Four Quadrants Client Spotlight:
Dr. J. Scott Anderson and wife Gail
J. Scott Anderson, RPh, DDS, Houston, Tex.
Imagine sifting through your company files at the end of
the month and you discover an envelope addressed to you.
You open it hesitantly; uncertain of what you will find.
As it turns out, there’s a check enclosed, written to you for
$193,000.00! The words “for your retirement” are typed in
the memo.
That’s essentially the scenario in which Houston
cosmetic dentist J. Scott Anderson and his wife Gail found
themselves after their first year working with us.
The couple carefully analyzed many financial advisors
and retirement vehicles when they decided to get serious
about their retirement. But they chose to work with Four
Quadrants because of our comprehensive approach: that
the success of their dental practice is directly related to the
dentist’s quality of life and ability to build a retirement
savings.
Scott and Gail stopped by recently for their first annual
review with us and took a few moments to recount how
their first year greatly exceeded expectations.
Four Quadrants: How would you describe your practice
in your own words?
Dr. J. Scott Anderson: I’m a general dentist, and I’ve been
doing this about 30 years now. We do what most general
dentists do: we see all age groups of patients; we do a
little bit of everything. We do a lot of sedation in our
practice that maybe a lot of dentists don’t do. I’ve done
that for quite a long time. I also do some orthodontia.
I restore and replace mini implants also. We’re on the
Northwest end of Houston out near a major suburban
mall.
Four Quadrants: What was it that brought you to us
initially?
Dr. J. Scott Anderson: I had first heard of Four Quadrants
several years ago, I don’t remember how, maybe a direct
mailer, an email or a newsletter. But I had them in the
back of my mind for several years. And we got to a
point where we needed to get very serious about our
Dr. J. Scott Anderson and wife Gail
“You know it’s just been an outstanding
year. I just cannot believe when we came
in for this first meeting how well it went,
and how much improvement we had in the
practice. We had no idea how much money
we were going to save. It very much
exceeded our expectations.”
- Dr. J. Scott Anderson
retirement, so I went to one of their seminars.
After that, I checked in with our financial advisor,
checked in with another one, did a lot of due diligence
on our own, but we went with Four Quadrants because
I felt like they had the most to offer with the complete
package. It’s what we needed someone to do for us; we
needed to have the guidance they could provide.
Four Quadrants: You both are pretty young. Gail,
were you thinking about retirement too, in the bigger
picture?
Gail Anderson: We had used a few different investment
vehicles, and some had performed better than others.
We were looking into annuities, had heard some pros
and cons, but I’m glad we didn’t go that route because it’s
a bigger risk than we were lead to believe. In hindsight,
Client Spotlight: Dr. J. Scott and Gail Anderson
we’re glad that we chose the comprehensive approach
that Four Quadrants puts fourth.
Four Quadrants: You just completed your first year with
us, what was the first sign this year that things were
going to be better with us?
Dr. J. Scott Anderson: For me, it was all the contact that I
got from Four Quadrants since day one. Honestly, there’s
not a week that goes by that I don’t hear from somebody
either by phone or email. You start getting these reports
and are talking to people and then you’re several months
into this stuff and you start seeing improvement right
away.
I said, “This is really working!” These reports showed
us in-depth financial areas. The accounting team
explained why we need to take a particular route. You
start saying “Hey they’re doing what they said they were
going to do,” In just a few short months we saw things
improve.
Gail Anderson: It’s nice because we’ve signed up with
financial entities before and, you know, they lay out the
program and they fall short of it, as far as keeping in
touch. I was impressed with how well Four Quadrants
keeps in touch, not just with Scott but myself, you know?
This is the first company that actually wants my input,
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“Four Quadrants gives us a roadmap to all
the points we need to go to and what we
need to do in a given amount of time. It can
be overwhelming at first, but that’s what
they’re so great at identifying — what we
need to focus on. Where we’re going to get
the best bang for our buck.”
- Gail Anderson
not just the doctor’s.
It was frustrating at times when these other companies
only reached out to him, and then I have to depend
on him to tell me what’s going on. They have my email
address, and everything is carbon-copied to me so I
know what’s going on. I don’t feel like I’m out in the
dark.
I work in the office, but sometimes I work out in
the front, and he works in the back, and we have a lot
going on. Sometimes we don’t always communicate as
well as we should, so it is good to have a third-party
communicate with both of us so we don’t have to try to
fill in the blanks with each other.
Four Quadrants: This dovetails somewhat with the last
question, but what’s been the biggest Value that Four
Quadrants has brought to the table for each of you?
Dr. J. Scott Anderson: I think it’s just peace-of-mind that
things are being taken care of. Before, we were always
wondering if we were doing the right things. But Four
Quadrants is so organized, and it’s kind of a one-stopshop if you think about it. You have the accounting area
and the financial advisors; no other avenues that we ever
checked into went into the depth that Four Quadrants
has gone into. It’s really been amazing to me.
Four Quadrants: What are some of the things you feel
better about that you weren’t able to get a handle on
before?
Dr. J. Scott Anderson: The accounting is so much more
advanced than the system we had in place before, and so
much more detailed than any of the accountants we had
worked with - and we’ve worked with several over the
Dr. J. Scott Anderson
Client Spotlight: Dr. J. Scott and Gail Anderson
years. I have a better understanding of what’s going on
and in the past, I didn’t. We’d just meet a couple of times
a year with the advisors, and they would say “Hey this is
looking good,” but it didn’t mean a whole lot to me.
Gail Anderson: Like Scott said, there’s a peace-of-mind
that we have. One thing in the back of your mind you’re
always worried about is if we are saving enough; are
we putting enough back? What if health issues arise in
our later years? How will we respond properly? It’s just
something that I think we all naturally worry about.
So it’s nice to have a team of people who are as worried
about our retirement as we are.
You can ask any of them about any aspect of the
business, and they can all pretty much answer it. They
don’t all just defer to someone else. So you can tell they
keep each other abreast of what their clients’ needs are,
and what our specific personal goals are. It’s nice to
know that there’s a team approach, not just one person
you hope is keeping everything in line. It’s good to have
different people and check and balances. That’s the first
sign I saw that this was going to be a good relationship,
they get back to you within a matter of hours.
Four Quadrants: You’ve talked about peace-of-mind,
but what’s something you achieved personally or
professionally that maybe you wouldn’t have otherwise
without our help? Maybe a challenge that we solved?
Gail Anderson: We were able to save $193,000 for our
retirement in the first year with you guys. That would
never have happened otherwise.
Dr. J. Scott Anderson: Four Quadrants gives us a
roadmap to all the points we need to go to and what
we need to do in a given amount of time. It can be
overwhelming at first, but that’s what they’re so great at
identifying — what we need to focus on. Where we’re
going to get the best bang for our buck and so that’s nice
and refreshing.
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With other outside companies, they don’t really know
us and where we’re trying to go; they didn’t take the time
to understand what our goals and aspirations are. So it’s
really nice that Four Quadrants can help us figure that
out.
On the horizon, we’ve got some home improvement
projects what will mean substantial expenditures. Four
Quadrants came up with a way for us to pay cash for
them. We had been sitting there wondering where we
were going to get the money for this, and after a year of
working with us, they came up with a way to be able to
get that done for us. Paying cash for home improvements
in a year we saved $193,000? That’s pretty exciting.
Gail Anderson: You know when we first started talking
about saving more for retirement, I thought Four
Quadrants was really going to make us adhere to a strict
budget. But we saved more than we ever have in our life,
and it was a relatively painless process. We didn’t have to
change anything we did, (laugh) I didn’t have to curb the
shopping.
Four Quadrants: This has been a great conversation
with you, and I appreciate the time at the end of your
meeting. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Dr. J. Scott Anderson: You know it’s just been an
outstanding year. I just cannot believe when we came in
for this first meeting how well it went, and how much
improvement we had in the practice. We had no idea
how much money we were going to save. It very much
exceeded our expectations.
Gail Anderson: There are some things you think that
are counter-intuitive that they suggest and that we
would not have done on our own, that have turned out
well. We found new ways to think about things that we
weren’t aware of previously. It’s really been a blessing to
accomplish what we have in a short year.
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