Dana Hastings originally planned to become a teacher. But during her freshman year in college her father passed away, leaving her mother—who had never written a check before—with mounting financial losses. Craving more knowledge about how money and emotions are intertwined and sensing her mother was getting bad advice, Hastings switched her major to finance and psychology and set in motion what has become a nearly three-decades-long career in the financial and investment planning field.

Hastings, 54, is the director of business development at Prosperity Capital Advisors, an investment advisory firm in Westlake, Ohio. There have been other stops along the way, with stints at UBS Financial Services and McDonald Investments/Key Corp., but it was her six years at Mercer Global Advisors (now Mercer Advisors) as a senior financial consultant that gave her the foundation for her current specialty—advising dentists on their financial affairs.

Her boss at Mercer, Ron Arndt, was a former dentist, so naturally the firm specialized on advising dental professionals as well as physicians, primarily through partnerships with medical and dental associations across the country.

After Arndt left that firm to start his own dental coaching consultancy, Hastings moved on to start her own financial planning and wealth management practice. Eventually, she partnered with her former boss to provide his clients with financial planning services. She still gets referrals from Arndt, and nearly all of her clients at Prosperity Capital are either dentists or physicians, more than 80% being the former. Many of them live beyond Ohio in Florida, New Jersey, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Illinois.

Hastings helps her dentist clients run their practices efficiently, establish retirement plans for their employees, handle real estate holdings and get the best loans for their practices.

For the business efficiency, Hastings digs deep into a dental practice’s income and expense numbers to shore up any deficits and examines industry standards for staffing, supply and occupancy cost benchmarks.

“I use these ratios to show the client where their numbers are a little low, high or in line with industry standards,” she explains. “If there are areas that need improvement, I can direct them to practice management consultants or dental coaches who can help them get their practice numbers in line, increase revenue and ultimately increase the amount of money that is available to fund a qualified retirement plan and provide the owner with additional after-tax income.”

Many dentists own their office space, so it’s important to incorporate the income tax component, cash flow and future sales projections of that asset into their financial blueprints, Hastings says.

And if a dentist needs to borrow money for professional needs, Hastings helps ensure they borrow from a bank that has a team dedicated to providing financing to the profession so her clients can get the best deal.

“These banks understand that there is very low default rate among dentists,” she says, adding they understand the financials of dental practices and typically offer much better loan terms than regular banks.

Though she came by her expertise rather organically by working for a firm that focused on dental professionals, Hastings says financial planners can strategically develop a specialty in the field. She says that if three to four dental practitioners are clients, they can give a financial advisor enough insight into their special financial needs, and the advisor can then better market his or her expertise to more dentists via workshops.

“They are active participants in creating and maintaining their financial plan,” she says. “They adhere to their goals and they are highly disciplined savers and investors.”