March Madness & Dentistry: Coaching Your Practice to Victory

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, good afternoon. How are you?

Casey Hiers:
Doing well.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Good. Good. Did you have a great weekend?

Casey Hiers:
It was lovely.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Lovely?

Casey Hiers:
Yeah.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
[inaudible 00:00:38], nice. We had just celebrated St. Patrick's Day.

Casey Hiers:
Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Just happened, did you-

Casey Hiers:
I did not pee green on 3/17.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Nice. Okay. Okay.

Casey Hiers:
That was one of the best shirts, Harry's Chocolate Shop, out of Purdue, when I was a student; that was their shirt. I pee green on 3/17.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah. That's awesome.

Casey Hiers:
Not a lot of that.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Not so much.

Casey Hiers:
I had a lot of basketball games that I was helping coaching.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Did you have any green beer at all?

Casey Hiers:
Zero.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Okay.

Casey Hiers:
Zero.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I had a little bit, but I don't tend to go out for St. Patrick's Day. It always feels like amateur hour to me, [inaudible 00:01:08] go out and there's a... And I don't trust the other people drinking and not driving, and things like things like that.

Casey Hiers:
Means we're getting old because we're actually logical.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I know, it sucks.

Casey Hiers:
I used to wear a kilt and put in a solid nine hours. Not anymore.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah. Not so much, man.

Casey Hiers:
Not anymore.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
No, I'll make some corned beef.

Casey Hiers:
It was a daddy-daughter dance on Friday night.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Oh, and you took your daughter?

Casey Hiers:
Both of them.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Both of them.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Oh, boy.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Good weekend, man. Good weekend.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Cute. That sounds cute, though.

Casey Hiers:
Woke up and fresh breath, it's March Madness time.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It is March Madness time. Here at the office, we do a little March Madness, just a company social. It's pretty fun to do. Everybody around here is talking about their brackets and starting to pre-plan out their plan [inaudible 00:01:50]. Are you excited?

Casey Hiers:
Some low-stakes gambling.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
Not enough for the

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It's legal here in Indiana.

Casey Hiers:
... IRS needs to get involved.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
How do you feel about your boys?

Casey Hiers:
Purdue?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
Boilermaker.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
As good as I can.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
Time to go win.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
You going to go all in on them?

Casey Hiers:
Well, what's all in mean?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Number one, the winner.

Casey Hiers:
Pick them?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
Well, yeah. Yeah

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Okay, just checking.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, I'll be locked in my basement watching them every game and-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Just stressed.

Casey Hiers:
I shouldn't be in public, and yeah, it's going to be...

Jarrod Bridgeman:
So, trying to tie together March Madness, College Basketball, and Dentistry, and you are the expert in a lot of those things. Can you walk me through and help me figure out some of the parallels there, being someone who's a dunce?

Casey Hiers:
A couple of my favorite topics, to be honest with you.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Even as a, I always call myself a non-sports fan, really just because I was so bad as a kid that I was spurned by it. But everybody is heard, and everybody has seen those wonderful Cinderella stories. The team it's almost like the engine that could.

Casey Hiers:
Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I think I can, I think I can. We've had some of our own successes with our own clients this way. What's a great Cinderella story to you?

Casey Hiers:
Underdog story, Cinderella story. So I think about NC State, right? Jim Valvano, 1983. Even if you're not a big basketball fan, The V Foundation, like cancer, there's fundraisers and events all year, throughout the country.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right, right.

Casey Hiers:
But that all started because he had an underdog, Cinderella team. And then I think of George Mason, I think that was in the mid-2010s... 2005, 2006-ish.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right around there, yeah.

Casey Hiers:
They were a double-digit seed, made it to the final four. Butler-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah, Butler.

Casey Hiers:
... around here-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I remember that was a big deal because I was-

Casey Hiers:
Final game, two years in a row. First year, nobody expected-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
... expected them. Those Cinderellas, and that's always fun, right? If it's not your team losing to a Cinderella, it's really fun to watch. Farley Dickinson, anyway.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
So, tying that into a practice owner or a dentist, a specialist out there, what would you say is a Cinderella story for somebody like that? Someone who maybe doesn't have the best looking practice, maybe someone who is, they're not knocking out of the park with a $3 million collection.

Casey Hiers:
I wouldn't even say the best looking practice, I would just say, we call it, boring is sexy. We had a lot of people who collected a million, 1.1 million, 1.2 million, they make 4 450. They save 150, $200,000 a year. They're on track for 10 to 15 million, in their 50s.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
But they do those [inaudible 00:04:30] every year. They were consistent.

Casey Hiers:
They're consistent, right? But at first, somebody else in their dental school might look at them, 25 years later, and be like, "You."

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right, right.

Casey Hiers:
Right. But the difference is being good at dentistry, knowing what you're not good at, as a coach. Again, I'll, Purdue Boilermaker is my background.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Sure.

Casey Hiers:
But in the old days, Gene Keady was the bulldog, right? Frank Kendrick was a really good recruiter. He went out and got Glenn Robinson, big dog. He went out and got all the guys. Bruce Weber was the X's and O's guy.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Okay.

Casey Hiers:
So Gene knew what he was good at, getting on officials, getting people fired up

Jarrod Bridgeman:
[inaudible 00:05:07].

Casey Hiers:
... being funny, but he had people under him that made his program go.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
So they had specialized help.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. It seems like now, if you're good at one of those things, then you get the head coaching job, and that's why they get fired every three years. There's no longevity.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. Right.

Casey Hiers:
But Tom Crean, he was an IU basketball coach, not real great with X's and O's, but boy, he was a good recruiter and a good rah-rah guy.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
So we got that, so comparing that to basketball, that's almost outside of the coaching, that's making your team run the drills, making sure everybody's playing the plays they need to play. If you have a wild card out there, if you have a player who is trying to be fancy, and maybe that player tends to cause a lot of turnovers, what would you say is a comparable turnover in practice zoning?

Casey Hiers:
No, that's good one. So I'll say there's a really skilled person and they're trying to do behind the back or just too many fancy things. Our firm prevents our clients from too many turnovers in dentistry.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
Right, your external team can help make sure you don't bring on an associate too soon, or you don't add that next location and go 2 million in debt all of a sudden. That's another thing where having a good team can help you avoid those turnovers.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
So a turnover obviously in basketball can potentially cost you the game, especially if there's too many of them. What effect, what does these type of turnover happen... What effect happens in the practice? What does that mean to the practice and to the owner?

Casey Hiers:
They're practicing in their late 60s, early 70s, god forbid, their late 70s or early 80s.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
That's what that means.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
So it's like when you're young and bulletproof, you always feel like you can just produce, and overcome, and overcome, and overcome, and at times [inaudible 00:06:53]-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Because I'm going to live forever.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
You know?

Casey Hiers:
I felt like that until I didn't.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Until started waking up and then being like, "Oh, my back hurts for no reason."

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, but too many practice owners fool themselves, and they're just thinking, "I'll just keep practicing because I love it," and this, that, and the other, and they don't really plan for tweaking that ankle-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
... or blowing out their ACL. Then all of a sudden you can't play it, right? You can't practice dentistry if something goes wrong with your hands, or your vision, or-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And so, and this is not something we really deal with, but there are different specialized help that can help you. There might be maybe someone that can help you with the practice management side of things, but there's other people, like us, for example, that work with you on the accounting, the tax, and the financial side. Having those right team members in place, either external or in-house, can make a large difference.

Casey Hiers:
No, that's a great way to put it. Let's say we're a program and we are recruiting some of the best practice owners out there-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
... to get them better.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes.

Casey Hiers:
So in every program, you have a strength coach. Strength coach is what they're doing. You have an operations person, they're booking travel.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
You've got all these people that do certain things, but ultimately, you have to have somebody looking over all of it. So many practice owners they might have a strength coach, or they might have the academic tutor, but they're missing three or four pieces or parts to their team or their program.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
And in dental, that's just going to simply have you practicing longer and making less money.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, and you want to make sure, too, that these people you have helping you are also proactive. It doesn't help to have an assistant coach that never comes and tells you when there's issues, or there's something better that could happen.

Casey Hiers:
Well, so as a strength coach, you either say, "You get your asses there at 7:00 a.m., and we're lifting." You don't just say, "We have a nice gym, and I'm going to be there, and whenever you would like to roll in, you go ahead and do that."

Jarrod Bridgeman:
[inaudible 00:08:51], right.

Casey Hiers:
Or to really make a parallel on dentistry, it's all available, but if you come here, you have to pay. As you call your accountant, you get nickels and dimes for 800 bucks, right?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. Right.

Casey Hiers:
So, yeah-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I've heard some horror stories recently from our BFF, Steve Levy, our CPA and JD, just about when we bring on some people sometimes, or we're even looking at in consulting, some of the things their accountants and stuff have done and told them, basically the exact wrong thing to say.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, and they thought they were right at the time.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep.

Casey Hiers:
[inaudible 00:09:23].

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And guess what? They're gone now. People were fired; you got to hire the right people.

Casey Hiers:
But yeah, in March Madness, listen, making the tournament's hard-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
... and dentistry, graduating dental school and actually providing good dentistry, that's tough, right?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
That's an accomplishment. That's really good. Most people want to make an impact in a tournament. You win four games, you're in the final four. If you win six games, you are the national champion. So in dentistry, it's great you're a dentist, but now it's time to do something about it, right? And you need overhead, sub 60, right?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep.

Casey Hiers:
You need to make that money. You need to save that money. It's right there in front of you, but it takes a whole team. It takes a team to help get you there. There's no one star player. I can't think of one, like when we had Glenn Big Dog Robinson, he was really good. He averaged 30 points. He couldn't get us past the Elite Eight because we just had one stud.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Didn't Glenn Robinson go on to play with the Bucks?

Casey Hiers:
Yeah.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Okay. I thought I recognized that name.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I got one.

Casey Hiers:
But if you're a great dentist and maybe you've got a good investment person, that's great. You've got a couple pieces of a 10-part puzzle, and so it really is important. These programs have to have every single detail covered, ironed out, and planned for. And in dentistry, you need to have everything planned for, not just that day's patients, and knowing that you know how to do dentistry. That's not good enough.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
You also need to know who's going to replace your star player. What happens when you're ready to retire?

Casey Hiers:
Well, that's a good point. We have conversations all the time, and it's time to start thinking. And even our own clients are like, "Well..." It's hard to admit it's time-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes.

Casey Hiers:
... or it may be time-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep.

Casey Hiers:
... or it could be time.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
But you've got to plan for that. You've got to plan years in advance. If you're planning in five years, that's not enough.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
Well, and going back to the basketball team, right? You can have one year that's just terrible disappointment, another year you're top of the mountain. In 2018, Virginia, the year before, they were the first one-seed to get beat by a 16 seed.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Oh yeah, I remember that. Yep.

Casey Hiers:
And then the next year they came back and won the tournament.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep.

Casey Hiers:
Now, unfortunately, my Boilermakers suffered that last year, so I'm hoping that the same destiny is in front of us. That being said-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Let's put that goodwill out there.

Casey Hiers:
... they had a terrible year. They bounced back and were then champions. And in dentistry, that can be the case too. From year to year, you hit with a big tax surprise, you lose a hygienist, you lose an assistant, you lose an associate. There are a lot of things that can get in the way.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
The best players in the world still can have a bad game.

Casey Hiers:
No doubt about it. [inaudible 00:11:52]-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
But it's also like, what's your plan to come back from that? Are you prepped for that?

Casey Hiers:
The older I get, I think about the odds, right? Hedge your bets, leveraging odds, probability for success. Let's just make it really clear. This is a podcast; we like what we do, we like our services.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.

Casey Hiers:
Our clients have increased their probability of massive financial success, less stress, longer life. Really, if you think about it-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right, right.

Casey Hiers:
... by having a team have their back. If you don't, the probability is simply lower, and lower, and lower, and lower, and it becomes more of a Hail Mary that you can make it, versus planning appropriately.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And how often do Hail Marys actually work?

Casey Hiers:
I don't know that statistic, but I can... The-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
There's a reason why it's called the Hail Mary.

Casey Hiers:
Doug Flutie and Joe Montana are probably in a couple of those highlights, and those are 40 years old. So...

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right. That's right. Casey, where are you going to be next? Do you know?

Casey Hiers:
I might be in tears if Purdue loses. Oh, I just need at least the final four. It's been since 1980.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Has it really been that long?

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
My dad's a, went to Purdue as well, and he's a big Purdue guy. So I remember watching a lot of Purdue games as a kid, and I didn't realize that was the case.

Casey Hiers:
Mm-hmm.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
They haven't been... God, that was before I was even born.

Casey Hiers:
Elite Eight a couple times, but yeah, last Final Four was 1980.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah... So-

Casey Hiers:
So where will I be, you mean, professionally?

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes.

Casey Hiers:
Okay.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes.

Casey Hiers:
Well, you-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Not in your basement watching TV.

Casey Hiers:
... you got to be more... It's a good basement. You got to be more specific.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It's way better in my mom's basement.

Casey Hiers:
We're heading to

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Nashville.

Casey Hiers:
... Nashville, Nash Vegas, Nashville.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep. Then we'll be in Denver and Boulder in April.

Casey Hiers:
Keep Boulder weird.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
Austin stole it, but yeah, Boulder's a unique place. They got three and four feet of snow last week.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Wow.

Casey Hiers:
So hopefully when we're there, it's not like-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
[inaudible 00:13:46] we got snow this morning here.

Casey Hiers:
But we're doing a brunch. We typically do wine or bourbon tastings, but again, we could care less if you enjoy bourbon or wine, that's not a requirement. It's just a different activity.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
The brunch one sounds like it's going to be pretty cool. If you want to mimosa, have at it, but-

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, there's a lot of interest in that too. Our goal is people want to hear subject matter at a nice venue, but yeah, we've got a robust travel schedule.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right. That's right. Folks, if you don't mind, please give us a review and a like on whatever platform you listen to us on, whether it's Spotify, YouTube Music, or Google Music. Check out fourquadrantsadvisory.com/events and see where we're going to be next. We're putting up new cities and venues all the time. We're looking at Atlanta pretty soon. I know that's coming up. We're going to be back here in the Indianapolis area as well. Casey, anything else you'd like to add before we go?

Casey Hiers:
Boiler Up.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Boiler Up. Thank you so much.

Casey Hiers:
I'm a humble Purdue fan because I've been humbled so often, but yeah, Boiler Up.

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.