Life's Curveballs & Practice Pitfalls: Are You Prepared?

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 the studio with co-host, Jarrod Bridgeman.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Casey, you're looking sharp today. Got a nice jacket on, a button-up shirt. I'm happy to be in your presence.

Casey Hiers:
Wow.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
That makes me feel great.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, we're both in a little bit of a grumpy, irritable mood, and I'm just trying to lift this up here.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Seasonal allergies, a little sinus tension. My head's-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
A little stuffy, huh?

Casey Hiers:
Yeah.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah. And I know you're a big guy, into making sure you get the proper vitamins and things like that, and sometimes your body's just like, "Enough's enough. I need to flush this out myself."

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Yeah. I got my nine hours, but I was in Florida over the weekend on a boat, and there was some wind, and woe is me.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Wow.

Casey Hiers:
But there was a combination of things.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I feel terrible for you now.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, I'm paying for it. My head feels like it's going to explode, but that's okay.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah. Well, so you're already a little bit irritable from that. Tell me, what happened to you this morning?

Casey Hiers:
I was driving my first and fourth grader to school, and Carmel, Indiana, is the roundabout capital of the world.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Correct. We have over 150 or something like that.

Casey Hiers:
180 roundabouts. And pretty much every day I'm in them, and I can see when people are doing the wrong thing, and about the play bumper cars. It happened to me today. So, turning right, look left, there's a Lexus SUV way off on the side. And go to make a nice, easy right turn, and I see a light, and I look over, and they're bumper car-ing my rear driver door, which I still don't know how they got from that point to the other point, unless they weren't looking or-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Gunning it.

Casey Hiers:
I don't know. But yeah, little fender bender this morning.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
But the good news is, everybody's fine, and nobody was hurt or anything.

Casey Hiers:
My girls were very cool under pressure.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Good.

Casey Hiers:
No tears. "Daddy, is that a bad guy?" I go, "No"-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
"It's a bad lady."

Casey Hiers:
"It's a nice lady, and we're all good." I said, "I'll put the window down, and I'm going to step out," and it was all good.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
So at the end of the day, there are worse things out there, but it's also not great. Now you have a car that you have to wait for insurance to take a look at.

Casey Hiers:
I look like a hillbilly. I got the side of my car smashed in. It still runs, so that's fine. My wife extracted the girls, got them to school.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Nice.

Casey Hiers:
It could have been a lot worse, but yeah, that was my morning, and I'm like, "Really? I feel a little sniffly, and now this happened and all of that stuff." But it was nice when the police officers were great, and then they're like, "Well, we got both your statements. It's her fault." And I saw her get very animated with one of the cops in the back. And I'm like, "Well, that's great, but her opinion can change when she talks to insurance, so I need an incident." I had to dot all the I's, cross all the T's. Can't trust anything or anyone, but we're all good.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And that makes me think of a couple of years ago, I was sitting at a red light, and I happened to look up in the rearview mirror, just kind of sitting there waiting. And I see this girl barreling down towards me with a phone in her hand, and I was like, "Well, shoot, I'm about to get hit," and then yep, I was hit.
So, that kind of made me think about, we talked about crashing, we talked about the pain of getting your car fixed, and dealing with the police and dealing with insurance and things like that, how that can play into pain in a dental office and in a dental practice.

So what if we did? Let's spin it in a different way, a crash course, which we're talking about, crash being a bad thing, but a crash course is a completely different kind of idea. When the unexpected arises or things out of your control happen, what can be done? So let's kind of start with a couple of examples of what something may be that's out of a practice owner's control?

Casey Hiers:
Well, it's kind of fun. We can take real-life experiences and spin them into a dental podcast on practice ownership. And the three parallels I wrote down on my notes here-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Oh, you took notes? Nice.

Casey Hiers:
... this morning. It was unexpected, it could have been worse, and as the police officer said, it was not my fault. Dentists and specialists can face a lot of those same issues. What's the unexpected? Staff quits. When we do our course, there's a lot of challenges in dentistry, but one of the first ones mentioned is staff. That's always challenging. But you come in on Monday, and you get an email, somebody quits. And it's frustrating, but it happens. Not my fault, let's go to that one. Insurance reimbursement all of a sudden is less, and it's lower. That doesn't mean that your dentistry is any less. You're doing the right things. It's not your fault. It's a circumstance that happens, and those things are very frustrating for a practice owner.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
For sure. For sure. And I'm sure this is not on your note or on your mind, but it's just something pop into my head, too. It'd just be like natural disasters. There are a couple of states that have been having issues with flooding or tornadoes during the springtime, and that's something very obvious that can set you back a week, or we even had a client who had a water damage issue.

Casey Hiers:
Well, here's another real-life example. I was out of state a couple of weeks ago, massive rain. I have a whole-home generator; it should be all set. There was like a brownout, kicks on the generator, then a generator did something 'cause there was so much rain, then it wouldn't get the utility electric back to my house, and everybody else has power. Wild stuff, battery backup work. I could have come home to a flooded basement. Good lord. But again, I looked at it as it could have been a lot worse. It wasn't my fault. It was unexpected, tried to be prepared.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Having the generator, having the backup battery, 'cause a buddy of mine had an issue with the sump pump, and his entire basement flooded.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, if you don't have a battery backup, at least it buys you six hours. Right?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
But the way this ties back into dentistry, just to come back to it, is-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
To kind of what we talk about.

Casey Hiers:
... if a practice owner, if their cash flow in their practice is where it should be, that trickles out to a lot of other areas, being insulated from problems.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. Right. And as you said, and we all feel it, some problems seem less when your cash flow is good.

Casey Hiers:
Oh, and undoubtedly our clients will say, "This stuff used to happen, and it would bum me out for a week. It would ruin my day. Now it happens, I'm like, 'Eh, we're going to get through it.'" But many listeners out there, when your cash flow in your practice is rough, you're skipping paychecks, or you're skipping distributions, or just taking what's left over, that's hard. In practice, you're trying to get that cash flow right. Your cash flow at home's not right; it makes everything worse. And like we said, a lot of times, not directly the fault of the practice owner, 'cause they're producing great dentistry, but our firm thrives because the business side of dentistry, if that's not insulated, it's going to affect you in a negative way. And what you can't do is just throw your hands up and give up.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. So I kind of want to bring up, I mentioned in my accident from a couple of years ago, I saw it coming. Let's talk about those kinds of cases where you can foresee a little bit, like, "Oh shoot, something's coming up soon, maybe a new bill's being passed."

Casey Hiers:
Tax surprises

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Or tax surprises. Something is coming that could have been potentially avoided or at least lessened in some way. I could have potentially moved my car out of the way if I had the room. Or in your case, maybe you had checked your blind spot and saw her coming right up on your butt there. What's something a dentist, a practice owner, can do to help prevent or at least lessen the blow of a problem?

Casey Hiers:
Instincts kick in, and our examples are many in life, right? And in dentistry, a lot of times we'll hear from practice owners after they get a big tax surprise. "I had a good year. My quarterly estimates, we either didn't do them or they didn't change, and I didn't talk to my accountant very much." And instinctually, they almost have a feeling that something's maybe not right, but they're busy. And then ultimately-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Or afraid to look.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, or afraid to look. We're around that tax time. And then they get that big tax surprise, and they're joke is, "Well, yeah, I owe another 30,000, but it wasn't really a surprise 'cause I had those instincts." But it's just another example of the headwinds practice owners face that can be overwhelming. And so again, what do we talk about weekly? Be aware of it, own it, and what's the plan? And many people, their plan isn't going to be to work with Four Quadrants Advisory and nor can we help everybody. But you have to have a plan, and you have to be proactive; otherwise, it's not going to work.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. And then-

Casey Hiers:
Oh, and by the way, I called my insurance, and they're like, "Oh, we have to file this under some acronym, because if you're in a wreck and you don't file it within X amount of days, your license will be suspended." I had no idea that existed. But I'm looking at this going, "Okay, I need to do the right things here." And unbeknownst, good communication to my insurance company, "Well, I'm not filing with, I'm going to file it against hers."

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes. But they still have to do something on their end via the license [inaudible 00:09:28].

Casey Hiers:
If I hadn't made that call, I didn't know that. "Oh yeah, you've got to file it with your insurance, or it gets suspended." Then the next time I get hit in a roundabout, I'm in handcuffs because my license doesn't work. Again, going back to tax surprises, it's-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And I'm not going to bail you out, buddy.

Casey Hiers:
Thank you. But again, communicating with your accountant is what's going to help with those tax surprises. If you have the instinct, don't hide from it. Run towards the fire, run towards the problem to fix it, 'cause digging your head in the sand isn't going to work.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
No.

Casey Hiers:
And I actually heard this about ostriches. They bury their head in the sand, but actually, it's one of those things that they hear the vibrations from far away to potentially know where the predators are. There's a reason why they do it. A lot of practice owners put their heads in the sand on this, because, as you said, "I just don't want to deal with it. I'm dealing with my patients all day. This is hard, this is frustrating."

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I do not have that capability to put my head in the ground and feel cattle coming or anything.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, the cattle are the biggest predator that you're worried about.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right. They've got big horns.

Casey Hiers:
But I will say, cash flow, tax surprises, and insurance, if you're not fee-for-service, those three areas can keep you on that hamster wheel and be very challenging. And again, you can keep kicking the can down the road, but once you get those right, everything feels better. Practicing dentistry feels better, dealing with your staff or team feels better, and going on vacation feels better. It makes me sad how many practice owners feel guilty when they're on vacation. They're even stressed on vacation, because instinctually they know their money's not right, their cash flow's not right, their tax management's not right.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Or maybe they don't have the right staff in place where they need to be, and they're just kind of worried about anything that's coming in over the week.

Casey Hiers:
That's a continual problem. I don't think staff issues are going away. You might not be able to control that as much as you control some of these other areas. And how can you control them? Well, have the courage to address them and talk to them. Come to one of our courses. Even if we never talk again, you're going to get pearls of wisdom. We're going down to urban country down in Kentucky.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right. That's right.

Casey Hiers:
We'll be in Denver, we'll be down in the Carolinas. Come to a course, learn something, to arm yourself with knowledge to empower your current team to do better. We talk about that a lot. In our courses, yeah, we want to talk to people, and we'll help some and others we won't, but a lot of times they'll tell us, "I learned a lot, where now I feel I know how to talk to my current"-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
They're armed a little bit better.

Casey Hiers:
... "CPA, investment advisor, tax advisor. I didn't realize that I was in an autopilot investing target date, lazy." Or, a high commission, neither great, they didn't even realize it. So then once they're armed with it, like you said, then they can do something about it. But that time spent is just going to make the other parts of your life better.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Correct.

Casey Hiers:
And these practice owners, it typically doesn't get better. What do we say all the time? These areas, cash flow, insurance, overhead, and tax surprises. These metrics typically only get worse if not addressed.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. And this is when you're a practice owner, when you're a dentist, and you've gone to school for all this, and you have the loans, and you've got your families counting on you, and employees are, your practice is your life. Every moment you're probably thinking about it in some way or another. And if there are fundamental issues, you're going to get burned out. You're going to equate not great business decisions or poor cash flow to how you operate and how your skills may be. And you feel like you're a terrible dentist, when that may not be the case. You just don't know how to do the business side, which again, you didn't go to school for that. That's not your jam.

Casey Hiers:
Well, and there's practice owners that make half a million dollars that should be making 850. And so that's another psychological barrier that they have, is they feel the stress, they know some of these things instinctually, but they're still doing pretty damn good. And so it's like, who can relate to them? Like, "I'm going to go complain to somebody, I'm making half a million bucks?" But again, if you should be making 850 and you're not, you're being a poor steward of your talent, and that's not great either. But we went a couple of miles wide, an inch deep on this.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah, we sure did.

Casey Hiers:
But again, a lot of this podcast, I think, it's important to just help people be aware and gain some courage to not settle for the status quo.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Exactly. Casey, you had mentioned we're going to be in Louisville and Lexington. That's happening, actually, this week. And we've got Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina. We're going to be in Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio. We're going to Denver, Colorado, right before, it's a pediatric dental association meeting, I believe.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah. So look for us there. We're going to be in Kansas, and we're doing our home state of Indiana as well this year. Please go to fourquadrantsadvisory.com/events. If you're interested, if you want to learn more, if you know someone who might need help, if you're just listening to this because your husband or your wife is a dentist, please let them know. Sign up, it's great information with one of our great speakers, and you also get great food. It's a great venue. You get drinks and bourbon if that's their thing.

Casey Hiers:
You will leave satisfied.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes, please go to our site, fill out a form. If you are not in an area we're going to be in and you want to talk to one of our representatives, please just fill out a form. We'll reach right out to you.

Casey Hiers:
We have people do that all the time. We had somebody, the husband was like, "My wife, the dentist, is stressed," went online, random conversation, and boy, their life will be changed.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's awesome. Casey, thank you for stopping by, and I'm excited to see all the information when you travel and go out there and speak to people. Just seeing how our country is and bringing that information back so we can do our job of helping other dentists.

Casey Hiers:
God bless America.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
God bless America.

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.