Stop Avoiding, Start Succeeding: The Habits of Millionaire Dentists

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 at the Millionaire Dentist Podcast in the studio with co-host, Jarrod Bridgeman.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Casey, how are you doing today?

Casey Hiers:
Doing well, doing well. Got to meet my dad for lunch, his 77th birthday.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Holy moly.

Casey Hiers:
He looks great, feels great. What a blessing.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's amazing. Where did you guys go?

Casey Hiers:
I drove the short trip up, about 40 minutes, to where I'm from, where they still live, and I wouldn't say it's so much the place we went, it's-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
The company.

Casey Hiers:
Cone Palace, nacho dogs, like guilty pleasures, they are delicious, and I should probably go run two miles after eating them, but it was a nice time.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
You took me there once.

Casey Hiers:
The old Cone Palace, the nacho dogs.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah, that was amazing.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, the after effects of the nacho dogs sometimes can be memorable as well.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Play some havoc on your innards there.

Casey, I'm pretty excited about this. By the time our listeners hear this, it's already going to be happening, but this week we've got some of our cohorts heading out to Buffalo, New York, to do a presentation. It's a very exciting time. We've talked about this podcast after podcast. But we're doing so many more of these events, we're going out and talking to so many more people. And we've got a really great crew of guys and gals that go out there and just help dentists realize the world of the business side of things that they may not even realize.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. We've got, a baker's dozen 13, right, we've got a double baker's dozen, got about 26 practice owners and a handful of spouses coming. And oddly enough, those rooms of 50 or 80 to 150 that we presented at in the past, we really like that 18 to 30 because it's intimate. And we've got about 26, a really nice group. Obviously represent our firm well. We've got some people going out to educate on the business side of dentistry. But yeah, it's going to be wonderful.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah, that makes me think of just college courses in general; it's kind of the same thing. The classes I enjoyed more were the smaller classes as opposed to a 200-person lecture hall.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, people get lost in the crowd. It's nice when there's interaction; there's a comfort level. It's not awkward with five. But yeah, that's a good sweet spot. So it's going to be a nice opportunity for practice owners in the Buffalo, New York area.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And if you're listening to this and you're like, "Well, why aren't you in my area?" Well, we probably will be soon. I mean, if you go to fourquadrantsadvisory.com/events, you'll see we're going to be in Louisville, we're going to be in Lexington, we're in Charleston, South Carolina, and Columbia, South Carolina. We're going to be hitting Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City. We're going to a lot of places all over the country. So if you want to learn more, please check that out.

But to get back on the topic we haven't even mentioned yet, while you're going to these events, while you're going to conferences and you're speaking to these people, what is a common thread, what are some common threads that you've noticed for dentists that have been successful?

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, that's a good question, practice owners, dentists, and specialists.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
I mean, we talk too much about things that people do wrong.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, let's flip it. Is there a correlation of folks that are successful or have reached a level of success prior to engaging with us, what are some common characteristics or behaviors of those people, we can certainly get into that.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Learning from speaking with you week in, week out, one of the big ones I've seemed to have caught onto is coachability. Is the dentist able to listen to advice and actively engage in that?

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, that's a big thing we look for. And it's really twofold, one is somebody coachable; two, can they take instructive criticism. Because if you have 50% overhead, then you don't need any advice. If you're over 60, there's probably some help. And there are a fair number of practice owners who maybe played tennis in high school or college golf, and they go, "Oh, I'm very coachable, I'm wired to be like that. I've just not met anybody with the expertise to be able to help me, so I do it myself," sort of thing. But coachability, somebody who, they're confident and they've achieved a lot, but they're always looking on how to get better. And if somebody can prove that credibility, then they are open, that is a common-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
They know enough to know that they don't know everything.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, I mean, some of the most cocksure people I've met, their finances are a house of cards. It's fascinating.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. Well, that's the facade of it. Early on in my dating days, it was fake it till you make it. And I think some of these guys are hoping that if they fake it long enough, it'll just come to them.

Casey Hiers:
It just stinks, if you're a practice owner and you look up and you're in your fifties or sixties and you still haven't addressed this, you've just faked it.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And I think that's a great trait to have. Some people, it takes them longer to learn how to be coachable. As you said, if they've been involved in sports on certain levels, that automatically kind of puts them up a leg up. For those who are steadfast in their ways, there's really not much you can do.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I couldn't have put it better myself. I mean, in the rare instance somebody doesn't make any mistakes and doesn't need any help. But yeah, if somebody's stuck in their ways, they don't need anybody to tell them what to do, and they're not going to listen then.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
So then, if you're that type, throwing money at something and not taking advice is probably not ideal.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Well, it comes back to how about the next one, making emotional decisions. And there's a lot of times where practice owners, they make emotional decisions, they don't know how to really analyze a decision. What are we talking about, buying a piece of equipment, adding a second location, building a brand new custom home that you can't afford but you emotionally want it, so you just do it. We see those things occur.

Highly successful people, and in this podcast, practice owning dentists and specialists, emotion's part of it. Typically emotion starts the decision, but then it needs to be backed up with logic, numbers and data. People that are wired like that tend to be more successful versus, you remember the Napoleon Dynamite scene of the ship in the jar, "I want that."

Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right.

Casey Hiers:
Sometimes people just want something and they don't care and they're going to spend the money and they don't think about how it affects cash flow in the practice or at home or how it affects their tax situation. It's just incredible. But again, successful people, they don't make emotional decisions, emotion's part of the equation.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
For sure.

Casey Hiers:
But you need to add logic and data and analysis to it.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And in terms of you talking to dentists across the country, do you have an example of maybe one of the worst decisions you've heard based on an emotional response?

Casey Hiers:
Typically, they will go ahead and tell me, I don't have to interpret it, they'll go, "Oh, and one of the worst decisions I ever made was." And typically it came from maybe a friend, but their friend's situation was different than their situation, but they shared an endeavor that they did, it sounded fun, it sounded neat and exciting. So they just emotionally said, "I want to do that too."

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Like, hop into real estate or something?

Casey Hiers:
There are tons of different examples. Throwing money at something because emotionally it felt good or because you heard a glory story once of somebody that it worked for. There's always going to be those.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Or playing on the whole, keeping up with the Joneses.

Casey Hiers:
No doubt.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It's not maybe a positive feeling you're reacting to, you're reacting to the jealousy of not having what they have.

Well, going off this whole idea of being coachable, not making decisions based on emotions, I mean, as you said, emotion does play into everything on some level. Let's say we've come up with a decision, we've come up with an idea. What good is an idea if it's not been implemented?

Casey Hiers:
I see this a lot in conversations with people. They're really good with ideas, and that's typically where it starts and ends. They don't know how to implement it. And actually in our mutual vetting process with potential people we work with, we're monitoring, engaging, are they able to accomplish a different task or two for us to learn more about them or not? Because if they don't communicate well and can't see things through, as a client, nothing gets implemented. They're full of ideas, but then if they just go back into their normal routine or they're too busy to think about it, how can anything get implemented or changed?

And so number one, it's having ideas and brainstorming, doing the analysis, but then actually implementing something. And so here we do that on behalf of our clients, we brainstorm, we implement, we analyze, but then we're going to implement that for them. So many people have the ideas and they just never get around to implementing it. They talk about it year after year after year, whatever that might be.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Whether it's a new piece of equipment, and then actually using said new equipment in terms of maybe a new procedure.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
It makes me think of, there's an old South Park episode with these characters called the underpants gnomes. And step one was steal underpants, step two was a question mark, step three was make a profit.

Casey Hiers:
I've not seen that episode, but there's a lot of wisdom behind that.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. And I feel that on my own sometimes because I like to write a lot, but I always start, and I'll get two-thirds of the way through a page or two, and then I just kind of fizzle out. The beginning of the idea is very exciting, and the idea of what could happen once you're done is exciting; it's the actual work of it.

Casey Hiers:
Well, and we've internally joked where some people we work with, they've had a lot of ideas and they would share those ideas, and we actually said, "Thank God they didn't have the personality to implement them because half of them were so dead wrong." And so that actually can be a benefit.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Were you talking about me?

Casey Hiers:
No, no, no, no. I mean, again-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah, somebody had ideas.

Casey Hiers:
A lot of these characteristics, I mean, we all have some of them, but it's not ... don't let those wreck your business, your practice, or your finances.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right, right. Or if maybe a staff member has an idea for a better system in terms of tracking your patients, whatever, have them explain it to you in a very clean way instead of just saying, Yeah, go ahead and do it. Because that could really screw your day.

Casey Hiers:
No doubt. I'll tell you another characteristic or behavior of successful people. They delegate things to the right people. And I'll dive a little deeper into that. There's a lot of practice owners that love dentistry and they do not like the business and financial side of things. And so they will actually have a trusted person in their practice, whatever creative name they have, and they will trust them to do these things, except that person isn't necessarily trained in it. And again, a low percentage is correct, and the rest of it just hurts them. You need to be careful not to delegate too much to an office manager or a staff member. Those people can have talents, but when you're talking about high-level decisions that affect money and retirement, a decision-

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And not just for yourself, for your entire staff.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, a decision in the practice made wrong can really hurt. I see that a lot where, again, a trusted person in the practice is ultimately given too much responsibility. And then it just goes back to emotion and instinct instead of analysis. But finding the right people in your life, in your practice, or outside of your practice, again, an external CFO that can help master these things, delegate it to a proven source, not, "Well, they're really good at this, I just want to focus on dentistry."
We've seen some of the largest overhead when that relationship exists. It's flattering if let's say you are the office manager and the practice owner gives you these responsibilities, it's flattering but you also need to be real with your bandwidth and your knowledge and not take on too much. And I think a lot of times that trusted employee will be flattered and just really try to figure it out and not be able to do it. Similar to the dentist who sometimes can't figure it out. That's a tough scenario.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, and that goes with educating your staff on what you want, what you're looking for, what you need. I think another great sign of a successful dentist is that they're able to educate their patients. Similar to how we, as we go around and talk to people, educate dentists about what we do. Can you kind of walk me through a good example of how a dentist can educate a patient?

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, that's a good one. And we see this from time to time. Sometimes, with practice owners on the back nine of their career, maybe more seasoned. They've known a scumbag dentist who just oversold dentistry, and they never want to be that dentist. And so they almost make it as a point of pride that they don't do that. Here's the caveat. Don't be afraid to educate your patients. You don't have to press them to do Invisalign, Botox, or get veneers on the spot. I'm somebody that I like to be educated.
And my dentist, who is a client, does a really good job of educating me on different things that they offer. And then, as those set in after a couple of my visits, well, by the third visit, I'm like, "Hey, tell me more about this. I want to learn more." I would've never even inquired had they not educated me on it. But so many dentists think, I don't want to oversell dentistry, that's a scumbag. Great. You're doing a disservice to your patients if you don't educate them on different things that could potentially be done. "Hey, if you do Invisalign, your bite could be better, and if you don't do it, over time you may have this. Here's something you could do." And then from there, I said, "Oh, I've always wanted those Hollywood teeth, how's that work?" "Well, you can do it like this, you can do it like this." "Oh, that's interesting. Do you offer Botox? What's that look like?"

And sometimes it might take three or four of those six-month visits, but damn it, educate your patients. That's not being scumbaggy; not doing it is a disservice to your patients.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
And you're going to get happier patients out of the that too.

Casey Hiers:
Well, I think that it just needs to be separated. You don't have to be high-pressure selling dentistry on the spot, but you can educate them over time. And again, for many listeners, that's like, yeah, Mr. Obvious. Trust me, there are a lot of dentists out there that either don't have the courage to educate or just think there's a stigma behind it. And I think that needs to be separated. Not educating is a disservice.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, on my end of the thought process on this too is, the education also then justifies the cost.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah, I mean, as a consumer, I want to think about it, and over time, something might make sense that didn't in the past. But if I don't know about it, I mean, then I'm probably not going to do it.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
No, and it's like, "It's how much? 10 grand for what?" Okay. Yeah.

Casey Hiers:
Yeah. But if I've thought about it for a period of time, it's, "Let's do this."

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Let's do it.

Casey Hiers:
I've planned for it. And while it is an emotional decision, I've thought about it and backed it up through logic and data.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
But if you can't do what's right, you can always do what's left.

Casey Hiers:
That would be a shirt that probably wouldn't sell really well, but there's something there, I think.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Casey, any follow-ups that you had on this topic that you really want to drive home to our listeners today?

Casey Hiers:
Well, I think in real time, we're educating our listeners on our events. Repetition is important. How do we know that? Well, we have software, and we see a lot of people now checking our events page. And ultimately, we're selling out of a lot of events. We hate turning people away. But it's the same thing. We'd be doing a disservice if we didn't educate people. Hey, we're going to talk about a hot topic, and if it's in your area, come visit. Well, a lot of people are hopping on our events page now.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep, yep. So Casey, thank you so much for stopping by today. Again, folks, fourquadrantsadvisory.com/events, check us out. We're putting out, every couple of weeks, we'll have a new one launched, a new one on the page to go to. Also, check us out on social media, we're on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. What else is there? Twitter, X, I'm sorry, X now. Check us out, look us up. We're always posting new things. We're always talking about our really great clients who come in once a year for their annual planning meetings. And some of our clients we may do a round of golf with. We may be heading to a new area and doing something great at a conference. So please check us out. If you are sitting here and you're like, "Why the hell aren't Casey and Jarrod talking about this one thing I really want to know about?" shoot us an email or write on the website.

Casey Hiers:
You never know.

Jarrod Bridgeman:
You never know. Thank you so much, Casey.

Casey Hiers:
Thanks, man.

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.