10 min read

The Excuses Holding Dentists Back: Why ‘Later’ Never Works

Picture of Four Quadrants Advisory Four Quadrants Advisory Dec 3, 2025 11:03:33 AM

Practice Transition dental financial planning dental accounting Financial Planning business of dentistry dental CPA cash flow Millionaire Dentist tips
The Excuses Holding Dentists Back: Why ‘Later’ Never Works
In this candid and entertaining episode, Casey and Jarrod dive into the excuses dental practice owners use to justify stalled growth, low income, and financial frustration. From “it’ll get better on its own” to “my situation is just different,” they unpack the mental traps that keep so many dentists stuck—often for years.

With real stories, sharp insights, and a few laughs, they reveal how avoidance, fear, and false reassurance can quietly erode a practice (and a retirement plan). If you’ve ever told yourself “I’ll deal with it next week,” this episode might hit a little close to home, in the best possible way.

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, how are you?

Casey Hiers:
I've been sick, like cold, sinus, really just grumpy. So if I sound a little different, I'm on the...

Jarrod Bridgeman:
If you're grumpier than usual, is what you're saying.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. I'm feeling better, feeling strong, but stayed at a nice hotel in Charlotte, and the AC at about 67.5 degrees. Woke up in the middle of the night, and the sucker's been blowing on me all night, and I'm hacking already, and the damage was done. So, my mega-dosing of every supplement known to man shortened it, but it's been a gnarly few days.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Good, good. How was your trip to Charlotte, by the way? You were there and speaking to a nice group of practice owners?

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, venue was great. Practice owners were awesome. People came in from far distances. They were dialed into the subject matter. They get it. They get it that being a practice owner is tough.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And this is for our events that we actually go around the country and host ourselves, and this would be the Bourbon and real financial advice for dentists event. You've done lots of these over the past couple of years, but now we've got a couple of really fun ones coming up in Chicago and Orlando.

Casey Hiers:
Well, I like doing our events. We don't have to tiptoe around anything. We can just get after it. When we go to state meetings or regional meetings or dental societies, we're guests in their thing, so we have to act appropriately.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
How was the bourbon?

Casey Hiers:
I don't even think I tasted it.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
You didn't taste any of them. Okay.

Casey Hiers:
Yes. The Stagg Jr., which is now just called Stagg, beat out Angel's Envy.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It grew up.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. It beat out Angel's Envy.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Nice. Okay.

Casey Hiers:
But yeah, it was a good event.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Good. I'm glad you guys had a good time out there. Casey, today, you were doing that, you also went and spoke with a study club as well, and I wanted to talk to you about, when you were in both these groups, do a lot of dentists have a lot of excuses as to why things may not be going the way they hoped they would be?

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. The hours of prep that we spent on this, wink, wink, excuses practice owners tell themselves, that was something we kind of wrote down. And I think that's a trap we can all fall into, but certainly one-off conversations, conversations with different groups in different geographies, there's a lot of common threads of thought we could talk about today with that topic.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's awesome. Right off the top, I wanted to ask you, do you find that there are... If you're talking to a group, and someone raises their hand and gives you an answer, it's a much more generic answer than it is on a one-on-one?

Casey Hiers:
Oh, sure. People are more guarded in the group setting.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I figured as much.

Casey Hiers:
Stereotyping, but a lot of dentists are not necessarily confrontational people. Very nice people. But a lot of times they're a little more guarded. And so again, getting back into the excuses practice owners tell themselves, it's typically around time and money. It costs them both, but time's certainly one of those excuses that people like to use.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And I can see that. As you said, everybody can really relate to that on some level. May not be at work, it may be at home. For me, it is something that just happened to me yesterday. As of next week, I have to get a root canal done, my first one ever, and I'm not excited for it, and it's something that could have been more than likely prevented. But over the past couple of years, I have put it off due to being afraid either of spending the money or spending the time. To be fair, this is a real fear I have. I'm afraid of being put under, and then having my wife drive me home, because I don't know what I'm going to say. That is a real fear that I have. Who knows what might come out of my mouth? But really, it's just the fear of, maybe if I just ignore it for long enough, it'll go away on its own. And if it's something that's decaying, something that's rotting, it's never going to go away, it's only going to get worse.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Now that you said it, every once in a while, you always said your tooth is hurt, but you'd be like, "It'll just go away.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
If I had gotten this taken care of earlier, it may have just been a filling.

Casey Hiers:
So, what were your excuses? "It'll just get better, I don't want to deal with it?"

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It was that, and I was like, "It's not really bothering me right now." Even though I broke part of the tooth off in a... It was a Pop-Tart.

Casey Hiers:
Oh, geez. Eating healthy.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right, baby.

Casey Hiers:
At least the tooth... Because it's root canal and crown, right? Not an implant.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep.

Casey Hiers:
Okay. So, there's a silver lining there.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And I'm really excited for... The big reason why it all happened yesterday is because my jaw hurts quite a bit right now.

Casey Hiers:
The pain.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Well, and no doubt that ultimately is what makes people move. That's the catalyst. You felt pain, you went to a dentist, you got referred to an endodontist, now you're going to get the problem solved. Voila. So many practice owners have pain in their practice, or their personal financial situation, but they do just what you did. It'll get better, it'll go away. It's all good, all figured out. So, some of the excuses I'll hear, we'll be going through some of our talk, or getting to know practice owners one-on-one.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Casey, why don't you throw at me some of the excuses you hear from practice owners?

Casey Hiers:
A lot of times, when we go through our material, and this happened recently, "Well, you just don't understand my practice." Or, "Well, because of our geography, because we live here, all these things are just so different and so unique." And here's the punchline. The majority of time, they're not. You're not a unique, special unicorn. There's a fix. You just need to get it fixed. But it's on the low end and the high end. So some people, if they're in a real glitzy, glamour area, "Well, our overheads high because we're in this area."

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I was going to ask you what the difference between a lower-income and a higher-income area.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. And it's, "Well, everything's so much more expensive here, my building and all my costs, because..." But then I hear the same excuse, "Well, I'm in a poor part of town, so we're more Medicaid or more insurance, and there's just nothing we can do."

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Okay. But the thing is that there is something that could be done. They just aren't willing to put in the time or the effort or find someone who can help them.

Casey Hiers:
No, we'll get around to it next week.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right. That's right. Again, like my tooth.

Casey Hiers:
We'll get around to it next week. It's all going to work out.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It's fine.

Casey Hiers:
I'm a 35-year-old dentist. It's all going to be fine. I'm 45, I've got some time left. I'm 55, I probably need to get serious. I'm 60. Shit. Help.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And it's a statement that everybody, we all laugh about, but it seems like as you get older, time does move faster. I mean, it's crazy to me how quickly my kids have aged, and I never thought that would be the case. And then you look back and realize, "What have I been doing the last six years?" Or whatever.

Casey Hiers:
Well, that's very true. You look up, and you're much older. But I think another thing a lot of practice owners have told me is, "Well, I can always sell my practice, and maybe I work a couple of days a week, or maybe I'm an associate a little bit." So it's almost like they feel like they have this backslide, this safety net of, I always could do that when I'm 67 or 70 or 72.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
But you don't know if you could do that. I mean, depending on how you are, is somebody going to want to keep you around that long?

Casey Hiers:
Physically, a lot of times people can't do that.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Physically. Exactly. And you never know if an accident of some type may occur. As you've told before, we have a client who had a former partner who was at a hibachi grill, and got some oil in his eye, and could no longer practice. And that's a freak accident, but things like that could happen.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. No doubt. Other things I hear is, "I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing better than I thought." Again, "You just don't understand stand. I'll be okay. I can do it tomorrow." It's a lot of excuses where, again, the top 1% of dentists who get this right, they either demand it from their current team or find a team that can do it, but from our perspective, our clients have a team to master this for them, so they don't have to use their excuses anymore. But even talking to them on the backend of working with us for three, five, ten years, they'll kind of laugh at it. They're like, "I remember talking to you the first couple times, and I was very cynical, and very..." I go, "Well, everybody is." Some people will tell me that, and I laugh. I already know that.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And these fears are... This kind of popped into my head, as you said, a lot of times dentists aren't confrontational. It's a fear of confronting it. A fear of confronting, I guess, your own fears. Afraid of saying, "It's okay, I'm doing okay for now," or whatever, but then when you actually dive into the numbers, whatever the case is, realizing there's potentially something much worse as the root of the problem.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Your hygiene department is not cutting the mustard. Your income is half of what it should be. You have three too many insurances.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
The whole mentality of ignorance is bliss.

Casey Hiers:
Oh, man. I think there might be some truth to that. Now, I'm on the counter-argument, right? But man, there's a lot of things in life where I look back, and I was like, I think ignorance might be bliss. When I didn't have a clue about some of this stuff, like the joy of a child. I mean, there's something to it. But the older a practice owner gets, the more responsibilities they get, the more their neck hurts at night.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And if the ignorance you're doing is actually causing real pain, that's a different story. Again, my ignorance in my belief that I could just hold off on this tooth, now I'm in actual pain. And physical pain, not just my wallet, hurts.

Casey Hiers:
The chickens come home to roost.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right.

Casey Hiers:
If you're a practice owner out there and you're making 350, and you know should be making five or 600, again, you know it in the pit of your stomach. And eventually, again, the chickens come home to roost.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Can't these dentists just ask their boss for a raise?

Casey Hiers:
Right. They wish they could do what their assistants and hygienists are doing to them right now. The tail is wagging the dog. But we love talking to practice owners. We love presenting this stuff. And so many of them, they come up and they go... Casey, or the team, or whoever's there, they go, "Wow, you guys hit on a lot in this hour. Clearly, you understand what we go through." And the only reason we do is because we have solved that for 20 years this March. But they just... The looks are different. It's like, "All right, this is the real deal. Do you think you guys can help?" Which I look at them and go, "I don't know." We're not talking about working together. We're talking about engaging in a process.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
We can engage in this process, and as part of that, things will be uncovered.

Casey Hiers:
You'll learn something, even if we don't work together. But it all comes down to time and money, and unfortunately, we all have excuses. I'm pissy yesterday and today because, well, I'm sick, guys. I'm in a bad mood because I'm sick. Well, it's true, but I can also potentially not use that as an excuse and just not be pissy. We're not saying anything that anybody out there doesn't already know, but confronting all that stuff is so important.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And listen, it's less stressful, less painful, and you can have a little bit more courage if you have someone there with you to help you rip that Band-Aid off and look at what's there.

Casey Hiers:
Look at all those analogies mixed down to one.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah. Let's mix them all together.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Yeah, let's...

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Two in the bush is one in the hand.

Casey Hiers:
What is it? I'll give you two hamburgers tomorrow for one hamburger today?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

Casey Hiers:
There you go. Yeah. Let's just flush all those excuses down the toilet and get real.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And if you want to get real, and you want to get real with Casey here, don't forget to check out fourquadrantsadvisory.com/events. Again, we'll be in Chicago. We're going to be in Orlando. We're going to be at Smile Con as well.

Casey Hiers:
Well, I'm doing an implant course in Vegas. I've got to get that flight booked like right now.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
What are you doing sitting here then? Casey, thank you so much for gracing me with your lovely presence.

Casey Hiers:
Ditto.

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.

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