead and how's my retirement and work life balance and how am I doing compared to others? And again, it's not about comparing in a bad way, but it's about being all that you can be in maximizing that profitability of your practice.

Casey Hires:
Let's give our listeners some benchmarks, Jason, and I'll just set it up here. There's a lot of variables, but for this one example, we're going to say that this is a $1.1 million annual collection practice. That's the benchmark. And Jason, just go down the line. And on this specific example, give some general benchmarks that our listeners might want to hear.

Jason Ewers:
Sure thing. So on a 1.1 million in collections we're seeing sub-60 in overhead.

Casey Hires:
60% overhead. If you're sub 60, you are doing better than most of your peers.

Jason Ewers:
Absolutely. And then specialists are sub-50, same thing, doing better than most of their peers. Income around $400,000 a year, your retirement savings at a $100,000 a year. And we mentioned earlier, the big thing is that the work life balance. The example I gave earlier from the doc I spoke to that was another thing, stress.

Jason Ewers:
He was stressed out. He was working extra hours, just stressing out. And then he even repeated to me saying, "I don't know how much longer I can keep working like this."

Casey Hires:
Burnout. We hear that a lot. Now it takes somebody with some self-awareness and some humbleness to admit that before it becomes a real problem, actually. But it's not about producing more or reducing lifestyle. Way too many practice owners think, "Well, I could be doing better. However, I don't want to have to work more days and I don't want to reduce my lifestyle." Well, here's a newsflash from our perspective, that's rarely the case. It's typically there. It's just not being found. It's not about more. It's about better.

Jason Ewers:
It's about being more efficient in your practice, capturing what's already producing and plugging the holes and making sure that you're making that practice run as efficiently as it can.

Jason Ewers:
Well, Casey, let's talk about this. We just discussed a dentist specialist out there that's doing 1.1 million in collections. How about one? That's doing a little bit better. How about how one eight? So if you're a solo practitioner out there with $1.8 million in collections, you should be making around $720,000 a year and saving about $180,000 a year. So let's take this one step further, Casey, to all of our listeners out there, take what you are currently saving for retirement and multiply that by 6.75. What would that number mean to you for retirement? Would that allow you to retire on your terms? Retire a little bit earlier? What would that mean to you? Also, if you increased your income by 25% and lowered your overhead by 11%, doing all this without changing your lifestyle, what would that mean?

Jason Ewers:
Wouldn't you want to know? That's the question that we want to ask and that kind of leads us back to this topic is don't you want to know how well you are doing or if you can be doing better? So the numbers that I just went over, the 1.1 million, the results, and the 1.8, where you should have those expectations at, we did not pull these numbers out of the air. They are actually three year averages of our clients.

Casey Hires:
Well, and we'll talk to people and how do you think you're doing? Well, I think I'm doing okay. What's your overhead? Oh, it's probably low seventies. And, then once we look at the data, Jason, sometimes it's 80, 85%. And again, it just goes to the point that they just don't know. So the rest of this podcast is going to be to a listener out there that has these questions that can relate.

Casey Hires:
Wouldn't you like to know? I always say if I could be doing better, I want to know how, or I want someone to be able to confirm, yeah, you're doing the best you can. And so our challenge is either confirm that you are or start to maximize the profitability of your practice financially speaking. And so we're just going to go through, we have a pretty efficient process to confirm this for people, and I'll give the analogy we like to date for a while. We like to get to know people's personality and mindset. We like to know their goals, personal and practice. That's something that's missed all too often. And that's real important here. What do you want? What do you want out of your practice? What do you want out of your personal life? But really, I want you to go through a couple of those first steps. I'll close us out with how we end things and really it's given people an opportunity to confirm they're crushing it, or start to.

Jason Ewers:
Yeah, absolutely Casey. It starts off with just kind of a short call. Just kind of feel each other out and see what we have to offer fits what you need and vice versa, kind of feeling the potential client, same way, just figure out what their goals are. We find out what their practice is like, just some general information. And at the end of that call, if we both feel like we want to go to the next step, then we both agree to go to the next step. We send a quick 24 question assessment out, that doesn't take hardly any time to fill out and just kind of gives us a little bit more information about you and your practice. And then we schedule a little bit longer call, roughly about 45 minutes. In that call, we just kind of go through that assessment and some other questions, and just really just continue to talk to each other and understand your goals and where you want to be at and then, how we can help you guys maintain that.

Casey Hires:
Listen, once somebody is committed to being better or finding out if they are doing well, it's simply learning about somebody. It's looking under the hood, looking at the data. Here's what I want to end on: the crescendo of our process here for practice owners who are wanting to be better is a custom consultation. How many firms do you know that number one guarantee their services, Jason, but number two, they line item out here's what you're currently doing, financially speaking, dozens of metrics across the board, personal and practice. Here's what you're doing. Quantify it, line item it out. Here's what we think should be done. Quantify it, line item it out. It's a complete audit of the practice and the personal life, financially speaking. And for us, we do that intentionally. We want to prove with someone's data internally, either we can or can't help them before we would ever enter into a partnership.

Casey Hires:
But that's about as simple as I can put it, Jason, if somebody has the desire to know and has that achiever mentality to not settle, it's at your fingertips. And it's a process that when people go through, boy, they just feel refreshed. That's probably the best word, rejuvenated and refreshed.

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 going 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.