Why Dentists Need Their CPA and Financial Advisor Working Together

On this episode of The Dentist Money Show, Matt and Tom discuss why dentists need their CPA and financial advisor working together. They explore how better communication and coordination can help prevent costly mistakes, improve financial decision making, and keep a dentist’s personal finances and practice finances working toward the same goals. They also talk about why dentists shouldn’t have to play middleman between their financial professionals and should have a team that communicates, understands the bigger picture, and is aligned with your goals.

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Podcast Transcript

Matt: Welcome back to the Dentist Money Show where we help Dentist make smart financial decisions. I’m a guy named Matt and I’m here with tax free Tom. Tom, how are ya?

Tom Whalen: Go. I’m good, man. How you doing?

Matt: Good. Do we like this nickname tax free?

Tom Whalen: It’s a lot less words than the last one, so I think it’s easier to remember.

Matt: What what the last one was something about tax guru expert. Yeah, something. Tax free Tom is better, yeah.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, yeah. So I I think I can remember this one a little better. Right.

Matt: okay, so you survived. You were just telling me that you barely made it home from your vacation.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, we had to make a few pit stops for some tornado type weather, but we we made it home, in one piece and ready

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: to give fire back up today.

Matt: It’s always a little scary when you’re traveling with the kids in the middle of seventy, eighty mile an hour winds. It’s a little scary. Is it tornado season? I don’t know this because I’ve y

Tom Whalen: I don’t know that either. I know that yesterday was tornado day, but I don’t know if it’s tornado season. So yeah. And it was it was crazy. yes, it’s spring training, something like that.

Matt: Yeah. You’re like, it felt like we were it might be the off season, but they kicked up it’s at least training camp, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay, well I’m glad you made it home and appreciate ya you doing this. Always love bringing the the tax insight for for everybody. So yeah,

Tom Whalen: Yeah, I feel like I feel like it’s been a minute, so I’m glad to be back.

Matt: It has been a minute and it’s always good to add these These tax topics. So just to give some context for people, we had our third annual Dentist Dentist Money Summit this past year. It was our our our final summit. Now that people kind of now now the word is out that it was our final summit. We are not foregoing events entirely. We’re just revamping how we’re doing things. So more to come on that. But it was our final summit in its in its current form. And part of that summit With this partnership we have with you, Tom, and and Marshall and your team, we thought it would be good at the summit to talk about the importance of having your advisor and accountant on the same page and having a coordinated effort there. And I wanna I wanna highlight this again, as we as hopefully everyone knows, on this podcast, we’re just focused on education, right? We just want to make sure that. People are getting something of value out of this and being able to apply it to their life. So we’re talking today, obviously, at Dentist Advisors. We’re a dental-specific firm for financial planning, investment management, and now tax and accounting. So obviously we do this in-house now at Dentist Advisors, but we’re going to be talking today broadly about just the the importance of as a dentist having a team in place. Whether that’s under one roof or just making sure that your team’s aligned. Anything you want to add to that, Tom, as we as we get in?

Tom Whalen: I I do want to emphasize like you just said it, but I’ll just kind of reiterate. We’re not here to to demand that you have all services under one roof. We see some efficiencies as to why that would be a good idea. but I don’t want anybody to hear like, we’ll only work with you if you’ve got all of your services under one roof. We just want to make sure that you’ve got a good team in place and that you can communicate well with your team and that they’re they’re directing you in the right the right way. That’s yeah, just reiterating what you just said there.

Matt: Yeah, exactly. Just not having them in silos. So we did this at the summit where we had a panel, you and Marshall, a couple of our advisors, going through some of these questions around what, you know, some specific examples and just things that we’re seeing of why this is so critical. So that’s what we want to go through today. But again, as we go through this, just a reminder, the show is brought to you by Dentist Advisors. if you if we’re going through this and things questions come up, you’re like, man, I need to talk to them, you can always go to dentistadvisors.com. Click on the book free consultation button, whether that be for taxes, financial planning, or both, we are here to help. so let’s let’s start off broadly, Tom, around before we get into like the nuts and bolts of of of alignment between your team. I think it’s important to maybe set the stage around how critical it is, because we get this question a lot, how critical is it to have a dental specific team? So dental specific advisor. So I’ll I’ll maybe highlight when we talk about team. Some of the key components of that. So CPA, of course, tax and accounting, bookkeeping, ad you know, financial advisor, those are two key members. And then maybe more transactional type relationships, depending on the situation, would be people like attorneys, a broker, insurance, insurance agents. Yeah, b yeah,

Tom Whalen: Like your banker maybe.

Matt: banker’s a great one. So let’s just talk maybe broadly and get your thoughts on the importance of having Those members of your team being dental specific versus a generalist.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, I think a generalist can do a good job for sure. but they I think a dental specific person provider or whatever, has a higher chance of doing a good job in their respective field and can kind of see around the corner, right? Like they’ve they’ve probably been through a situation like yours, right? If you’re buying a practice and like working with a banker, they understand the cash flow, the ad vacc, to understand how much can we expect to make, what is my debt service gonna look like, or let’s just say us on the accounting and consulting side, we can help project out like what is this practice going to do in your hands versus the seller who may not do specialty type work, but we know that you do endo, you know, molar endo and you’re doing the keeping the extractions in house. We can help project out like not see the future necessarily, but bring up some maybe out of the box things that let’s just say a generalist who’s only done one of these in their career hasn’t seen a ton of these transactions isn’t going to be able to see around the corner as much. Again, like they can do a good job. I I just think that when you have a dental specific person who’s been through a bunch of these different nuanced transactions, they’re going to help provide better consultative type advice that you’re just not going to get elsewhere.

Matt: Yeah. Totally agree. The other part that comes to mind for me is between our two teams, between our, you know, the accounting and and and tax team, between our team, we work with easily over a thousand dentists now. Easily, almost two thousand, probably

Tom Whalen: yeah, easily for sure yeah. Yeah.

Matt: nearing two thousand. So we we talk a lot about kind of generally about like the comparison trap, right? Not comparing yourself to others. However, I think there’s actually a positive spin on this when we talk about comparison in the sense of establishing benchmarks and understanding where, like we get asked all the time, like where do I stand versus other dentists? And I think that’s a there’s a difference between comparison and a frame of reference of saying like we have a frame of reference. We have the ability to benchmark your progress and to your point, maybe not see the future, but kind of be able to say like, based on what we’re seeing with cash flows and how much you’re saving and what what’s happening with your practice and the area you’re in. Like we kind of know w we can get more specific on a projection than a generalist advisor would be able to do. And then also kind of taking that further, being in only in dental and being connected in the space and building relationships that we all have, your team and our team, over the last easily over a decade for us going on two decades, you guys close as well.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, we’re getting there, yep.

Matt: Yeah, like how connected we are to the space to say, if you are behind in an area, you need this or that. Being able to connect you with the right people. Again, this can’t be overstated around the value of just having a team, that peace of mind of having these people that all we do is dentistry. It’s we live and breathe it.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, I mean we we get asked I I think our number one question we get is generally how are we how’s the practice doing? How am I doing, et cetera, whatever. And then the the next most frequent question is how’s everybody else doing? Right. So that like you

Matt: Yep. Yep.

Tom Whalen: said, that comparison game, maybe on Facebook in your house isn’t ideal, but when you’re running a business, you want to know the trajectory that you’re on. And like you said, we can help come up with a ton of data points, a ton of benchmarking, and then format our planning specific to you on this trajectory that we have seen before, time and time again. We know what

Matt: Yeah. Well to you

Tom Whalen: works, and not to say this is only a few buckets, but but when we work with almost two thousand dentists, it’s like we’ve we’ve seen your situation before. Everybody’s special, but your situation might not be special, if that makes sense.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Well, no, and I think there is a peace of mind in that of like the collective knowledge that you’re getting, the problems that have already been solved time and time and time again, well before you brought that problem to us. It’s like, yeah, we’ve solved this multiple times. We’ve seen it multiple times.

Tom Whalen: And like the the client is not paying for our education. If that you know what I mean?

Matt: Yeah. Exactly.

Tom Whalen: Like we’ve had manufacturing companies come to us and say, Hey, we want to work with you because my friend’s a dentist loves using you. And we’ll say, Listen, we can do a tax return, but there’s all these deductions and credits out there that we don’t really know about, and you’re gonna pay for us to learn a lot of this. I don’t think it makes the most sense. So

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: I don’t think clients should be paying for somebody’s education to to learn what somebody else would already know.

Matt: It’s so funny, Tom. You just brought that up. I just had a broker come into our office yesterday, but just to like basically soliciting not in a bad way, just networking. We’re networking, right? So he walks in our office, hands me his business card, and he’s like, Hey, we do business sales. Like that’s what our business is. I’m not obviously getting a name names, but they that’s what they do. They’re brokers for small businesses. And he said, Hey, we’re trying to network. We know you guys work with dentists. Tell me about what you’re doing, all this stuff. So we’re just chatting. And he’s like, I think we could be a ton of, you know, add a ton of value for your dentists if they’re looking to transition. Do you work with a lot in that area? You know, that are in that you know, that stage of their career. I was like, Yeah, we this is we do this a ton. And he’s like, Great, great. That sounds good. And then as we’re like wrapping up the conversation, so funny. He goes, By the way, like, what do like how do dentists like how do they value their practices? Like how are these

Tom Whalen: That’s it.

Matt: Businesses valued? Like, is it like a multiple? Is it off collection like or is it off revenue? And I was like, you don’t even know. And like this is what you do. But he was a generalist business broker. He knew nothing.

Tom Whalen: Right, like he he might stumble on he might be able to stumble on a good sale for a dental practice. That would happen. But it could also not happen. Right.

Matt: Yeah, maybe. Yeah. It might not. And the new one it was just so glaring as I was talking to him and hearing and he was asking again, he was asking great questions and he was genuine wanting to know. But I was like, you have no idea. So to your point around your if you run into it, someone that’s a journalist that’s learning dentistry for the first time, you are literally paying for their education along the way. So that’s a really, really great point there. okay, so hopefully we’ve established kind of the overall arching, if anything, if you’re out there l thinking about hiring whether it be an advisor, CPA, an attorney, someone in in lending, I think it’s really critical that and there’s enough out there, it’s not just us, there’s enough quality advisors out there in this space that one of the check boxes you should be looking at is do they understand and know dentistry? Do they have experience? even if they’re not exclusive to dentists,

Tom Whalen: Yeah.

Matt: it’s do they work with enough dentists to be able to know your world? So it’s the biggest

Tom Whalen: Then go agree.

Matt: Thing. let’s g take this further now and talk about the importance of having alignment, we’ll call it. It doesn’t have to be under one roof, but alignment between these team members specifically will the the remainder of the discussion will be around your financial advisor and your CPA. So let’s just to go there, Tom. Why is it important for dentists and fin for the for the dentist to have a financial advisor and accountant aligned? What comes to

Tom Whalen: Yeah, I think

Matt: mind for you?

Tom Whalen: yeah, to me it’s like the practice. I’m just gonna operate that under the assumption that we’re talking about practice owners right now, because I think a lot of what we are talking

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: About will kind of lend itself to that. But

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: like the practice is is where it all begins, right? Like that’s where all the the income is generated that w we have decisions to make from the business perspective, but we also have bus decisions to make Once that cash flow leaves the practice and now goes into your personal account. The way I view us as the accounting consulting bookkeeping tax side of things is we’re helping the business. Of course, we’re helping the individual, but I don’t, I, the CP, I’m not doing investments. I’m not managing investments. I have no idea what you have in your personal liquidity, what your investments are. I can kind of guess based on what your investment tax forms might show, but I don’t know exactly. again, I’m not trained to to make that decision. So We wanna work closely with somebody again who’s in the dental space that understands w what a dentist is going through. like I said, we we kinda deal with more of the business side than personal. Of course, we’re gonna answer questions, but and and your advisor’s gonna answer questions on the business side of things too. But we wanna make sure that we, the CPA team and the the advisory team aren’t butting heads because if we’ve got an extra fifty to seventy five, hundred thousand dollars, whatever of cash laying around in the business, like what are we gonna do with it? We don’t want it to be Like we’re just completely butting heads every single time we need to make a decision on what to do, whether it’s pay down debt, invest in new equipment, invest personally. Maybe there’s some personal debts we need to clear up. there’s just so much to decide. Like everybody is constantly competing for your dollar. And if you if if it’s just an absolute war every single time we need to make that decision on what to do, it’s gonna be an absolute drag. So I think just if for nothing else, to make it easier on yourself and then again, to have like a unified plan of attack going forward. It might not

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: be like we might not have the same plan for every single client. In fact, I don’t think we do. but we we want to be on the same page to make sure that like w the the the ship is at least pointed in the same direction and we’re working together, not against each other. I think like we see that every now and again where it’s like, well, I want to invest. Well I want to pay down debt. And it’s like it’s just this battle and it it’s

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: it’s a drag.

Matt: Yeah, it absolutely is. So a couple of things when you’re going through that, I’m thinking kind of like think of like a Venn diagram, when you’re talking about the CPA being more on the business side, almost almost solely on the business side, right? With with a little bit of crossover on the Venn diagram over to the personal. But that then us on the advisor side, we’re the opposite. We’re very firmly placed in the personal side, with certainly a crossover. In the business side, of course. But bringing those two things together, you’re kind of covering all bases when you’ve got l this isn’t exact, but let’s say it’s 80-20 business to personal for you, 80-20 busin personal to business for us, you’re going to cross over. and then I love what you’re saying about not even if we’re like the worst case scenario is the CPA and the advisor are at war, but even in like more practical sense of just having general alignment and I think the biggest thing here that I think of all the time is there’s rarely like a black and white solution in any of this. It’s always just gonna be trade-offs. So you’re mentioning debt versus investing or or whatever it may be. I think just having the prof the your prof the professionals in your life who have that sign same mindset around like, hey, there’s no like right answer here. Here’s all the trade-offs that you that are that are gonna be that are gonna come from this decision and making sure that both sides are approaching it in that in that light versus what I think happens a lot. Tom, you know the CPAs are like, no, the only thing that we look at is how do you save taxes this year? I don’t care about anything else. That’s where I think it becomes like a quote unquote war between the advisor and the CPA. Is that what you’d say too?

Tom Whalen: I wholeheartedly agree with that. Yeah. of course we do we want to like mitigate taxes. We want to do our tax planning

Matt: Course.

Tom Whalen: and all that, but it’s not the number one thing we’re focused on.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. And and a lot of CPAs are, and that’s where we sometimes get into battles. We’ll get into this in a little bit later of like some specific situations that this can happen where we’re thinking over the totality of of their life and career, which I you obviously you guys because there’s alignment here, you guys are too. But a lot of times in the worst case, CPAs are thinking year to year to year, and we’re thinking as planners over the next 30 years. And that’s it, just that can create a lot of issues.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, and I think it’s tough for the client if the the teams are misaligned, because you might have two rock star providers in their respective fields. So it’s like, what’s the right answer? I

Matt: Yes.

Tom Whalen: Mean, so in the client is like dentists, they have high income, they have good cash flow, but they’re not necessarily trained in these fields, and it’s like I’m getting conflicting advice from two awesome people, I don’t know what to do, and then it’s it’s just tough for them to. have to be the one that makes a decision if we’re not getting at least a little bit of a line.

Matt: Yeah, definitely. let’s talk so let’s assume there’s alignment, right? But maybe we don’t know there’s alignment because there’s not there’s not good communication. So what issues come up that you’ve seen or just generally, you know, be maybe if it’s not specific, but just generally, again, outside of alignment when there’s not communication between both sides, between the advisor and the the CPA.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, I think like worst case scenario is that there’s big surprises and we need to I’ll just use a an example. It’s not like super common, but it has happened. And to me, this is like worst case scenario where new practice owner bought their practice, we didn’t think their income was gonna be that high. We did not wanna take a ton of accelerated appreciation. That’s pretty common for us. We projected out multiple years, but the advisor thought we were going to or just assumed that like hey we’re that’s what we’re gonna that’s what the account’s gonna do and then they did this big Roth conversion. We had no idea. Had we known, yes we would have accelerated more the depreciation, but we’re going through the our tax projections on a quarterly basis. Hey, just make sure we’re good, we’re good. Yep. And then all of a sudden at tax time we get a six figure Roth conversion plopped on our plate after business taxes are already filed. Hey, this isn’t what we planned for like to me, like that is worst case where it’s like we’ve been projecting cash flow wise from the business. We don’t need to like taxes are good. And then all of a sudden it’s like, hey, you owe forty five thousand dollars. my gosh, like there’s this big scramble, right? That to me is worst case when it’s big unexpected cash flow surprises one way or the other. And you know, we’ve been planning all along to not have it that way. So

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: Again, like there are situations where I think that’s an awesome move. But if it’s made without us knowing, then it’s just really, really difficult and it puts a strain on cash flow and it’s like, well, do we amend? Like we can, but then you know, just I don’t know, it just it just puts you in a pinch and it’s nobody likes that.

Matt: Yeah. I think that’s a great example, something that we’ve seen. I think, yeah, the the relationship between like cash flow deductions, retirement accounts. I think there’s so many moving parts there where again we live in one world, you live in another, like a day to day basis. If they’re if we’re not communicating, I kind of think of it the the analogy I would use would be like building a house or doing a remodel on a house. And like everyone kind of working in isolation and no one communicating about sequencing or you know, the plumber doesn’t know what the electrician’s doing and vice versa. Like that can get really messy if people don’t know what’s going on as like you said it earlier, it might be an incredible electrician, an incredible plumber, an incredible carpenter. But if they’re not talking to each other, they might be doing incredible work in isolation and screwing up the other person’s work.

Tom Whalen: I’m absolutely gonna be using that analogy going forward, so I I will give you credit when I use it, but I will be

Matt: Perfect. Perfect. I this is fresh on my mind because I’m closing on a house next week and we’re we’re I’m getting ready to do some remodeling things. And so it’s it’s on my mind as I’m tr I’m coordinating all of the different moving pieces.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, good deal.

Matt: So there you go. okay, so so from so we’re talking alignment, we’re talking communication, and again, I want to emphasize those are two very different things because if we just we we step back and say, again, there might be alignment on like philosophically, but again, if we’re not communicating well and we’re working in isolation, that still can cause a lot of problems. The other thing that I’d mention here, Tom, and I want to get your thoughts on from a communication, not even on like the technical like screw ups. Let’s say there’s alignment and we just happen to be working in isolation in parallel and it’s working fine. But I also think about this when it comes to not communicating, around the str the extra stress and effort and work it puts on the dentist. We’ve heard this a lot around, man, I’m really tired of playing middleman between my CPA and my advisor. Do you wanna speak to that a little bit?

Tom Whalen: Yeah, for sure. Th there are times where it’s like we can’t get good access to the advisor directly. So our next best option is to go through the dentist. Dentists obviously they’re they’ve got their schedules and like it dentist schedules are just hectic. They’re frantic, they’re you’ve got three minutes between patients or I’ve got this day off and that’s my admin day and I got some staff meetings and whatnot, like there’s just a lot going on. So if that’s our best option, that’s what we’re gonna do. But it might be weeks in between you know, weeks, months, whatever until we can get something back from the because the client has to go then to the advisor, advisor back to the client, client back to us. That can be a long gap. And if we’re trying to make some moves, whether that’s I don’t know, buying some extra equipment, or if we’re looking at making a hire, or what’s the cash flow look like on a new associate, what’s the break-even there? Do we like there’s just a lot that can happen in a couple of months time. but yeah, like you said, the added stress. It’s like if it’s summer and everybody’s on vacation and like life is good and like I don’t know, that’s fine. People maybe are in a low stress environment, but if we’re getting towards the end of the year or tax time, there’s different I mean, not not all months are created equally from a stress standpoint, right? So yeah, if we’re if we’re going months in between communications, but we need to make decisions in less than months, it just

Yeah, it puts this extra stress on a already stressful job or career for a doc. So it’s just so nice when we can go send you guys a message on Slack and just say, hey, this is what I need. I’m doing a tax projection. Are there any capital gains I need to worry about? Or are there any Roth

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: Conversions I need to worry about? Like it’s so, so easy. The dentist doesn’t even need to worry about it. And then from our perspective too, it’s just less stress on us because I’ve got this, we’ll just say. I to say ticking time bomb, but that’s what I’m going to say. And I can just get an answer that same day without needing to coordinate four different schedules. It’s just super, super easy.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. I have a specific example that literally just happened within the line with yesterday and today. The meeting is is tonight. have a client who is looking to potentially upgrade their home. We’ve been talking about this for several years. They’re working with Jake on the accounting team, who’s great. And so I’ve been talking to my client about this and going over, you know, logistics and like they’re like, can we just meet tonight and talk about it? I was like, absolutely. So they sent me the, you know, they’re sending me like the details of the home where they want to talk about cash flow of this. And then Jake messages me separately and he’s like, hey, can I hop on that meeting? I think it’ll just be easier if we’re all on it together. We can talk about it together. And I was like, Absolutely. So now Jake’s on the meeting together. We’re all gonna be in alignment. We’re all gonna so there’s no past, there’s no games of telephone after between anybody. It’s just we’re all on the call together. Jake can bring the data on the business side. I can talk about the personal side. I’ve known the client for almost 10 years now. Jake’s newer to the relationship, so there’s a lot of historical context there. It just makes it so much cleaner and easier. This is a personal decision for them, but there’s so many moving parts on the business side that Jake needs to be a part of.

Tom Whalen: Yep. Yeah, it’s like to use the home references again. Like the client doesn’t need to be the general contractor here, right? They’re not lining up schedules, quarterbacking everything. And then after that meeting, there might be some takeaways, some homework items that again, the client doesn’t need to be like, okay, CPA team, are you sure you got that? Advisory team, are you sure you got

Matt: Nope. It’s just Jake and I talking, yeah.

Tom Whalen: Yeah? And what I think works really, really well is the fact that like in I’ll just use this example. Like you might Again, after this meeting, you might have a couple of homework items, Jake might have a couple of homework items, but you’re keeping each other accountable, right? Like might not be able to do his without you, and you might not be able to do yours without Jake. So the client doesn’t need to keep people accountable. It’s it’s the professionals are counting on each other. So if I want to get my stuff done, I’m gonna say, hey Matt, like where’s this at? And vice versa. So we’re we’re on it, right? Like I think

Matt: Yep.

Tom Whalen: that works really, really well.

Matt: It just and it just again, I can’t emphasize enough the level of the the the peace of mind and relief it provides the client,

Tom Whalen: Mm.

Matt: where it’s just like we they they show up to the meeting, we all talk it out, and then from there we do our thing. And then we communicate to them when needed and and bring things back to them as needed. But they’re not, again, to your point, playing that general contractor. It’s so it’s huge. so you mentioned an example on a mistake that can be made or that was made possibly when it comes to like a big Roth conversion with with lack of communication. let’s talk about maybe a mistake that was avoided via communication. I have a a specific example that I’ll bring and I want to see if if you have anything to add or or any other examples. But a a sp a specific example of a of a mistake avoided by having proactive Alignment and communication between advisor and CPA. This is multiple times this has happened where sizable amount cash sitting in the business. And advisor on our side, we’re like, hey, we’re up some cash sitting in the business, probably more than you need. let’s pull that out and put it in our brokerage account. Or pull it out and pay out some, you know, whatever whatever it is. But let’s let’s say invest that money. Well, we’ve now learned over the years. and we push very hard to have proactive communication, whether it be an internal to our team our CPA team here, or if they’re working with someone else, at least bringing this up to the CPA and communicating, because what can happen is A, there’s a reason that CPA wants that cash there, specifically because there’s maybe a basis problem. That is what has come up time and time again and what confuses dentists a lot. But if you don’t have communication with the advisor and CPA, and we just say, Hey, client, pull out a hundred grand and go invest it in a brokerage account without talking to the CPA. All of a sudden, depending on the situation with the entity structuring and basis, CPA freaks out like, whoa, no, there’s a Yeah,

Tom Whalen: Gains, right?

Matt: exactly. There’s a reason why we don’t want to do that. So can you speak to that or any other example that you have seen, Tom?

Tom Whalen: Yes, the basis one is like that is I would say pretty prevalent. and that happens when you buy a bunch of equipment or bunch of stuff, we’ll call it, and and you buy it with debt. So you’re not paying cash for it. So that has to happen. And then also you take a bunch of accelerated depreciation. So we buy five hundred grand worth of equipment, we accelerate the depreciation. So we haven’t really paid any cash because we’re just making some debt payments. But maybe we haven’t paid a ton yet. So that’s why our cash looks so strong. But our debt’s really high. So like there has to be a few things that have happened in order for there to be a basis issue. Again, bought a bunch of stuff, took a ton of depreciation, and we bought that stuff with debt. So like that kind of lays the groundwork. But again, if the communication’s not there, there could very well be a situation where a client’s got an extra hundred, two hundred thousand dollars in the checking account above and beyond normal operating capital needs. advisory team says, let me see your balance sheet or like what does your cash look like? Yep, got a ton of it. Let’s go invest it. Take it out. Like that, yeah, that would would cause a capital gain.

Matt: Cause some issues.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, we’re taking out more than we have in basis. So yeah, having those con conversations of like what but what is basis? What is my basis specifically? What’s it gonna look like towards the end of year? because and it’s it’s not that we can’t go below zero in basis like today. It just has to be zero by the end of That’s I think a little bit misunderstood sometimes too. But there might be a plan in place to restore it back to zero by the end of the year, in which case we’d say, okay, we can dip into the negative for now. because we know that we’re gonna finish strong. We just close up a couple of big cases, cash coming in next week, whatever. it’s like that’s a situation where that communication is great. But ideally what happens is we’re avoiding that whole basis snafu because of the conversations and the planning we’re having well the well throughout the year along the way and we just never even hit that issue. So I think that might be where you’re kind of leading this is that we’re talking along the way and we just don’t have that issue because we don’t let it get to that point. We understand

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: What causes it, why are we faced with this decision, or what like yeah, what causes it and and how can we avoid it. So that is a huge, huge thing that we deal with a lot.

Matt: Yeah. And and you’re speaking to something that’s like one of our top annoyances. I and I say we, ’cause I know you and I have shared this, of just CPAs, like this drives me nuts when we see CPAs immediately assuming that S Corp election makes sense no matter what, and one seventy nine makes sense no matter what, and they just it’s like they’re a robot just clicking a button and just just and the most egregious example of this is a client of ours. This is a few years ago. Came on board, new client. We looked at all their stuff, got them onboarded, and she had just bought a practice and you know, large debt load. Immediately, no, no, no. Actually, in Tom, in this example, you know who I’m talking about. It was a startup. That’s what it was. It was a startup. Startup,

Tom Whalen: yeah, I okay. I do know what you’re talking about.

Matt: not positive cash flow yet, immediately elected S Corp and took massive multi-six figure depreciation. And completely screwed up her situation. And what was so egregious is I talked to this CPA and the CPA says to me, Well, she’s gonna elect S Corp in the future anyway, so we might as well do it now. It was the worst answer I’ve ever heard in my life. It was

Tom Whalen: Yeah, and that might be one of those situations where, and this is not to throw shade at generalists in general, if that makes sense, but

Matt: Channelists generally.

Tom Whalen: Right, but that kind of screams somebody who’s not dealing with hundreds and hundreds of dental practices, knowing what the

Matt: Exactly. Yep. Yeah. That one that one frustrates us a lot. Like we see that that mistake quite a bit is electing S Corp too soon and and all that can and I think you’re right. It’s not understanding dentistry and how how it works. okay. So anything else you’d add to the just mistakes or communication or things that would can be avoided on it anything on that front?

Tom Whalen: Yeah, I it’s like I I from our end, we just again we don’t we the CPA team we don’t necessarily know what’s going on with the investments. So it’s really difficult for us to do tax planning and projecting from the business side of things if we don’t have that well-rounded picture. Now, if you are if you’ve got no money invested anywhere and your entire source of income is the practice and nothing else outside of it, well then we don’t there’s nothing else to worry about. But as people begin to accumulate and they’re interest dividends, capital gains, et cetera, are coming in at pretty big numbers, like that’s super, super important. So I had a client that I did a projection for last week and I had sent a message to Taylor on Slack. I’m like, hey, what like what do I need to know for dividends, interest, cap gains? Nothing. Okay, we’re good. Sweet. this client makes a ton of money. So his ta tax rate’s really, really high. And I just I want to make sure that the cash flow looks good. so yeah, if if the advisor and the on the personal side of things is very responsive and understands what’s going on in the business a little bit and I don’t understand what’s going on the personal investments a little bit. It’s just like I said, the tax planning is so seamless. And then of course like taxes are cash and cash is king and like what are we going to do with our cash? Well we need to earmark some of it for taxes. But then that changes our investment decisions as well inside the business. So if we can’t do decent tax planning, it just really puts a wrench in things. And again it’s like with the sticking with the home theme, it’s like, well If we can’t work on the the framing of the house, how can we start deciding on I don’t know, fixtures and doorknob and whatnot? You know what I mean? Like we need that baseline layer done properly. In my opinion, it’s kinda like that tax planning and that just kinda trickles into so much other stuff.

Matt: Yeah, it’s a great example. The foundational stuff before you can optimize any of the edges. It’s like the optimization means nothing if you don’t have the walls up. So I I think that’s a great example. We’re really going with this house theme. It’s fresh, fresh

Tom Whalen: Wow, it’s it’s great.

Matt: on the mind. okay. So getting a little bit specific around like, you know, dental situation dentist situations. We see this a lot. Imagine like a dentist has again, this is like a weekly, monthly, yearly occurrence. Where a dentist has a more profitable year than expected. So a big year, maybe you know, incomes going up faster than we thought. How have you seen where we work together or or whether it’s us or just generally speaking, an aligned, proactive communication on the same page, advisor and CPA? How do you see that working together to help a dentist make smart decisions in that situation?

Tom Whalen: Yeah, so there there are times where it’s like I guess in my opinion, maybe this is just me being jaded from working with let’s just say advisory teams that aren’t as communicative and free-flowing of information. It is I’m of the mindset that once cash leaves the practice, it’s not coming back in. It’s just gone. It’s just bye-bye,

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Whalen: it’s in the ether, don’t ever count on it again. but there have been situations where, like you just said, we we are doing projections and we are looking at year to day financials and everything like that. We’re having our regular meetings, but income is just spiking so fast that it’s it’s it’s almost irrelevant by the next month. The projection is almost irrelevant because it’s so fast. and there are times where it’s like, hey, we need we’ve been taking distributions, we’ve had the cash flow, we’ve had the basis, but like it’s just going up so fast that taxes are a little more than we anticipated. that’s that’s fine. Talk to the advisor, we can funnel some money back in from the brokerage account. It’s like, my God, I’ve never seen that. Like it’s so crazy to me. so like that is super helpful because then again, like we don’t need to strain the business, which again, I I am of the mindset like the business is the lifeblood, it’s the golden goose. Like we need the business to be on solid footing. And if it’s not, then it’s just gonna have this terrible trickle effect down downstream. So if we can work together to kind of like come up with some cash flow solutions that aren’t gonna damper the business like go get a line of credit for two hundred grand and draw into that like paid eight percent interest every month or like I just I’m not super interested in that. like that’s a situation where again, like in the past, I just kind of have waved it, kissed it bye bye. But now understanding like, we we are quite liquid personally and we can funnel some money back in, or hey, we were going to sell this typical this item for some cap gains, but we ha we haven’t done it yet. And we’re still feel good about the investment and we’re just gonna hang on to it. So we’re not gonna trigger that extra tax burden that we were kind of planning on. You know what I mean? Like there’s there’s levers that can be pulled that again, if we don’t have a good well rounded picture, it’s just gonna be really difficult to explain it to somebody who doesn’t have a ton of insight on the scoop.

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: but yeah like I could kind of go on, but I think those are a couple of good stamp notes.

Matt: Yeah. I think that’s great. And you hit on something so critical coming back to this idea of alignment when you said that you you believe the practice is the cornerstone of all this. It’s the golden goose. It’s what drives all of this, the ability to grow wealth. And obviously we feel the same way. We we know this of in our relationship with our with our teams. but that right there is probably worth mentioning around the alignment piece is making sure that your advisor and accounting team both believe that because it might seem obvious, but I can tell you there’s a lot of advisors who don’t believe that. Or don’t treat it that way. Don’t act that way.

Tom Whalen: We don’t treat it that way, right? Yeah. They bleed it for all it’s worth. We can figure out the cash flow later. It’s like, no, no, no, we need this thing to be on solid footing. The rest will

Matt: Yep. Yep.

Tom Whalen: figure itself out.

Matt: Yeah. Well, the most egregious example are, you know, let’s just call product salesmen who masquerade as advisors who pretend that their product or strata whatever they have is gonna be what leads to your freedom. That’s what they pitch you. When in reality the the the the the truth of it is what’s gonna lead to your financial freedom is your practice, is your business and being able to so I just I’m glad that you brought that up because that’s worth foc or you know, hitting that the the number one piece of alignment you have to have is alignment between your advisor and CPA on the practice being top priority financially. Has to be. So that’s a that’s a a great example you gave there. on kind of the profitability of a practice and communication there of cash flow moving back and forth and what we have to do in those situations. the other one that I can think of maybe generally, but getting aligned on things like deduction clumping, right? And how and how we do that in a year that might make sense. Maybe it may not be a big profitable year, but maybe it’s a year that they sold a big piece of real estate or they s or they had a big influx of cash via they sold one of their practices or something. I think those situations, those kind of like trigger points of liquidity or big profit years, there’s so much that can be done, you know, if we’re thinking technically on like the use of a donor advice fund and and clumping that with other deductions that they might be having on your end. So there’s a lot of tact tactician type stuff,

Tom Whalen: Sure.

Matt: Technical type stuff that again just makes it so much more effective and valuable when there’s alignment on those types of things.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, and you said like whether it’s selling a piece real estate or selling a practice, or maybe there’s like a large inheritance or something that’s outside of the business. You know, like if somebody gets a half a million dollar inheritance, like I don’t see that. Maybe it comes up in conversation. yeah, you know, grandpa passed away and I got some money. Okay, well, what was that? I don’t know what that means. but you might know what that means. And maybe that b maybe now we have so much liquidity personally that that can kinda reverse itself into the business. And now I don’t need to take so much money out and I can pay down some debts that I wasn’t able to earlier or whatever. So just having the communication going both ways is super, super

Matt: Yeah, definitely. we hit on this a little bit, but I wanted to bring it back up in case there’s any other things that come up for you. But let’s imagine the a dentist in this phase of either doing a startup or buying, and the decisions that are need to be coordinated around that between advisor and accountant. Any w again, we mentioned like entity structuring and all that. Anything else that comes to mind of decisions where coordination is critical between these two parties.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, I mean, I think when we’re talking about buying, my head immediately goes to depreciation. I don’t know if I should or shouldn’t, but that’s where my head goes. and the timing of the depreciation, what does the future look like? Or what are we what’s our best guess of what the future looks like from a business perspective, but then also again on the personal side of things. do we have I I had mentioned earlier, like kind of the the opposite side of this coin, but there have been times where we do accelerate depreciation because of that Roth conversion deal. We’ve seen it where

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: like we know about it. We’re planning this together. Hey, I’ve got you know 200 grand from an old 401k from a previous employer. I’m buying buying this practice. We have we have the ability to take this depreciation, roll that into a you know, convert that to a Roth, offset it against the practice depreciation. Like there are things that again, when we’re communicating about make so much sense and work so, so, so well. And this practice owner is now 33 years old and has a quarter million dollar Roth IRA that’s gonna grow tax free for the next what thirty years. It’s gonna be tremendously beneficial. Things like that that you kinda need to decide in year one, because that’s when all the the the purchases take place. so it’s I mean of course it’s always important, but like in those big ticket years where like you said, practice sale, practice purchase, big renovation, new building purchase, et cetera, these kind of like big ticket items, we we had really better make sure we’re talking about what’s going on inside and outside of the business.

Matt: Yeah, it’s a great point. Another example here, I think on the technical side is we’ve seen this in the past, not not as frequent as like the Roth conversion, but maybe that they have a concentrated position in a brokerage account in one stock. And we are looking for opportunities on our end to to divest that because it’s bringing so much more risk to the investment side of things. And so again, coordination in that front of like, hey, we’ve got a big depreciation. AGI’s way down this year. maybe this is maybe this pushes them from twenty percent cap gain down to fifteen or h down to zero, depending on what their income is. And so maybe you

Tom Whalen: Sure.

Matt: exactly so there’s coordination there of like this is the perfect time to sell part of this concentrated position based on the depreciation. So again there’s technical aspects of this, but again, yet another example of just that coordination being so critical, no matter what stage of career

Tom Whalen: Yeah.

Matt: You’re in.

Tom Whalen: And and maybe it’s maybe it’s not the best time to do it from a tax perspective, but because the risk is so great, it’s like we gotta do this. I under maybe we understand it’s not the best time from a tax perspective, but like what can we do about it? Of course I can’t just like magically wave a wand and make it all go away, despite

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: some people think, but there might be some things we can do about it or at at least help mitigate it, but we’re de risking ourselves so much that it’s worth the cost of the extra taxes. But like Again, having us all on the same page, understanding what to expect and just being able to plan for it is so, so vitally important. And I think we touched on a little earlier too, is like the peace of mind it provides is that the client they know they’re well taken care of. Again, maybe we incur a little bit of extra tax, but that cost is so worth getting rid of that risk. But again, maybe it is the best time to do it because of it income being down, whatever. But as long as we’re all on the same page and we’re working together, I think that’s what’s super important.

Matt: Yeah, and understanding the trade-offs to your point. I think that’s great. let’s go through maybe two more here.

Tom Whalen: Or not.

Matt: I think this is critical

Tom Whalen: Yeah.

Matt: to understand is any cases that you’ve seen, Tom, where focusing too much on tax savings ends up hurting the bigger picture. We we’ve talked about this in our tax series. The the ultimate goal here at the end of the day, the spreadsheet goal, not the life goal, but the spreadsheet goal is maximizing after tax wealth. But sometimes this gets confusing. So any cases that you see of, Tax a focus on tax savings hurting the overall bigger picture. Yeah. You’re like, how much time do you have?

Tom Whalen: A lot. A lot of time. Yeah, how much time we got? again we talk about accelerating depreciation in the early stages of practice ownership. And that can just with the whole basis situation, like that can just really put you in a an upside down position where you’ve got all this debt load, but you’ve got no more tax deductions because you took it all in year one. And maybe year one was great. Maybe we didn’t pay any tax. That’s cool. But now in years two, three, four, ten However long your debt is structured, all those deductions are gone. And now we’re just playing this catch up battle. So if you didn’t do something with that tax savings money, then a lot of time, you know, people might say, Well, I use it for a down payment on a house. It’s like, well, that’s great, but like I don’t have cash flow now. Right. So we see it where deductions are accelerated into low tax bracket years. Like that just is a really kind of backwards way of of planning, in my opinion. And it can just really mess up the cash flow situation down the road when we’re s when we’re laced with a ton of debt. I’d see that time and time again. you you mentioned it. We see the whole S Corp election being way too early, making it very inflexible in how we take our money out of the business. and then I think probably the most common example I see isn’t necessarily the the advisors or the CPAs. It’s just the it It’s like a lot of times the clients are like, I want to buy this because it’s a tax deduction. So

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: Their cash is going out the door time and time and time again. And you don’t get that return on your investment. So you’re buying all this equipment and you’re not

Matt: That you don’t need.

Tom Whalen: You don’t need it. You’re not using it or you’re not using it to the extent you thought you would. And now we’re spending multi six figures on this equipment and we’re just it’s just sitting there, right? It’s like the gym equipment that just sits at home. It’s like cash flow wise, you’d be better off not buying that equipment. So yeah, where we’re just getting into unnecessary spending. And that’s a whole different discussion and of unnecessary spending, like what does that look like? But we see I think that is my most common occurrence is that it’s just unnecessary spending be in

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: in the name of taxes, right?

Matt: Yeah. Here’s a here’s a big one on our end that we see because we’re huge proponents of retirement plans, obviously, being a really proactive tax reduction and tax savings tool. But just like you can be house poor, you can be retirement plan poor. You can be 401k poor. So we see this w we’ve seen this where clients come to us. We certainly don’t do this with our clients. We w because we’re looking at the bigger picture, but where a dentist is so focused. I mean, the most egregious example would be triple layering this 401k profit sharing cash balance plan. And the problem with a cash balance plan, the problem that can occur is that they are much more rigid than a 401k in profit sharing, where they are not discretionary. You set one up, you are stuck. You gotta fund that thing for a minimum of three years. And so we’ve seen it’s not

Tom Whalen: And it’s not a small dollar amount either, right?

Matt: A small dollar amount, and it can get real tricky if you’re you know, underfunded in that thing if you’re not investing it properly, and and and doing the right actual calculations. And so where a dentist is just thinking, I don’t care. Like I’m like they they see those dollar signs flashing and maybe a CPA they talk to is like, you should do this. And they use up all their liquidity to reduce their taxes because you c I mean you could put a ton of money between those three layers in one year. We’re talking situations where it’s multiple six figures in a year, massive tax savings, but you’re sitting on no cash now.

Tom Whalen: And it and it it’s it’s a little bit I don’t say deceiving, but it’s it’s kind of a mind mental game because like it’s still your money. Right? Like so whereas you’re buying equipment, I’m starting

Matt: Yes, totally yes, yes.

Tom Whalen: ways with my cash.

Matt: Good, better, best for sure.

Tom Whalen: Right. So it’s it’s like, yeah, I’m still I’m investing it, I’m gonna doing the smart thing. And it can make some sense in certain situations, but it’s like you said, it’s locked up for it could be locked up for multiple decades. And that kitchen reno, all right, like can’t wait a couple of decades sometimes.

Matt: Yep. Yep. Yeah, totally agree. We are huge proponents of retirement plans for that exact reason. It’s one of, if not the only, deduction that you get where you actually keep the money. The that’s, you know, IRAs, 401ks, profit sharing, cash balance, HSAs. It’s your money just for the future. It’s still a it’s still a net negative to your current self, cash flow wise and liquidity wise, but you get to keep the money. But again, if you’re not thinking about those trade-offs around, crap, because profit sharing and cash balance plans are funded with cash. that you have sitting around. They’re not funded through

Tom Whalen: Yeah, I mean we we

Matt: payroll.

Tom Whalen: we’ve right, we’ve heard clients I would say attempt to be sold on s a cash balance plan, let’s say, and then we sit down and say, Well, can you afford to put an extra two hundred thousand dollars? no. So well then what are you doing here, right? Like you can’t afford it, right? Like

Matt: Well then what are you doing? Yep.

Tom Whalen: it’s it sounds cool that you can have these massive tax deferrals and that’s again, that’s what it is. It’s tax deferral, not a tax like complete mitigation, but Then when we sit down and actually kind of crank out the numbers or on a projection and say, hey, do you have an extra 200 grand lying around that you do not need and you’re okay parting ways with, not only this year, but next year and the next year and next year, and you can’t touch it for a while? Like it’s a lot of cash that you need to just have. I don’t want to say no use for, but I just think that the the scenarios where it makes a ton of sense are pretty limited.

Matt: Yes. Yes. Or they’re more limited than someone selling it to you might might imagine. And you need to be going into a situation like that with again a proactive, highly communicative team that’s aligned, that can understand the trade-offs of what’s this doing for your taxes, what’s it doing to your liquidity, d what future needs do you have on the personal front or the practice side? How close are you to exiting? This is a whole analysis and strategy that needs to be put in place, not a product to buy. So it’s it’s a it’s a it’s a comprehensive strategy. So it’s really critical in those situations to have again communication and alignment. let’s finish with this, Tom. We’ve covered a ton and given some hopefully some good examples. what are signs that you’ve seen to kind of close the loop on this? Any signs that a dentist should be th looking for that their team is not coordinated, is not communicating, is not aligned?

Tom Whalen: I do think if they’re playing the quarterback or the general contractor where they’re constantly aligning people’s schedules for the other people.

Matt: Yep. If you’re playing secretary, there you go.

Tom Whalen: that’s that’s a telltale sign. and and it doesn’t necessarily mean that both are it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily misaligned or they’re both terrible. It just maybe it’s just one side. Maybe it is both sides. But I think that’s like the glaring like the obvious point that if you need to be the one tracking everybody down, something is going awry. If if the CPA is requesting documents from the financial advisor and they’re just not coming, then maybe we’re looking at the financial advisor side of things as kinda out of whack. Or if the financial advisor is looking at, hey, we need a P L on a balance sheet so we can have our kind of like year end planning initiative and the C PA’s like, I I don’t know, I c I d I need another few weeks to get a P L out. It’s like maybe they’re the ones that are struggling, but in in either case, if each other are relying on each other for extended periods of time, like that’s a telltale sign that something is a little off. yeah, if we’re if everything’s last minute, AR taxes are filed on time, but it’s April fifteenth and I am constantly told that I need to owe fifty grand or I need to come up with a hundred grand on the day that that it’s due, like that’s a struggle. Or if if I the CPA am again asking for what’s the the plan for capital gains this year and I don’t get a response and again it’s last minute, it’s December twentieth and I’m still waiting on it. It’s like again, I think I think just playing quarterback is a telltale sign. I think last minute type items are a telltale sign sign. I think those are pretty

Matt: Yeah.

Tom Whalen: Big ones anyway.

Matt: I think that’s a good one. Like at the end of the year or beginning of, you know, tax season, which we should we didn’t even hit on this, but filing extensions. That’s a you know, just in that’s a whole other topic. if you’re filing

Tom Whalen: Yeah. Sometimes it makes sense, but a lot of times it doesn’t. Just throw that up.

Matt: Yeah. Eight out of ten times, Tom, it doesn’t make sense, or what would you say?

Tom Whalen: Think eight out of ten times it’s not necessary.

Matt: There you go.

Tom Whalen: So I just personally I’m I might go through I don’t know, let’s just say 200 tax returns in a year. And I extend maybe four, and they all have K1s that have come from like they’ve sold their practice to DSO, they’ve got rollover equity. The K1 doesn’t come until August. That is it. I don’t extend

Matt: Yep. That’s it.

Tom Whalen: other ones, partially because I don’t want to be doing a ton of tax work in June and July when it’s super nice.

Matt: Yeah, you’d rather be in middle of tornadoes.

Tom Whalen: Right. Yeah, exactly. It’s super nice here, right? but it’s just I don’t know, I mean, you need a lot of times you need tax return data for bankers and I’m looking to buy a new building. Okay, we need pr tax return information. Well, we can’t close on a loan because my taxes are late or I want to just I personally as a CPA I want to wrap up the prior year as soon as possible so we can start focusing on the next year, right? I don’t want it to be October first and we’re still talking about twenty twenty five taxes when we’re three quarters of the way through twenty twenty six. So I think

Matt: Yep. Yeah.

Tom Whalen: A lot of times it’s not necessary because these docs don’t have information that requires extension.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, we see that a lot too. I’m glad we hit that at the end because that’s a that’s just a sign that you need to be pushing on your CPA. I think it’s just an assumption with so many out there. I’ve talked to Dentist like, we filed an extension for the seventh year in a row, no idea why. Just what you do.

Tom Whalen: We have some that are like, Well, that’s just what we do. Like, well why? Well, because our CPA extends it every single year, man. Well what do you have? They might just be an associate with the W two. I’m like, there is no reason that should be extended, so

Matt: Yeah. Or their single location, single practice, nothing crazy on their situation. It’s like we just extend because we just do and then they’re still scrambling in October. So

Tom Whalen: Well that’s the thing is is it this is a general statement here, but what I have seen is that when people just habitually extend, it’s not that they’re getting the information done four weeks later. It’s we’re still dealing with this time crush

Matt: Months later.

Tom Whalen: in the middle of October instead of the middle of April. It’s like we’re not actually doing anything different, it’s just time frame and I I’m not

Matt: Kick in the can. Yep.

Tom Whalen: crazy about that either.

Matt: Yeah, it’s so true. So yeah, to come back to this idea of the signs, I think you hit If you are if you are you the dentist are busy stressed connecting the two or questions are coming up at the end of the year, or really it like springtime that should have been brought up before around you know stuff happening in the retirement accounts or dividends and like that kind of stuff. I think that’s usually a sign there’s some maybe some some misalignment. So and then obviously we hit on the the extension piece kind of separately. But okay, Tom, anything else you’d add, kind of final words of wisdom on this the value of coordination and things that Dentist should be thinking about walking away from this episode.

Tom Whalen: Yeah, I think overall again, you can have separate parties and two different under two different roofs and it can work just just as well as everybody being under one roof. I would just challenge, not challenge, I would urge people to just make sure that there is that alignment. obviously what we’ve got going on, it’s just so seamless. It’s so easy for for me as a CPA, for you as an advisor to for us to just be able to contact each other immediately. and I think it does remove a layer of stress and uncertainty from the client’s perspective. So again, we’ll work with anybody, whether you use all of our services or just some, but I do think what we’ve got going on is extremely beneficial to the clients from a from a logistical perspective.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. If you ever want to test what I’ll add here f to finish is if you ever want to test the level of ego of your of your people, I would encourage you to if you’re working with a separate advisor and a separate CPA, separate you know, separate companies, ask them separately if they will g connect with the other one and just see. Just see what happens. and I bring that up with experience that we have come across many fragile egos when it comes to other professionals. We are so open and willing and wanting to coordinate and and be proactive. But just ask. Hey, what can I I’m I’m tired of playing middleman. Can I connect you two so we can start kind of coordinating this together? It could be that simple. And maybe they maybe they are totally willing. They just have never you’d it’s never been asked. So that that’d be the thing I’d say is just ask. So

Tom Whalen: Ask the question, yeah.

Matt: Just ask. So Awesome, Tom. This was so great. hopefully helpful for people. Hopefully you got a few things out of this that you can apply to your life. again, if you’re working with with an advisor and CPA, again, just just go to them, ask that question, see if you can take a step towards closer alignment and better communication. I think it’d make a world of difference for you. if you are out there listening and thinking you have issues with this, you like this has prompted something, like I need to get this figured out. I need a more coordinated effort on my team. We are here to help. You can go to dentist advisors dot com, click on the book free consultation button. you can go to dentist advisors dot com slash accounting if you are just looking for the accounting. we are here to help. So again, Dentist Advisor dot com. For now, Tom, thank you so much for being here. Tax free Tom, sharing your words of wisdom. Everyone thank you for listening. Until next time, take care. Bye bye.

Tom Whalen: See ya

Keywords: dentist financial planning, CPA and advisor alignment, dental practice management, tax strategies, wealth building, practice sale, cash flow, investment planning

Getting Organized, Taxes