Your dental practice has been successful for years now, but can it be more successful? Do you have a feeling in your gut that you could be making more money and saving more money? Casey and Jarrod discuss how getting a second opinion from dental-specific financial experts can uncover areas that could be improved.
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 with co-host Jarrod Bridgeman.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Hey, how are you?
Casey Hiers:
You know you probably hear it in my voice. My allergies are a little bit active and I've been pouring our heart and souls into a consultation coming up.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right. So let me ask you, what is the consultation like in terms of what we do, what is that?
Casey Hiers:
Well, that's a great question. Internally, a consultation is for a practice owner that they've gone through our vetting process, they're interested to work with us. We have qualified them and determined we would potentially like to work with them. And it's the formality of taking their data, proving it internally that we can actually have an impact that we hold ourselves accountable for, which those statistics are all over our marketing and website.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
If they haven't been to our website yet, what are those statistics?
Casey Hiers:
We like to hold ourselves accountable where if you're a practice owner, on average within the first three years, overhead goes down 10.9%. We actually round-up on our website 11%. That includes our fees. Income goes up 25%. Retirement savings goes up well over 600% on average. And that's with very little increase in production, like 1.7% increase in production. So ultimately that's what we hold ourselves accountable for. The consultation is the formality of getting into the weeds of numbers and data and showing to a prospective practice owner and spouse quantifying what working with us looks like.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Before you get to your consultation presentation, I like the way that rhymed, that's nice, what information do you need to get from potential clients to people you're speaking with?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah, no, that's a good question. I mean, ultimately, I joke, we like to speak with living, breathing practice owners who are mildly curious about Four Quadrants Advisory and if there's a better way. Minimum collection's $900,000. They need to be at least five years away from retirement. We have a lot of qualifiers. But ultimately, is somebody qualified? That's a discovery call. Then we get into, well, what's going on?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I mean by this point, they're giving you some hard numbers.
Casey Hiers:
Well, I'm going all the way back to where we're just having a conversation. There's pace to everything. And so once somebody's qualified and once we learn a lot about them and their spouse and their frustrations or challenges or areas, we have practice owners already making $600,000, but they feel like they should be making eight. And a lot of times they're right. And so it's really getting a good feel for what folks want. Personality, mindset. Aligning that up with numbers and data. There's an assessment of all. But ultimately we're looking at taxes, all personal taxes, practice taxes, LLCs, any and all taxes, tax filings, profit and loss statements, balance sheets, production reports, fee schedules.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I mean, if there's money involved, that's what we're looking at.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah, fee schedules. And that's really just to dip our toe in. That's just to look under the hood and kind of thumb up, thumb down internally, "Yeah, this is somebody that we can really change their life." Or we look at it and go, "They don't need to pay us. They need X, Y, and Z. That's not in our wheelhouse." Things of that nature. But your question was what's the consultation? Once we looked at that initial data, if we determine, yeah, we want to do that, and there's a little bit of money involved, skin in the game, there's a lot of time on our end, and a little bit of money on the practice owner's end. But it's ultimately a complete diagnostic of your personal finances, your practice, looking at every nook and cranny. We're looking at bank statements, we're looking at debt positions. We're looking at just a lot more data. Ultimately about, I don't know, 12 to 15 bullet points' worth of data uploaded to our portal. Our team spends a bunch of time on it. But ultimately it's showing a practice owner here's how you can make more, save more, have a proactive team, make your life a lot easier, and a lot more certain, at least in the personal finance and the practice efficiency and profitability arena.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
So by the time this consultation happens, you already have those bullet points. So does any new information come out from the doctor to you during that call, during that presentation?
Casey Hiers:
Oh, sure. There's always curve balls, right? I'm trying to think of a good one. I haven't had the one where they say, "Hey, my great-uncle just left me $3 million." That's the joke. But no, I mean, typically it's continuation of the conversation. Nothing new necessarily comes out. There's new information that they hear and see. A lot of times it'll be maybe just a basic tax management thing that we'll find, and they know nothing about it, their current team. Because to work with us, you're severing relationships with people that you like and are related to, or neighbors with, or go to dinner with, or golf with.
And so they're typically shown things that nobody's ever shown them, which is a real disservice. Because we've typically spent, I don't know, five to eight weeks looking through a little bit of data and tell them more than anybody's ever told them before about their personal and practice situation. Which again, that's why I get fired up because, in a small amount of time, that's what we find and do. And that's just how it is here. But yet people are so, they don't want to be vulnerable or exposed. That's the one thing I will say.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
When you give them this information, what is the mood? How does the mood move with them? Are they both excited because of what you're telling them? Are they shocked that they didn't hear this? Are they pissed that they weren't told this previously? Is it a combination?
Casey Hiers:
Yes. So yeah. I mean, we see all kinds. There's a lot of people that go, "I knew it. I've always had that feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew it." Others get frustrated, others get excited at optimism. Some get defensive. We try to look for coach-ability and ability to take constructive criticism if backed up with data. I'm gauging that early because the folks that get defensive by the consultation, that's no good. If people want to give excuses, get defensive, again, you don't need to pay us for that because you're probably not going to take our advice anyway. And so I'm really trying to flesh that out early.
If somebody's defensive and doesn't want the help, or is a do-it-yourselfer, or just has too much pride or ego, that's okay. I've got buddies that are like that. I still like hanging out with them. And so I'm trying to find that out about these practice owners early and basically just say, "Hey, it doesn't seem like you need to pay us, again, to not take our advice, because that's a terrible outcome. We want great outcomes."
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Casey, when Dr. Smith has, or Dr. X, whatever you want to call him, has gotten to the point that, yes, we're going to do a consultation, what's the average time you would say from day one, yes, let's do this, to we're going to give you our presentation?
Casey Hiers:
Some of that depends on Dr., what'd you say? Dr. X. or Dr. Smith?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Dr. X.
Casey Hiers:
I like Dr. Feelgood. Is that Guns N' Roses or Motley Crue?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I think it's Motley. It's someone that's definitely a eighties hair band.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah, yeah, anyway. Whenever the doctor, twofold, one, we give target due dates for this data. We do that for a couple reasons. We're a system and process-driven firm, and so we need to know if somebody's going to be easy to work with or not. A practice owner that tells us they're too busy to get us information and data, again, within a reasonable amount of time that we both agree on, then we can't take it. It can't be more important to us than it is to them. And if they keep pushing it off, then they're not going to be great to work with.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I'd say that's just going to set a precedent of how they're probably going to work with us through the future. Like they're going to be late on everything.
Casey Hiers:
Unfortunately, a lot of practice owners have clung to, "I'm the busy dentist and that's my trump card and that's my excuse for everything," and you know who you are. And you're used to everybody dancing for you out there. Again, for us, our results are so good and our process is so good at identifying if we can achieve them or not, we're not going to dance for people. We're on team dentist. We want all dentists to do better.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
So I mean, if you work with us, we're talking, what, millions over your career more than what you currently have?
Casey Hiers:
Millions and millions. I mean, again, if it's not that we don't take it. But to answer your question, how much time, it depends on how quickly they get us their data. If they hit the right due dates, yeah, we're going to probably take, we only have a couple spots a month. I mean, again, I'm talking a lot of people. We're only going to do this for the qualified and the ones that want it and the ones that we can truly help. But yeah, it can be a few weeks out. I mean, all in, it's probably anywhere from five to 10 weeks. I mean, my timeframes are changing, but again, with the summer, there's people that I've talked to late June, early July that we didn't have a spot until October. So it just depends.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Besides potentially doctors being laid on giving us information that we need, what are some other hurdles that you have to work through?
Casey Hiers:
A couple of them, and it really is a good exercise for the practice owner, but when they go through the process of gathering data, one, they learn a little bit. Some people learn, "Wow, my money's all over the place, or I have more debt than I thought, or my overhead's higher, my employee wages are higher."
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Maybe they never saw it all in one place.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah, nobody's ever asked for it. Another thing that they learn is that a lot of their data is not up to date. And we always talk about if your QuickBooks are months behind, if your financials are months behind, if your taxes are constantly being extended, that's not acceptable. It's not a good enough standard of care. And having incomplete or incorrect data is a terrible precursor to making decisions in your practice. And so a lot of people also finally realize that. That's just while they're gathering it, they realize that themselves.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I mean, I don't know if this is stating the obvious, but that's because our job is to help you have more money, while your current accountant's job is to do their job of getting your taxes done.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. That's a good point. A lot of good CPAs out there, their job is to do the taxes from the numbers that you bring them. The investment people, "Dentist, bring me money, I will invest." Our firm is different. We go find, we go find it. When we're redoing taxes and finding tens of thousands of dollars, when we're lowering taxes by five, eight, $10,000, just when all that we're finding it, we're getting it. It's not just you bringing us your junk-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
We're proactive.
Casey Hiers:
... to file, we're proactively making it all better. But ultimately, a lot of people are looking for how do you do it? How do you do it? How do you do it? How do you do it?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
After the presentation, you've gone through, you've sat down, you've given them 10, 15, 20 bullet points of data information. Maybe little few other things came out. What's the next step after the consultation? Is that the final like, "Yes, let's, work together." "No, I'm not ready to move on." What's next?
Casey Hiers:
Ultimately, once we cover this data, I mean, expectations have been set. We've had a lot of conversations on what to expect. There's no surprises. Ultimately, once the information's given, it truly is do we all want to work together or not.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
It's kind of the last milestone before?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah, well, it's here's the crescendo. There's a period of time to take us up on extending an invitation and it does expire. I mean, we tell people, "Listen, if you look at this and take a couple days and sleep on it and you're not really excited, then you shouldn't do it." Because our clients are ecstatic to find somebody who has the expertise to help them, to take that time, all those duties off their plate, to take the stress away, for finally dentistry to start paying off the way they always wanted it to. People are excited.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Now, I wanted to ask you, I know on earlier calls, you'll also invite the spouse to be on as well. Is the spouse included in this consultation?
Casey Hiers:
Absolutely. If the spouse isn't involved pretty early, that's a big red flag and we end that. Yeah, no, it's incredibly important.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
You don't want the doctor to sign off on something that's life-changing and then surprise their spouse with it.
Casey Hiers:
Well, and here's the reason. Some of our client's spouses don't know where the office is. Others are the office manager. No matter what your interaction is, we're finding money and doing things better. And it affects the personal life. And the personal financial planning, the comprehensive nature, we talk to spouses all the time. And maybe the spouse is male or maybe the spouse is female. But, "Hey, we want to redo the kitchen. We want to put a pool in. We want to build a house." That is part of our services. We help with just about everything that you can imagine. And so yeah, the spouse needs to be involved early and often.
And normally the "toughest" spouses, once they realize, yeah, this is a massive upgrade, a lot of them are our biggest cheerleaders. Because they see their dentist spouse, they see the stress, they see the stuff the patients don't see, they feel it, they see it, and they know almost better than the one that's in the chair, they need help. They can't do it all. And so it's a nice balance, but the reason is because this isn't just about the practice. This is about getting personally financially stronger.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, thank you, Casey. I thought that was a really, really good conversation. Even for me. Having worked here, I've not sat in or heard the consultation.
Casey Hiers:
I don't let you in for those.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
No. You said I'm too distracting. I'm too pretty to sit there. I get it. What do we have coming up next for you on the road? I know Four Quadrants will be at...
Casey Hiers:
SmileCon.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
SmileCon. That's in Houston.
Casey Hiers:
Yep.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep. That's coming up.
Casey Hiers:
Deep in the heart of Texas.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
We do have some more top golf events coming to a city near you. We will be in Charlotte very soon, Colorado Springs in November. Visit our website at fourquadrantsadvisory.com/events to see where we will be, and we're loading up all next year as well. And we'll be sending out emails and all kinds of stuff just to get people aware that, hey, don't forget, we're coming. Put it in your calendar.
Casey Hiers:
Thanks, pal.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Thank you.
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.
