Episode 693: Strategically Prepare for Economic Downfall

 Big Life Financial’s Derrick Van Ness returns to the podcast! He talks with Kiera about financial thresholds dentistry professionals should aim to meet, the difference between dying with zero versus an estate, how to be strategic as business owners for economic downfall, and a lot more.

This episode will tell you what you need to do to be prepared for potential mayhem in the economy.

Episode resources:

Learn more about Big Life Financial

Get in touch with Derick directly: [email protected] 

Listen to episode 511, Tax Time: Getting the Most Bang For Your Buck

Listen to episode 462, Get Tax Savvy

Reach out to Kiera: [email protected] 

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Transcript:

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0:00:00.5 Kiera Dent: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yep. We don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental. And I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I could help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress, and create A Teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team podcast.

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0:00:50.1 KD: Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And you guys, I have an incredible guest today that I am super excited. He's been on the podcast before and this is a man that I love because we will rally back and forth on all things investing, different ways to help dental practices. He is a brilliant man and I love all the things he brings to the table. So we are gonna welcome Derick Van Ness from Big Life Financial. Derick, welcome to the show today.

0:01:16.4 Derick Van Ness: Thanks, Kiera. Excited to be here. As always.

0:01:17.4 KD: I love it. I am a little disappointed that your background's not the bricks. Have you not gotten your bricks back up in the background? I mean, that's what I expect when I see you, Derick.

0:01:27.6 DN: I know. I still have the bricks, they're folded up in the corner.

[laughter]

0:01:30.8 DN: I moved into a new house last year and have been traveling like crazy back and forth with family and all kinds of things. So yeah, haven't put the bricks up. I haven't decided if I'm gonna do bricks in the new studio here.

0:01:42.1 KD: I do enjoy the white though. I think it does have a nice zen feel, but I knew the bricks were a conversation from the last time we podcasted. So, but Derick guys is genius. He was just at our summit, super appreciative of him and our support. So many offices reached out. But what was cool, and I thought we'd bring it to the podcast a little bit, was I had Derick come on with a couple other financial people. So I was explaining that in your financial Rolodex, as business owners and as practices, and I didn't realise this as an office manager or as an owner, that you need to have different people in your financial repertoire. So you need your bookkeeper and they need to be your day-to-day transactions and things like that. Then you've gotta have your CPA, then you've got your tax strategists and then financial advisors. And there's a few other things beyond that. But to me, those are kind of the core four that I'd recommend you have. Derick, would you agree with that? Are there any... Like, I'm not the financial person, this is just how I was explaining it. Do you feel like it's the core four or are there maybe like a sexy six?

[laughter]

0:02:38.1 KD: How many should we actually have in there?

[laughter]

0:02:44.1 DN: Well, I definitely think if you have those four, they're all essential in their own way and there's slight bits of overlap with some of that, because investments and tax strategy and some of that stuff does interplay a bit. But if you have those four, you've got the basics and then, on top of that, you might have a business coach or consultant. I think that's absolutely vital. And then maybe if you haven't done estate planning or if that hasn't happened in a long time, that's one of those things that's like, maybe not inner circle, but most dentists do well enough that it makes sense to really get the estate planning piece figured out because things happen.

0:03:22.9 KD: And Derick, on that note, because I just did my trust in estate and that was really weird and creepy to be like, upon my death, this is what, like, it felt disgusting. I'm like, great. Like, yeah, yeah. What am I gonna do YOLO now? At what point, like do you feel like there needs to be a certain financial threshold that people should be at? Or is it like once you buy a practice you should have a trust? Because for me it was like, oh, our house, I only put it under my husband's name. Don't worry. When we were signing on title, they're like, are you sure? And I'm like, yeah, I'm sure. And they're like, but if something happens to him, you don't have the house. And I'm like, what's my worst case scenario? And they're like, well, if he's got someone else.

0:03:57.6 KD: And I'm like, if he's got someone else, he takes the house. Like, I don't care. I don't need it. We're good. But I started realizing if something happened to me, my business and my team weren't gonna need to be protected because it was all associated to Kiera and not within my estate and trust. So is there a certain level, Derick, that you recommend? And then I'll get back on track with this Core four?

0:04:15.6 DN: Sure.

0:04:16.4 KD: Almost up to the sexy six. I mean, you did give us six, so I think we could say sexy six, but...

0:04:21.4 DN: I like that.

0:04:22.0 KD: Should people have that estate in place?

0:04:27.0 DN: Well, there's a couple of basic things. Of course, if you have... Everybody should have a living will, in my opinion. Of course. So that people know what your wishes are. And once again, it feels a little morbid, but it can keep the family from fighting. If you're in a situation where do they keep you plugged in? Do they pull the plug? What do you want done? What are your wishes? It can really help a lot. I think everybody needs that. I think if you have children, of course, guardianship of your children, 100%. And then when we get into basics of assets, I think once you have a house or you have some substantial life insurance, like a real asset. Like if someone's just coming out of school and has student loan debt and they're single and everything, it's probably less important. But as soon as you have a real asset, I think you definitely need the basics of a basic will, a basic trust.

0:05:16.7 DN: And then once you start to get some substantial assets and I would say let's call it in excess of a couple of $100,000 of equity, of stuff being built up or a successful business that's producing and has assets, then I would definitely look at that next tier, which is where you start getting a little bit more into... It's not just like, "Oh, we're gonna dump all this money on our husband or wife or kids if we pass," but starting to look a little bit more multi generationally, starting to look at, "Okay, do I wanna dump this in their lap? Or is there a better way to put these assets to work so that they can create income that can support the types of things that we want our family to do?" And the big thing with estate planning, because I read a decent amount of books on this, is it really comes down to estate planning is traditionally about reducing taxes, right? Getting money from generation A to generation B and not getting beat up in probate and all the taxes that can happen. But the reality of legacy is it's about including your family, it's about including your kids. It's about being an example while you're alive so that when these assets do pass to them, they're a gift, not a burden.

0:06:30.7 DN: If I'm honest with you, like 80% to 90% of people who get sizeable estates, it ends up being more of a curse than a gift because they're not ready for it. And all of a sudden they've got all this money. They don't know how to handle it. They haven't had practice managing it. It can be a real problem. So I think the big thing with all of that is starting to become aware, figuring out what you want, what you want to pass on as a legacy in the form of values, in the form of things that you've learned in your life. And wisdom. If you do that and you really focus on that, create some structure around that. Good estate planning will supplement the tax part. But to me, a true estate plan and once you have real assets, you should be doing this includes that passing on of values, wisdom, some structure. To be having those conversations. Everybody wants to protect, "protect their kids, protect their spouse from money and taxes and all that kind of stuff." That is not preparing them for the world. And so I think if you want to have success, you need to be having these conversations. Nobody wants to talk about taxes. Nobody wants to talk about when I pass away. Nobody wants to talk about the dirty business of the metrics in your business and stuff, but truly, that's all the mortar that hold the bricks together and I feel like you're not doing anybody any favors if you're not having those conversations. So that's my two cent.

0:07:51.4 KD: No, I think that that's really wise advice and I appreciate it. This is why, guys, I love Derick, I love the financial people at Summit. We brought on financial experts and of course there is a little overlap, but I've just found that making sure you've got a good group of people around you to help, but gosh. As you were saying that, I just thought about these estates and it is weird, but I also talked about a study where they looked at like there is this game and they realized that not knowing was actually more stressful than knowing. So you not knowing what's gonna happen to you when you pass away actually causes an underlying stress. It's more stressful than having the conversations. You not knowing what's going on in your business actually causes more stress than knowing. Even if the numbers aren't great, even if it doesn't look good, like there's statistics that have proven this and studies been done. So it's one of those things where I agree with you. I think that the estates and the planning and the financial planning, but I also like that you talked about when you have real assets, that's when you need to do it.

0:08:52.0 KD: It was awkward and uncomfortable for me. I never thought that I was grown up enough. I'm like that's what my parents do. But I do believe that having that protected, it's a lot easier for me. I'm like if I go in a plane and I died tomorrow, team would be taken care of, my family would be taken care of. And I'm not worried that this work that I put in to give to the podcast community, to give to the dental community just going to go away because it's associated just with me. So I really think if you care about your patients and you care about... To me it's about the families. But I also love that you talked about not having it be a curse to your family too.

0:09:26.1 KD: On that note, Derick, this is like very off topic, but I am curious 'cause there is a buzz right now going around the book, Die with Zero. What are your take on Die with Zero versus having an estate? Because the whole premise of Die with Zero, for those of you who haven't read it, is that we basically spend all of our money. We're not really building up generational wealth and we're like living life. Of course you're supposed to Die with Zero. You're not sitting here for retirement. I've got weird feelings 'cause I think we're going to live until we're 120 years old. So exciting. We'll all be working as like 100 year old people at all the stores because we've spent all of our money. But what's your take on this? Die with Zero, because you do a lot of financial planning, you do a lot of the investments, you do ERC, so employee retention credits and R&D research and development, which is a huge tax savings for businesses. What's your take on building up wealth versus dying with zero? Just from a fun, juicy topic to hash with you.

0:10:21.4 DN: Well, what I'm going to say may not be sexy, but I really think it's a personal choice. I think some people want to spend every bit of it and that's totally fine, and I think there's some merit to that. If you're having a conversation with your family and saying, hey, listen, my spouse and I, we're going to spend all of this because we want you guys to make your own way. As long as that conversation is being had and you're really doing it from a place of, you know what, I want my kids to really have the full life experience, that's great. Other people. It's really important to them to pass assets onto their kids because they've been through some really tough stuff and they don't want their kids to go through maybe third world problems, maybe second or first world problems and have to go through some of that. Because there's no question when you're really struggling financially, it can be really disheartening. And a lot of people don't get out of that hole.

0:11:13.2 DN: So I think it's a personal choice, but I don't have a problem with it. But the truth is, it's really tricky to manage. When exactly am I gonna die and how am I going to end up with zero? I'd rather have extra because otherwise those last couple of days might be a little scary. So I'm just a believer in do the things that create a powerful mindset for you. Do the things that make your life higher quality. So if higher quality is, I don't wanna worry about passing it on and I'm gonna live my life in such a way that that's not a problem, that's great. If you want to go multi generational and that makes you feel really powerful and you use that as a catalyst to help your spouse and your children and their children to really think about the world in a powerful way, then I think that can also be really advantageous. So I think ultimately it comes down to what creates the most powerful mindset for you, what creates a higher quality of life? Because that's the game we're playing. It's not a money game, it's a quality of life game.

0:12:14.6 KD: Derick, you gave me and my husband some really solid advice. I actually think of you often on. You said Kiera, there's always the financial ROI, but there's an emotional ROI, which there is no number that you can put in there. It really is this emotional ROI. And so that has stuck with me so much because I'm like my financial advisor, Ryan Isaac, with Dennis advisor. She's like, Holy bank accounts, Kiera, because I have, like, squirrels of all my savings accounts. And I'm like, profit first guru to the Nth degree. And he was like, should we consolidate any of these? And I'm like, it gives me an emotional ROI where I know and I can sleep well at night, that I've got money for the business and I've got money for Jason and I've got money for this. And I know what I have there, even though it seems psychotic to a lot of other people. But you really help me see that the decisions I make, and I also do think a lot of our financial decisions truly are associated with emotions more than they are of what makes sense on paper. That's why people sell when the stock market goes down, even though they should hold. It's just one of those things where I think there's a lot more emotions.

0:13:18.6 KD: So, Derick, you and I, we've had quite a few awesome conversations, but I think you came really hot into Dental A Team's group. We had a Doctor Mastermind in January, so we've started new things. Guys, we have our one-on-one consulting, but I also wanted to build a community. So our doctors all get together once a month just solely to talk doctor in business and strategy, and then office managers get together once a month as well. So it's been really fun to build this. And Derick, without you being at one of these Masterminds. ERCs came up as a really hot topic because the conversation that we were having together as a group, and I won't share all of it because it is an intimate group and it is private for our team and our clients. But the idea was, how do we prepare for the economy? How do we prepare for this potential economic downfall? What can we be doing as business owners today? And one of the members said, ERCs and R&D are great tax strategy things. Which is honestly why I refer so many people to you, Derick, is because you have helped people get a lot of money ethically, and there's a lot of people out there doing ERC and R&D that is not ethical and not right for all businesses.

0:14:30.1 KD: But you know the dental space. You work with dentists all the time. Like, you're very well versed. You told me you did like 11,000 the other day, which was insanity when you said those numbers. But I do think and that's why I wanted to pop on the podcast today to talk about your sexy six that you should have. But also, how can people be strategic as business owners to prepare for potential economic downfall? I think you play one of the greatest roles in that, of helping people safeguarding cash flow. So do you kind of want to take it. That was like what was a spurring topic and now how you come in like stage left. Here comes Derick, guys, to help show some really cool things that a lot of our clients are doing, if it feels right to them.

0:15:13.9 DN: Yeah, well, the first thing, Kiera, to prepare for the economy and everything is, I think the number one thing most dentists can do because, let's be honest, most dentists make pretty good money, right. A lot of the clients I work with make enough that they're in the big boy tax brackets. So I think the first thing you can do that is immune to the economy is be efficient with your taxes. If you're overpaying taxes. And statistically, when I worked with Garrett Gunderson, and we did an audit of a bunch of doctors and dentists and I think 95% or more of them were overpaying taxes. And I think it was like $11,500 per 100,000 of income, right? So a lot of our dentists, that would be 40, 50, $60,000 a year that they're overpaying taxes. And there's quite a bit more than that that you can do. But just that one thing that's not going to change with the economy doesn't go up and down with the market. It doesn't change.

0:16:10.8 DN: I mean, they do things with the tax code every handful of years. But the reality is being more efficient there will automatically put probably for most dentists, $50 to $100,000 a year back in your pocket that you'll have more. So that's the first thing because...

0:16:26.9 KD: I'm going to ask we talk about this as a blanket statement, but me sitting over here as like but I don't know, my CPA tells me this is what I owe in taxes. How do I know if I'm overpaying or underpaying on my taxes? I hope no one's underpaying. Pay your taxes, guys. Be happy to live in the place you live. It's a good thing. It's a good thing to do, but not [0:16:44.9] ____. How do we know what's a good checks and balance on that?

0:16:50.4 DN: Well, I think a general rule of thumb is have a second and you got to shell out a little money for this. Don't do it in April, right? Do it in May or June, but go to a second CPA and have them, pay them for their time to look at your books, see what they say, see what they see. Now that's just a real simple sort of checks and balance. Let me make sure that we're not missing anything. A lot of different CPAs and a lot of different groups have things that they know about their own little tricks. I mean, the tax code, it's really funny. There's about I don't remember what it is. It's like 20 pages of how to pay taxes and like 4,000 pages of how not to pay taxes, right. All the tax code. It's really about...

0:17:31.9 KD: I feel like it's a really terrible game of Monopoly with this instruction manual that I can't even get through to know how to play the game, but there's all these rules is how I feel about taxes. I don't know if you agree with me, but I'm like, great, another rule that I didn't even know we could do and apply, and I could have gone and don't stop, just pass go. Like, oh, if I only would have known.

0:17:54.7 DN: I know. I've been playing this game 15 years, and I would say once a quarter I stumble across something pretty significant where I'm like, oh. And usually I'm working with the client, and they're telling me, Hey, I'm working with my CPA or this advisor or this person, and they're having us do X, Y, and Z. And I'm like, I don't know what that is. Let's find out more, right, so we dig in. We're actually working on several getting them vetted by attorneys right now. Some different tax strategies that we haven't really rolled out yet. But we're always checking into this stuff because, like you said, the rabbit hole is really deep. And just like, everything tax code is open to interpretation, so it's understanding what you can and can't do. And a lot of times it just comes down to the details of not just what you do, but how you do it. So, yeah, it does go pretty deep. And the nice thing is, Kiera, we can scrape a lot of the cream off the top, right? Like sort of the 80 20 rule. We can really help you with a lot of the really obvious stuff, and a lot of other CPAs can do that.

0:18:53.0 DN: I'm not a CPA, but we work with CPAs all the time. Our role comes in on top of what a CPA does. So a CPA does your regular, how to pay yourself, how to write things off, how to structure income and different kinds of things. And there are a couple of tricks they can teach you. But on top of that, a lot of them don't help you create new tax write-offs or tax efficiency. We do come in and do that. Some investment advisors do that kind of stuff. And there are quite a few different tools out there that... A lot of people assume their CPA is gonna come to them with like, Hey, you should do this tax strategy, put money over here, or move it around like this. That's actually not what most CPAs do.

0:19:35.0 DN: So don't expect that of your CPA. That is more of a tax strategist or a lot of investment advisors get into some of that. And there are different tools within entity structuring and donations and investments and other kinds of things. So there's not any one person who does all of that. What we do at our team is actually I work with a couple of different professionals because I can't be a pro at everything, know all the nuance of everything. Just like I can't be an estate planning attorney, so we know enough to identify and help people with, Hey, this is a good possibility or this is something we should look at for your situation. Your CPA will usually be a part of that conversation, but at the end of the day, what you're saying, to try and understand it all is pretty tough.

0:20:19.4 DN: I think finding people you trust, good people who aren't just there to sell you a bill of goods, but really who understand that this is a long-term relationship and that the better they do for you, the longer you're gonna stick with them. They're not just in it like, I don't know, there's a lot of people who are turn and burn. They find someone do a transaction and then they're down the road. But really find people who you feel good with and get them to collaborate on your behalf. And I think you'll end up in a lot better situation. But that's one thing people can do in the economy is taxes. Taxes mean cash. Cash creates what I would call durability. In other words, durability to handle the bumps in life. I think the balance that we wanna be aware of is everybody's trying to be efficient with their money.

0:21:08.2 DN: Get it working, get it growing, get leverage, all these kinds of things. But efficiency and durability are kind of at odds with one another. The more efficient you get, the less durable you are. So the simplest example to show that was the supply chain, it was super efficient. Goods showed up just in time. Everything was totally balanced on a razor's edge and then COVID comes along or a guy drives a boat into the Suez or into the canal, over in the Middle East and all of a sudden the whole supply chain falls apart because everything's balanced on a knife's edge. I know when people show you numbers and we talked about ROE return on emotion versus return on investment, everyone wants to show you the optimal ROI balance that thing on a knife's edge.

0:21:55.6 DN: That's not how life works. It's never a smooth flat paved road, it's dirt road, it's hills, it's turns, it's bumps. So you wanna be efficient, but you also want to have durability. So having cash creates that or access to cash. Truth be told, with everything going on with banking, I would not be someone who would depend on bank lines of credit. I would want to have a certain amount of cash, bank lines have their place. But I would not want them as my, catch me if I fall money. You'd definitely want to have good reserves in that. And so one of the tools we're using right now to help people if they don't have that or to bolster that is something like the employee retention credit. It's a one-time thing that happened during COVID and basically the government came in and said, Hey, we have all these rules and you've gotta follow them it's the law right now.

0:22:46.6 DN: And because of that, it may have impacted your business. So if it impacted your business and made you the... The line right now is 10% less efficient or effective. So that doesn't mean you had to lose 10% in revenue or in profits. It just means that you had to deal with a lot of extra things that slowed you down. And what I hear from a lot of my dentists, this is kind of the running joke is, we saw less patients, but we made more money because everybody was getting braces because of masks. [chuckle] Or getting ortho done or... People had extra money so they did those procedures that are a little bit more expensive, so it looks on paper like you were more profitable, but in the meantime you took a ton of risk.

0:23:30.8 DN: You had to deal with patients waiting out in the car, you had to deal with extra cleaning, you had to rearrange your schedules, you had to do all kinds of things. If someone was sick in the office or their kid was sick. Under normal circumstances, if your child gets sick, mom or dad still comes to work with COVID, mom and dad had to quarantine for 14 days, even if they didn't ever get it, those kind of losses add up. So if... Even if you made money, you might still qualify for these credits and you can get a substantial amount of money up to about $26,000 per employee, right now. And I won't go into crazy details on it, but at the end of the day it's... If you've got 10 employees, that's pretty close to a quarter million dollars that you could potentially get.

0:24:14.6 DN: And most people are pretty close to that. People who work in dentistry get paid well enough, all the employees and such that they're hitting the caps so that you as the employer who took all the risk, who paid your employees, who worked through it, that's what this is for, it is the government saying you had to work with one arm tied behind your back, we're gonna come in and pick up some of the wages and we're gonna reimburse those to you. So most of our dentists, that's on the low end, probably $50 or $75,000 for a very small office all the way up. We do have some people who are getting more than seven figures back. And that's a great way to build your nest egg, build a bucket of cash right now that will really insulate you from whatever's going on in the world because we don't quite know.

0:25:03.4 DN: But I think there's pretty good consensus that the next couple of years won't be nearly as robust as the last few years. We were... The economy was on fire, government dumped $6 trillion into the economy. So now we're... We need to slow that down. It's actually a healthy thing. It's always painful, but it's... If you want to think of it in terms of health, like today's the... The next year or two might be a rest year. It's not the workout year. [laughter] Let the economy recover, let everybody stabilize. And having cash is going to allow you to absorb any bumps that might come your way. So I think that's a great way to do that. So I think that's an easy one that most dentists are going to qualify for because just if you're in healthcare, you had pretty strict mandates.

0:25:51.5 DN: You had to do a lot of cleaning, you had to do a lot of extra stuff that really did have an impact and we're happy to talk through it with you because I think for most dentists it's a no-brainer. There's no pressure to do it. If you feel like it's not... You don't qualify, honestly, we're working with 100s of clients at any given time. I think right now we're working with three or 400 clients actively. It doesn't matter to me, we're not gonna push you into something you don't want to do. But I think if you've heard about it or if you're getting all the spam emails or the robo calls or whatever and you want to talk to a real person who understands dentistry, we'd be happy to go through it with you. In 15 minutes you'll have a pretty good idea of how it works, whether you qualify. And the nice part is, there's no cost upfront. So if you don't get money, you don't pay anything. So the risk is really very low. So we'd love to help if we can, but that'll put you in a good spot for the next couple of years.

0:26:46.6 KD: And that was honestly something that I just feel, people should take advantage of in my opinion. I remember feeling guilty, Derick, taking PPP, I felt ridiculously guilty. But oh my gosh, I don't feel like I really need this. We're doing well, our business is growing, but I also feel like at the same time... And there was a huge thing, I'm gonna get real dicey and I know this is gonna get hot topic and you're either gonna like keep going or shut the podcast off. I'm not sure...

[laughter]

0:27:12.2 KD: But when it was going to be that student loans were going to be forgiven and reimbursement checks were going to be sent out and... The threads on social media were hot and spicy. But my thoughts were, was I upset about it?

0:27:26.8 KD: Heck yeah. Jason and I freaking scrim saved, we paid off his freaking loans. I was angry if you talked to Ryan Isaac, that was one that just heated me more than most things. But just because that didn't bless me, why should I be upset about that for other people? And so I feel like these are opportunities that if it works for you and it feels right to you, why not take advantage of it? The money's there. People are getting it if you qualify for it. So I'm just a big person of, you know what, if it's right for you and you feel good about it, I would at least explore it as a business owner to see if I qualify. Because for me right now as businesses, I think one of the best things you can do to prepare and safeguard your business because if the business fails, we all fail.

0:28:10.7 KD: Is to have cash on hand right now. Cash is going to help you feel secure. Who knows when the... When that bank run heat in Silicon Valley, I was like, oh shoot. I freaked out. I was worried about my clients. What do we do? I was reaching out to financial advisors asking, what they're doing for their clients. We are going into uncertain times and I feel like safeguarding and preparing and getting you that insulation if you will, to where you could run lean and mean for a couple more months and continue on to serve and bless other people, I think is wise. So if that's with ERC, if that's with RND, if that's with other things, with tax strategy by all means. But I would say make sure you are boosting up that cash right now, preparing and insulating your businesses I think is a really wise thing.

0:28:55.8 KD: Which is why Derick, I think you guys... You guys came up with the mastermind, not me, not me chatting about it, it was a lot of the clients talking about it because it is a great way to serve and to help in a way that really is ethical and honest. I get weird, conservation easement that doesn't jive with me, but it jives with some other people. So you as an individual have to decide what's right for you. But Derick, if people are interested, how can they connect with you just to see if they even qualify for it and then make the decision from there being an educated consumer as well.

0:29:26.3 DN: Yeah. A real simple way is obviously go to our website, which is biglifefinancial.com. We have a special page for The Dental A Team because we work with you guys all the time. So it's biglifefinancial.com/DAT, either all capital or all lowercase. Don't mix them up or it doesn't work, but. [laughter]

0:29:48.2 KD: Don't be tap guys be DAT dat, dat.

0:29:50.8 DN: DAT. Yep. So that's the easiest way to put you right on my calendar and we can make sure that we get in touch with you and help with whatever, but even if you have questions, things you're not sure about, you want a second opinion on something. I'm not an expert at everything. I wish I was, but I have access to really incredible smart people. We've spent the last, I don't know, 10 plus years really putting together people who are great because as I work with clients, I'm looking at what are their needs and they ask me questions and if I don't know, I go and find someone who's really smart. And after we've done this long enough, most of the questions that dentists have, we've got someone who can help them with. So even...

0:30:32.0 KD: Which is awesome.

0:30:33.0 DN: Yeah. That's a big part of our sort of value add is just help the client doing what's right for you as a dentist, as the client we think is always the most profitable thing for everybody.

0:30:44.0 KD: Agreed. And the reason I love Derick, for many reasons as he knows Garrett Gunderson, if you guys have read Killing Sacred Cows, I was like, what? You guys are that closely connected. I want a signature, Derick. I just think Garrett is an awesome person 'cause he is very unconventional. But Derick, I love that he works solely with dentists, primarily with dentists and so working with that many dentists. I feel like for me I like to niche. That's why I recommend HDA because they work primarily with dentists, dentist advisors because they work with dentists. Derick with Big Life Financial because they primarily work with dentists. Dental A Team, we work primarily with dentists. So when you get people that are experts in their field, they're able to give you better guidance because they know the industry forwards and backwards.

0:31:30.1 KD: So, Derick, I appreciate you. That was a real fun one for me.

[laughter]

0:31:34.2 KD: These are things that I felt so dumb on when I first started owning a business. And I found the more I expose myself, the more I learned, the more I ask questions. Don't be afraid to be "dumb in this area." Ask the questions because we don't know it. 4,000 pages of tax. Forget that. I'm not about to go read that, but I'm gonna go talk to people who know the industry and know it really well to help me. So, Derick, I appreciate that. Guys go check it out biglifefinancial.com/dat for Dental A Team. And Derick, he's working with quite a few of our clients. He's been able to help a lot of our clients. And so if it makes sense for you guys, at least go check because I think safeguard your businesses now.

0:32:11.6 KD: I don't wanna be talking to you in six months from now when you're saying, I wish I would've done that because you chose not to make the call or you chose not to execute, to find out and then you're wishing you would have. So don't be that person. Don't be the person who's sitting there building their house on the sand. Be the person building their house on the rock that's gonna be secure when the floods come, when the rains come. That way you're prepared. So Derick, thank you for being here today. I super appreciate you.

0:32:36.6 DN: Loved it Kiera. Thanks for the conversation.

0:32:39.0 KD: Awesome. All right guys, as always, thank you for listening and I'll catch you next time on The Dental A Team podcast.

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0:32:47.0 KD: And that wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A Team podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.

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