Escaping the Post-Holiday Hamster Wheel: Why Strategy Beats Resolutions

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:
Casey, I am so happy you are here today. Just the brightness of your face lightens my life.

Casey Hiers:
Mm.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It's like in The Shining.

Casey Hiers:
What do you want? What do you want from me?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Do you have 20 bucks?

Casey Hiers:
That was too much.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It always makes me think of the movie The Shining with Jack Nicholson, when he's coming after the wife with the ax, and he's like, "You're the light of my life." I don't know. I just-

Casey Hiers:
Oh, there we go. Little movie reference and you're aging yourself.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Hey, I was born after that movie came out. Okay.

Casey Hiers:
I gotcha.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Casey, it's January. Last week we talked about how coming back and in the break and reflecting all that kind of stuff. Our first week here, both you and I we came back and we both had this renewed sense of energy and wanting to tackle things, and how can we improve things this year? How quickly did you burn out on them?

Casey Hiers:
I don't make New Year's resolutions-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
... so most people by mid-January, it's unfortunately doesn't happen. But no, it's always good to have a break. It's always good to come back. And some people takes them a while to get their sea legs.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes.

Casey Hiers:
For others, they're ready for battle. There was too much time off. They want structure. They're happy to get back. But there is a little bit of fog sometimes-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
... when you have some time off, like you said, those two weeks around the holidays.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And even if it's not quite, quote unquote, "work related," it might also get the added factor of kids going back to school and trying to get your kids back into a sleep schedule and getting them up.

Casey Hiers:
I've seen more car wrecks in these couple weeks in January than I think I have in six months. I don't know if it's-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Stupid.

Casey Hiers:
... getting back into a routine. I don't know what it is. It feels a little different.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Almost like a week or two of people not being used to traffic. It was kind of during COVID and post-COVID. During COVID, there was a lot less traffic, and then afterwards, the streets were filled again and again, quite a few wrecks happening.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Some people are ready to get back, right? Other people they're still yearning for the holiday time off, and they have a hard time almost rewiring the brain, getting back into it. There's different sides of that coin for sure. If you like what you're doing and you're able to achieve things, and typically, there's more joy.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah, but just that first morning.

Casey Hiers:
If you push pause on... As a practice-owning dentist, if you just push pause on some of the frustrations you have in your practice, you come back, and it's still frustrating. Is there a plan? How is this year going to be different? It really comes down to that.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. We talked about last time, instead of New Year's resolutions, maybe New Year's goals, I think, is a better way to frame. At least in my mind, a goal is something to work towards, where a resolution just feels like a promise that can be broken.

Casey Hiers:
Well, one thing's gimmicky, and it's typically it's cute, right? Move more, eat less, read a book, spend more time with this person, mend this relationship.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Those have been my goals for 10 years, and things happen.

Casey Hiers:
And those are all good. As a business owner, it needs to go from a new year's resolution to 2026 should have been planned out last quarter, and then there's excitement.

You know what 2025 was, and that's in the practice, that's in the personal finances. And you have your 2026 plan because a lot of practice owners tell me, "I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel every year."
And unfortunately for some practice owners, they got off the hamster wheel for a week or two, and they simply feel like they're getting back on that same hamster wheel, and there's not as much joy because hope is important.

Hope is a terrible business strategy, but you talk about older people. If older people whose health is failing have hope, and that can be little things, right? A grandchild comes to visit. Hope keeps them going.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes.

Casey Hiers:
If they don't have hope, they typically deteriorate faster. You can talk about a business. And in a business, people hope and think a lot in their practice, but unless you have clear-cut plans, goals, strategies, and how you're going to get there, that feeling of the hamster wheel versus empowered to go to battle because you know there's a plan. Very different things there.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, and again, as you said, hope can be a good thing. So if you have a good structure in place, a plan in place, at that point, some of that hope around that plan is not a terrible thing. But people out there might be trying, or they're hoping for some kind of miracle to happen, some kind of patient lottery.
Something happens where an influx of patients come in, or an influx of money comes in. I don't really play the lottery, but I always hope that I win. I got to play to play, whatever. But it's that type of thing where hope is a great thing, but the hope's got to be focused on something substantial.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. No, and it goes back to what I was saying of if you're a practice, there's practice owners out there that don't feel empowered, they don't feel they have their fingers crossed and hope that things go well-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
... and maybe they improve one or two things, and all of a sudden, overhead drops 10%.
Versus practice owners, and I talked to them too, they have plans, they have strategies. They've tried some things. They know what doesn't work. They know what they need to do to be sharper. They know what they need to do to improve.

They have to want to raise their own standard. And for some practice owners, you can't continually just say, "Well, inflation or insurance, or it just can't be done, or dentistry's changed." Are those things true? Sure. But to use them as a crutch or an excuse not to get better.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
There's an entire world of other things that can be worked on. And as we said before, insurance is not the most fun thing in the world for a lot of people. It cuts up the money. It's a lot of extra work.

And we work with our clients and our people and our practice owners to look at insurances and look at fees and all that kind of stuff, and to put together a plan to be like, "We need to raise, we need to lower, maybe we should drop this plan."

But sometimes people hear that stuff too and just immediately jumped a gun and be like, "Well, I'm getting rid of Delta." Or, "Oh, I'm going to raise my fees 50%," and so, without any research done to it. "Or maybe I need to lower my prices to get people in here."

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, just going on gut.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Which, depending on the size of the gut, might depend.

Casey Hiers:
I don't think there's a correlation there.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Okay.

Casey Hiers:
And for others that have consistently had strategy and planning and improvement and not just relied on hope or one or two improvements, the achievements build up year after year.

We have an oral surgeon who, for him, he started this year, retired, and he's retired two and a half years sooner than he had planned for, and he's retiring two and a half years sooner with multiple millions of dollars more.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And what's the catchphrase that we've been saying lately that he said to you? "I wish I had started sooner."

Casey Hiers:
I wish I had started sooner. Yeah. For him, it was two and a half years and a couple million more. That's fantastic.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's nothing to sneeze at.

Casey Hiers:
If he would have found it sooner, it would have been more money and the option to have more time. But for those who evolve past excuses, rationalization, and just throw the hands up and it can't be done.

For those that engage in the battle to maximize and be a good steward of their practice, their talents, their skills, and what they have in front of them to not settle for high overhead or whatever it is.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep. And if you look at it like a psychological level too, coming in on the new year and having some hope, having trying to at least start planning things out. You and I talked about how we had that first day, maybe that morning was a little rougher getting up, and it's still dark outside, and things like that; their employees are feeling the same way.

And if you're coming in day one, being grumpy and not feeling the hamster wheel, that it comes from the top down. So you're leading by example, and so you're showing your employees that it's okay to be grumpy and not feel it. And so that could be a hard thing to deal with when you got to put on your game face.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Regardless of where you're at in the practice, your staff or team, they're going to have some of the same things going on. If they're just doing the same thing with no strategy for improvement, personally or professionally, it feels like the hamster wheel versus having a plan.

If you have a plan, you're excited. You're excited to go execute something. If you don't, your mindset's different. And attitude, a lot of times comes from leadership. And you, as the practice owner, if you are not excited and ready and have a plan to improve personally and in the practice and all those areas, it's that trickle-down effect, and it's tough.

And again, for us, our goal is to educate and challenge. We want to educate the listeners, and we want to challenge the listeners. If you're one of those people that are coming into this year and you're feeling a little foggy, you're feeling a little hamster wheel, you're yearning for the time off, what are you going to do about it?

What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? And unfortunately, a lot of practice owners will spend decades in that exact pattern, and it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't.

What's your vision? Well, what do you want your practice to be? What do you want your finances to be? What do you want the culture of your practice to be?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And then working your way backwards. You and I had talked about a completely different subject earlier. One of the tips they say when you're writing a murder mystery, if you're a novelist, you start at the end and work your way backwards.

What's your goal, and what are some steps you can take along the way? This is step one, this is step two, step three, and it's got to be something I would say-

Casey Hiers:
Reverse engineer it and then, okay, you've identified your overhead's too high. That's really good. What are some steps you're going to do? And then, excuse me, you want to try those times, like this step, that I'm going to give this much time.

It's okay to go, "You know what? I'm not sure how to improve my cashflow. I'm not sure how to lower my overhead. Okay, well then, now what?" Too many business owners throw their hands up. "Well, it just can't be done."

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Because even if you go to an outside company or whoever to help you try to figure that out, you need at least to know your numbers in the first place. They're going to ask you.

Casey Hiers:
Well, in dentistry, there's a lot of quote-unquote "consultants" that practice owners write a big check to, they're underwhelmed, and nobody's happy. And so there's another step to that too, where potentially you want to go find and delegate and find those who master what you're not good at, but there's a lot of fool's gold out there.

Unfortunately, we've seen that from experience, where we look at what people are paying for their professional services throughout a year, like significant money. And we then look at their data, their documents, their financials, their achievements, and what are they paying for?

They could get this at H&R Block on the tax side, and they could just have the no disrespect, the local Edward Jones rep help them with what they've done with their growth. I mean, any financial advisor can say they're up 13 to 16%. A junior high kid could have done that last year.

How about those who are playing defense, helping source it, and growing that money 20, 25%? That's excellence, but practice owners don't have time for it. But my challenge is just don't get on that hamster wheel again with no plan except hope that's typically...

And again, some people can be fairly successful like that, but this is a good time, like you said, a little reflection, looking ahead, what side of the aisle are you on? Are you excited to get back at it and excited to achieve this year?

Or do you feel like, "Well, back at it again. I guess we'll see how it happens." And there's so many practice owners, they're literally leaving 150 to $200,000 of money in their pocket on the table every single year, and they don't know how to get there. Don't settle for that.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
This is why you and your team go out all over the country all year long is to not only find a great restaurant and have some bourbon, have some great food, but to educate practice owners out there of here are some things that you need to be looking at. Here are some red flags that we see so commonly in practices.

Casey Hiers:
Well, I love going out there, and I love presenting because you just see how it just hits them square in the forehead, and it's not talked about enough, but it's interesting, but then what are they going to do with it?

So we had somebody come to one of our events, and ultimately they became a client, but I asked them, "What drew you to our event?" And they said, "Well, we like bourbon. You guys have a bourbon tasting, and we liked the venue. It's a special restaurant. And so we went there."

"We take tons of CE, we look at tons of different initiatives and ventures, and we never do anything with it." But ultimately, they learned a lot, and they thanked us for selecting them. Because I think what a lot of practice owning dentists and specialists have is so many people trying to get in their wallet with false promises or underwhelming results that they don't realize when they talk to somebody who it's a mutual vetting process that they're selecting us, we're selecting them, it's not one way. And a lot of times, practice owners have so many people trying to quote unquote, "sell them something," They get fatigued with it. But ultimately, when people...

Their excitement for this year is off the charts because they have a plan, they have a team, they refuse to just do status quo and rinse and repeat and Groundhog Year, right, Groundhog Day, and they're excited.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I'm excited just-

Casey Hiers:
But think about Bill Murray.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
Groundhog Day was fun for a while, and then it got miserable for the guy.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes.

Casey Hiers:
I mean, he was-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah, pretty dark in the middle of that movie.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. I mean, there's electrocutions and all... It went from this is fun to this isn't. And I think there's some parallels there with practice owners. But ultimately don't like 2026 just like 2025. If it was bad, we'll better improve it. If it was good, you can still improve it. But if you find yourself really not digging this year already midway through January, it's on you, man. Choose your hard. You can do the same thing and be disappointed, or you can try to do something different to get off the damn hamster wheel and achieve more. And again-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Because if you don't try, 30 years from now, you're going to regret it when you're 75 and still in the chair.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. But again, it's easier for us because we get to talk to a lot of practice owners from all around the country, and we get to hear from them, but all this is real.

These are real challenges that practice owners have, but they're not going to talk about them in their study club. They're not going to talk about them with their colleagues because everybody wants to put on their best face. And ultimately, people have to experience enough to not settle for it.
But from our perspective, we just see so much subpar...

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Care from-

Casey Hiers:
The standard of care and dentistry that the external team is or isn't providing, and it's easy for us to get frustrated for them, but we can't care more than they do. And again, some people-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It's like helping my kid with their homework. I get so frustrated, and they don't get the answer. I'm like, "It's right there." That's probably why I'm not a teacher.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. No, there's a little bit of that. People have to connect their own dots, but no, 2026 is going to be a great year. And for us, literally, it's how many people do we get to educate? How many people do we get to help? Because there's limited spots for our events and there's limited spots for us every year on how many people we are going to help. But regardless, we love going out and doing this. And we're going to be in Dallas, right? We're going to the Yankee Dental Congress.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
We're going to be in Birmingham and Fairhill, Alabama. We're going to Gainesville and Jacksonville, Florida, or we're going to be in Bozeman, Montana. There are so many places and areas that we know that there are practice owners out there that would love to hear this kind of stuff.

They usually only get the clinical side of things, or they get implant course, and this is something that can be, I wouldn't say easily placed in, but it's something that can be built into your practice that can make huge, huge differences.

Casey Hiers:
Well, it's interesting. Our events have always been well attended. However, now they are selling out consistently. There are waiting lists. Again, there's a need for it. And I think the younger generation... Like the older generation, they're trying to just figure it out. Younger generation, and I'm broad strokes here, but they're almost more agile to realize, "I'm not a CPA. I'm not an investment guru. I'm not a financial planner. I'm not a..." Fill in the blank.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
They may have seen their parent, who is an owner, struggle, or they're an associate currently getting ready to purchase, and they see that the owner there has been struggling.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. No, don't settle for the fog, don't settle for the hamster wheel. I think that's best I can put it.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right. Folks, visit fourquadrantsadvisor.com. I built a brand new events page. It says upcoming events, and it looks really pretty. So check it out. And if you like it, send me an email and just be like, "Dude, you're the reason-

Casey Hiers:
Great job, Jarrod.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
... this is so good." Thank you. I appreciate any and all compliments. Yeah. So feel free to fill out a form on there or register for one of our upcoming events, and we've got so many more things and places and all kinds of stuff we're doing this year, and I'm just so excited for you and your team.

Casey Hiers:
Oh, by the way, we have a lot of clients that listen. Send it to a friend.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Share the love.

Casey Hiers:
If I have a good piece of cheesecake, I'm going to go tell my friends, "You should go have this piece of cheesecake," and tell people that maybe could benefit from the education or from the conversation.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Did you bring cheesecake? Is that why you were saying that?

Casey Hiers:
Not today.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I tend to share that stuff, but I don't know if you know. Our good buddy, Stacy Phillips, but he's lactose intolerant, so I'm not going to share that with him. Thank you, folks.

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.