A Decade of The Dentist Money Show: 10 Principles That Still Matter

On this special 10-year anniversary episode of The Dentist Money Show, Matt, Ryan, Will, Jake, Taylor, and Rabih revisit the 10 core financial principles that we still believe in today. They break down why many dentists still feel stressed even after hitting their income goals, how rising targets can create new layers of pressure, and why true satisfaction often comes from aligning expectations, not just increasing earnings. The conversation highlights the advisor’s role in helping clients define meaningful financial goals, manage stress around money, and find confidence beyond the numbers. After over 700 episodes, millions of downloads, market cycles, and plenty of mistakes, tune in for 10 things we still believe 10 years later and stay tuned until the end for a special thank you and surprise!

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac: Welcome to the Dentist Money Show, where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m Ryan, and I’m here with the panel today, actually, which is a beautiful thing. We’ve got Taylor and Will and Jake and Rabih and Matt the Mountain. What’s up, guys? What’s up, everybody? Thanks for joining us. How you guys doing?

Matt Mulcock: Yo, I got, got to point out the money chain for will the money chain for Jake. kind of, yeah, we kind of went half as they say, can we say this on air half-assed the, we, we half-assed the. ⁓

Ryan Isaac: Pointing out.

Jake: We need to get into, we need to make our podcast explicit. That’s like the next territory for the podcast to go. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac: 100 % agree, 100 %

Matt Mulcock: We’re going for it. We’ re going for it. Let’s do it.

Ryan Isaac: Agree. Well, okay, so 10 years ago, which seems insane, it seems like a lifetime ago, we hit record for the first time. It was ⁓ Reese Harper, little shout out. myself, I remember episode one was in the basement of the old building, me and Reese, Justin was in the corner, we called him Q in the studio, he had a clock on an iPad.

Matt Mulcock: Do you remember it Ryan for real? Do you remember that episode?

Ryan Isaac: And we had scripts to read, including jokes that were written out. and actually the first one was me and Reese standing for audio purposes and we thought it would flow better. We actually were standing face to face with microphones. Picture that. We had a microphone stand, I had a teleprompter, he had a microphone stand, teleprompter, we were facing each other, Justin’s in the corner keeping time. And like, looking at Reese, I just.

Matt Mulcock: I can! You guys like staring into each other’s eyes or?

Ryan Isaac: I felt dumb so many times in my life and that was definitely one of them. you the goal was to start the podcast and help dentists make smarter financial decisions and feel more confident about money. That was the whole point. We wanted a channel or a place to teach and give away as much as we could for those many, many dentists who would never become clients. There’s a lot of dentists out there. So that’s where it began. Since then, thank you listeners, you’ve listened. You’ve learned, you’ve laughed with us and probably at us through hundreds of episodes. What episode number are we on, by the way? Do you know? It’s crazy. You guys have made the Dentist Money Show what it is today, and we are actually really, really thankful and grateful. This is some of the funnest stuff we get to do at Dentist Advisors. So to celebrate a decade of conversations and stories, we’re going to raise our mugs to you guys, literally. So.

Matt Mulcock: Many times at us. Over 700, I think.

Ryan Isaac: Right now, push pause, go to DentistAdvisors.com slash 10 years, and that’s the number, one zero. DentistAdvisors.com slash 10 years, and sign up to receive a free dentist money show mug. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, it’s beautiful. Go there, and while you’re there, we’d love if you could share the most valuable thing you’ve learned from listening to the podcast. So if you’ve been a listener, share something that you’ve found valuable. It can even be making fun of one of us at some point in your life.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, or maybe it’s not valuable, Ryan. Maybe it’s something they just want to… The criticism.

Ryan Isaac: Or maybe it’s a criticism. It’s a deep, deep criticism. without further ado, having said that, we are going to revisit a list of things that has kind of grown and been curated over time. Matt, why don’t you give us a little intro to what we’re gonna be expecting today?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, we were trying to make this special and we, we make everything special. We try and, ⁓ we’ve talked on and off about what to do with this episode. We’ve been talking about this for, for quite a long time. again, just crazy that we’re literally at 10 years of a little, little podcast for dentists talking about money. ⁓ but we thought this is kind of in conjunction with us.

Ryan Isaac: Like we do every episode, I mean, you know what mean?

Matt Mulcock: As we’ve alluded to over the last few episodes, kind of in conjunction with the project of going back and kind of re resurrecting old episodes that we think that either we, still agree with or things that we wanted to change. And so this kind of all happened simultaneously. And I stumbled upon an episode that you guys were sorry, Ryan, you and I actually did this. It was about five years ago, uh, but it was, it was basically 10 principles.

Ryan Isaac: Mm. Which is crazy, that’s crazy.

Matt Mulcock: For dentists, like 10 money principles. And it got me thinking, got us all thinking, what if we did for the 10 year, 10 things we still believe 10 years later. And so just kind of these core money principles that, you know, we have not changed our mind on, and we just thought we would do this panel and share these principles over the years that we’ve not wavered on and have not changed.

Ryan Isaac: Yep. Love it. Yeah, I love that we’ve been doing this. yeah, thanks everyone for being here. Again, Taylor, Jake, Will, Rabih, and me and Matt and all of you. So thanks for being here. Let’s jump in. We’re gonna go through these. Each one of us or some of us here are gonna have a different piece of these, maybe one or two each. We’re gonna go through kind of what we believe, why it matters in an example or a story. What I thought was cool about this, Matt, as we’ve been doing this is like, We mostly have, I mean, most of these principles are still tried and true, but maybe the application of some of these things has changed over the years and it’s cool to see how that’s changed and kind of just acknowledge that. So you ready to dive in? Okay. All right. Okay, let’s go. Let’s go with your little party hat. And no one has a party hat on anymore. their chance. It’s fine.

Matt Mulcock: Let’s dive. Let’s jump head first. We all took the party hats off.

Will: It was kind of giving me a headache, so I was like,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, it was pretty tight. Yeah.

Will: Can’t do an hour. It was like pulling my chin hard.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, we’re just holding him up. And like I said, I had this money chain like you guys do, but it broke literally as I was pulling it out of the package. so,

Ryan Isaac: Thank you

Will: Never taken mine off. I’m sleeping in this thing.

Ryan Isaac: Chains.

Matt Mulcock: We were saying we’re going to keep them on for client meetings and just be like, want this? You want to be dripped up like us? You follow our advice.

Ryan Isaac: Be drift up. The chains are so

Will: Yeah.

Ryan Isaac: Cheap, it won’t even turn your skin green in the shower. Yeah. Yeah, let’s jump it off. Kick it off for us, Matt.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, exactly. They won’t break the second open the package. So, ⁓ okay. Am I starting this with the first principle? First principle. we actually, it’s funny, we haven’t talked about this. We, we created the doc. so I want to, I want to know as we go through this, like if anyone on our, in this panel, this Brady bunch panel, if you disagree with this, I guess now’s the time to, bring it up. Maybe we’ll get spicy, but principal, I do a debate. Yeah, exactly.

Will: We just turned this into like a argument.

Ryan Isaac: We’re just gonna- yeah.

Jake: I know it’s whenever I get together with you guys, I just wanted to disagree with everything you say. It’s just my natural tendency. So we’ll see how this goes.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, we’ve never noticed that does not. Okay. Principle number one, ⁓ that we still believe 10 years later, your expectations are more important than your income. ⁓ I actually super glad we started with this one. Cause I think it, it, there’s a lot of things that kind of flow from this kind of foundational principle and something that we talk about a lot. ⁓ I think, so the first thing I thought of going through this or thinking about this principle was just how dentists are often, well, so first of all, kind of one of their gifts is that they’re very focused on like the next thing. very, they’re usually type A, they’re focused on progress. They’re focused on like they’re obviously the smartest people. Some of the smartest people, yeah, benchmark, exactly. So that some of the smartest people in in, in society.

Ryan Isaac: Benchmarks, comparison,

Matt Mulcock: But I think where sometimes that gift can become a curse is when it comes to money and something that, you know, one of the biggest kind of things that we talk about with clients is, one of the biggest risks with them when it comes to money is getting the goalposts to not continue to move. ⁓ and so we very much believe this, that it’s, it’s everything that you do when it comes to money, should be kind of grounded in your why and your purpose. And that is, that takes a lot of work and that the goal itself can’t just be, you know, dollars on a screen, that becomes basically an unwinnable game. So this is something I still firmly believe that your expectations need to, or that are more important than income, but I’d to get the panel’s thoughts on this principle here.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, I was just gonna ask when everyone jumps in, how many times in your career as an advisor have you seen a client have a goal, and we’ve all done this too, you have a goal of a certain collections number or like when I finally earn half a million or whatever, ⁓ they’re actually not any, they might even be more stressed out by the time they hit that collections or income number. How many times have you seen that actually happen?

Taylor: Yeah. I mean, I have a quick story that just came up a week or two ago. I had a client that had a collection school and just to give you some background, they are on track to collect 4.5 million at their practice this year. And this is after when I first started working with them, they were in a really rough spot financially. but when I jumped on the call with them, I was expecting him to be excited, but he was just stressed out of his mind. And he was like, I don’t know what’s going on. Like.

Matt Mulcock: Killer.

Taylor: I kind of wish I could go back and just be a barber because before he was a dentist, he was a barber. And I was like, why do you say that? And he said, when I was a barber, like life was more simple. And I, you know, made enough for what I needed. But now that I’m doing so well, keeping up with the Joneses and our spending has gotten out of control. And now it is just this hamster wheel that I’m on to try and keep up with this lifestyle because

Ryan Isaac: Whoa.

Taylor: I have just increased my expectations of what I need and what I can do with this extra added income, which was fascinating to me because we know we were in this place a couple of years ago where they were just really struggling because they weren’t doing well at the practice. And now by every conceivable metric, the practice is very successful kicking off. I mean, they had a hundred thousand in profits alone last month and he’s just stressed out of his mind.

Ryan Isaac: Hmm. Yeah, Jake. Jake.

Jake: Yeah, can I put some numbers to this? This is Jake, by the way, for the people listening who don’t know who’s talking, maybe all these voices coming at him. This is Jake talking here. That was Taylor who just spoke. Just from a numbers point of view, like Taylor was saying, we often equate our expectations with just spending and lifestyle. And if you’ve listened to this podcast for a while, know, our rough calculation for how much you need to retire is about 25 to 30 times your annual spending. It’s kind of like our benchmark that we use just back in the napkin math. You can do it at home.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Jake: That’s kind of your financial independence number. So let’s just say you’re living your life and from like over a couple of years, you inflated your lifestyle by about $25,000 of spending, you know, for annually. So you just increase spending by about $25,000, which isn’t a reason why I think that happens for people with kids and moving into houses. That’s pretty normal. And let’s say over that same time, you’re like, man, I actually:

Ryan Isaac: Thank you.

Jake: I’ve been saving, I’ve been investing, I grew my net worth by like a couple hundred thousand dollars, things are feeling good. Well, you may actually not be any closer to your goal if your spending is increasing at that same pace, right? So for example, let’s say you did increase spending by 25 grand over the course of a year. What that equates to 30 times that amount for like retirement assets that you would need is about $750,000, right? So in order to keep up with that spending, you’d have had to have grown your net worth by 755,000. $750,000 just to keep up with that increase in spending. even if you like, that’s a lot of money. If you grew your net worth by 750 grand over a couple of years, that’s awesome. But if you’re spending went up $25,000 annually, you actually aren’t any closer to retirement. Anyway, just want to bring that up.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, thanks Jake. It’s good numbers. Taylor, that’s a good example. Anyone else have anything to say about your expectations are more important than your income?

Matt Mulcock: Just to back to what Taylor said, we not a specific example here, but something that I know we’ve all kind of discussed before, where we, we actually talked to clients years, years and years later as the progress they’d made, like Taylor’s client that he mentioned, more stressed out about their tax bill that is now like four times what they used to make when they first started dentistry. And I’ve pointed that out to people trying to give them kind of like, not like to:

Ryan Isaac: Thanks

Matt Mulcock: Patronize them, but just to give them like a reference point. Cause I think this is a really human, normal human experience of like, we just adapt. Right. But I just think giving people reference points of like, let’s, I think this is probably why tracking your progress is so critical. One of the underrated parts of this is to give your census, give yourself a sense of where you used to be to where you are now. I just think it’s really, really important because again, we have so many dentists now that it’s like. Literally, their tax bill is 4X what they used to make and they’re 10X more stressed about it.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, not as satisfied as they used to be when they were barber. That’s a really cool example, actually. Let’s go to number two. is the foundation of sound money decisions with our own Will Gochnour Will, take it away.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, that’s crazy.

Will: What’s up, if anyone who’s watching, just gotta pack some boxes after this,

Matt Mulcock: Will’s in the back. He’s moonlighting at UPS.

Ryan Isaac: Wills literally, We said he looked like, and the blue shirt actually looks like you work at like a UPS, a, or like what’s the, like an office max or something.

Will: Yeah, it’s literally like a UPS store employee with a chain. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: For reference, what this actually is. Will’s not moonlighting UPS. Yeah. This is, we are getting ready to send out client gifts. There’s hundreds and hundreds of boxes that have to be built and packed. So Will’s going to get us started today after the podcast, I think back there.

Will: For sure. Solo, just grinding. ⁓

Ryan Isaac: Thanks

Will: Any clients out there, can expect an amazing gift hand packaged by me. So if you’re not a client, you might want to become one. ⁓ So the second section is that organization is the foundation of sound money decisions. And I mean, that can’t ring any more true than anything else on this list, I think for us, because that is like our core, one of our core philosophies and it always will be, that will never change. Like if we do a 20 year episode,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Will: It’ll be on the list of 20 for sure. Organization, you can’t overstate it. We built this business on serving dentists, right? Like that was a decision we made many, many years ago. And one of the reasons, as everyone who’s listening to this knows, is that the life of a dentist, the financial life of a dentist is frankly pretty complex. And it’s more complex than the average like human person, American, whatever you want to say. because you come out of school, you have a lot of debt, you have to go into more debt to get a business. You’re a business owner by trade and you are a clinician and you have lots of employees and there’s just so many hats to wear and things to juggle. We know that if you, can get out of hand quickly. We have a lot of new clients come on board where they say like the minute that they get organized, it feels like this breath of relief and they can finally see. Everything in front of them and they can start to make decisions based on that. We have a mantra that we’ve always kind of stuck with and the four steps to like success in making decisions are organized. That’s step one, analyze, decide, and act. You can’t do the next three steps. You can’t analyze or decide or act until you’re organized. So that’s kind of my spiel on that. What do you guys think?

Matt Mulcock: We used have t-shirts, those are stuck in the back somewhere.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, I was gonna say.

Taylor: I’m sorry.

Will: Yeah, the worst t-shirt we ever made, I think. But it was the good letters, the design was terrible.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, design was terrible, but it’s a good step. I think it’s a really good visual overall, yeah.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, I think ⁓ that will forever probably be the answer to two questions. Number one, what’s the biggest money mistake dentists make? Being unorganized. number two, what is financial planning for a dentist? Is being organized. ⁓ Both fairly boring answers, but they really are like the foundation of all those things, for sure.

Taylor: Yeah. Well, and I have a unique perspective on this because like, guess, first off, everyone on this call, we all grew up wanting to be dental specific financial advisors. Like I knew that’s one thing that we all had on our bingo card going. ⁓ but I, I come from a place where my background is in like a financial services industry. That’s very product focused. Right. And I feel like for the most part.

Matt Mulcock: course.

Ryan Isaac: Yep, yeah, rock star, whatever.

Matt Mulcock: It’s either that or a veterinarian.

Taylor: The financial planning industry as a whole is very product focused. If you interviewed most advisors, they would think their job is to sell products, is to sell solutions. And the thing that drew me to dentists advisors in the first place, as an advisor, as someone who wanted to work in this industry was just our approach to financial advising that we don’t sell products. We sell organization. We sell a system. sell. Actual education and applying financial principles to your life and it’s a really really hard sell Right. It’s not something that you can go to a booth and say look at this awesome product, right? It’s we really have to educate teach and inspire people to make changes in their life and one of the biggest reasons why I was so excited for this podcast just because You know we owe where we are today and no small part to this very podcast that we’re on and all of the educating and principles and things we’ve talked about starting with this principle of organization being at the foundation of financial planning.

Matt Mulcock: Great point. just like making, we just like making things harder. You know, we should just start selling products. We’ve been saying this for years. Yeah. So some of Newt’s.

Ryan Isaac: Thanks, Taylor. Just hawk some insurance and some a newt some it yeah, right something new. It’s right some premium in this

Matt Mulcock: Or maybe we just want to admit really quick, maybe this after 10 years, we can just admit that we’re just not good at selling products. Like maybe that’s really what this is. We’re just like, we actually suck as salesmen. So we chose the path of financial advisor.

Ryan Isaac: I couldn’t be. I end up talking people out of like, don’t need this. Just don’t do this. Yeah. Anyone else? Organization is the foundation of sound money decisions. ⁓ Jake, Rabih, Matt, any comments here? It’s okay. Okay. There’s that old phrase like, I only have an opinion because you asked me to have one. I don’t know where that came from, but I love that. Number three, this is going back to Taylor. Your temperament is more important than your tactics. Taylor, what on earth do you mean by that?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. We nailed it. Yeah. Yep.

Taylor: Yeah, this one is really hard.

Matt Mulcock: He’s like, I have no idea, I didn’t write it.

Ryan Isaac: He’s like, actually, I didn’t write that. I just got assigned to that one.

Taylor: This is definitely written better than I would have said it for sure.

Ryan Isaac: Your bad attitudes making you poor, is that what you’re?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Taylor: I find that Ryan and Matt live rent free in my head, right? There’s a lot of like is Dentist money isms that just like are always in my head when I’m talking with clients and they come up. ⁓ and this one really comes up all the time in conversations with clients. And that is that the. ⁓ Great dentist that’s an average investor will do way better than the great investor that’s an average dentist. Right. And what does that mean? That means that when it comes to investing, temperament is so important, right? Which is really, really hard to wrap your brain around because our entire lives we’ve been told the harder you work, the more effort you put into something, the better you will do. Right. And it feels like that’s the case when it comes to investing. It feels like if we’re making trades and we’re moving money from here to here and we’re putting in these advanced tax strategies and all of these, you know, products and solutions that we will do better because we are doing something. We’re putting our time and our energy and our attention towards this investment or our portfolios growing. And unfortunately what we found over time, and this is not we as in Dentist advisors, this is just like we as investors as a whole is that, a lot of times we shoot ourselves in the foot. The more times we put or the more time and effort we put into our portfolios. Right. The market does its job, right? We are the ones that get in our own way. And we need to be careful that when we are doing and we’re building our portfolios and trying to gain and capture returns that, ⁓ we are not listening to what’s going on in the news. We’re not being swayed by what our friend, neighbor, brother-in-law told us, right? And that we really keep a level head and have a mild mannered, calm approach to our investment portfolio.

Jake: Yeah. Can I jump in here? It’s not about what you know. The whole personal finance deal is it’s not about what you know. It’s about how you behave. This is like the crazy thing is in today’s day and age with the internet and chat GPT and everything that we have, we have more information at our fingertips than ever before in human history. But none of us are better savers or investors or better managing our wealth or doing those things that we ever have been before.

Ryan Isaac: Love it. Thanks, Taylor. Jake. you

Jake: Is because it’s not about the information. It’s all about behavior. Personal finance is so cool, but maybe so frustrating in the sense that an uneducated farmer who doesn’t shout out farmers. I’m not dissing on farmers. My father-in-law is a farmer. I don’t know why that came to my mind. Yes, exactly. Father-in-law. Yeah. Stanford hours of realist. Shout out. But the uneducated person who doesn’t pay attention to anything, doesn’t listen to any news.

Ryan Isaac: Shout out to farmers and many of you are actually very educated too. Yeah, it’s a lot of educated farmers for sure.

Taylor: Thanks

Jake: Can outperform like a triple PhD Wall Street person over time and have better finances than them. And so it’s just, it’s kind of counterintuitive and it has nothing to do with information and everything to do with behavior and savings and managing your emotions and being smart and I mean, or being consistent. It’s kind of, it’s cool and maybe frustrating in that way.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, and quite often, yeah. Thanks, Jake.

Matt Mulcock: Jake, I thought you were going down the road of the Mark Twain quote. So I decided to finish that. said, ⁓ which goes, ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know, for sure. That just ain’t so I thought you were going to go that route because that’s what it’s kind of encompasses this whole thing that people think people want to believe that what Taylor was saying earlier, the more activity, the more trading that we can time this thing, we can beat the market. people want that to be true. And it just.

Jake: Let’s do it.

Matt Mulcock: Is not, and it’s everything that you guys just said. And I want to come back to something because Rabih and I had a conversation with a dentist and her family, ⁓ very, very large portfolio. And ⁓ they are considering coming over to dentist advisors and we’ve had multiple conversations. And one of them was, because again, they’ve got multiple seven figures in investment accounts and they wanted to talk the investment strategy specifically. And one of the things that they brought up as a concern coming over to us is they’ve been convinced by this other group. will not name names, but they’ve been convinced by this other group that they’ve got, as he put it, teams of people watching their portfolio every day and trading it every day. And he looked at this and I’m not blaming this guy at all. ⁓ But he looked at this as a strength. He was like, are you guys going to do this too? And Rabih had to hold himself back from laughing and, and obviously Rabih did a fantastic job of educating on what this all is, but I wanted to bring this up because it’s what I think Taylor said earlier that our, our industry still is very much selling people on tactics over temperament or special product or strategy. have a better mousetrap and it’s real. is, it is very difficult to fight against that and to tell people the truth when they’re trying to, when they want to be lied to about some special strategy.

Ryan Isaac: Thanks

Matt Mulcock: Rabih, you know what I’m talking about.

Rabih: Yeah, 100%. And actually this reminds me of a quote by either Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger, where they said, this industry does not need really high IQ points. So if you had the chance to shave off a couple of IQ points and get better behavior and better temperament, you do much better investment wise. So the fact that, hey, yeah, we’ve got multiple people who are kind of acting as too many cooks in the kitchen is actually showing you value.

Ryan Isaac: Thanks

Rabih: This is a whole different ball game. It’s a game of letting compounding work and it doesn’t mean that you have to poke it every once in a while. You have to let it do its work.

Matt Mulcock: Sorry, really quick. We’re not saying tactics don’t matter. We’re not saying strategy doesn’t matter and that you still have to have those things in place. It’s just the temperament and behavior. Everything you guys just highlighted is far, far more important.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, Matt, I can’t believe you didn’t say like, you know, compare this to the diet, health, exercise industry and fitness. Why didn’t we? There’s never been more information. Yeah. You know, that’s kind of, it was in my head. I held back. Rabih, let’s keep it going. If you number four, ⁓

Matt Mulcock: I know I was trying to, I was trying to, to change it up a little bit later. I’ve got ideas for that later. It’s coming. Yep.

Will: That’s coming, that’s coming, no that’s coming.

Ryan Isaac: Kind of really similar topic, there are no shortcuts. What do you mean by that, Rabih?

Rabih: Yes, 100%. And I think this ties into all the lessons we’ve discussed about it. It’s not enough to set your expectations once or to get organized once or to weather a storm by having a good temperament once. You have to keep on doing it. And this is what we forget. We think that it’s a set it and forget it type of thing. But you need to stick the course. There are no shortcuts because As I just said, it’s a different ballgame and compounding requires us to stick the course as long as we can. You guys know I’m going to bring numbers into this. invited me, so here we go. ⁓ at what age, I’m going to quiz you, do not cheat, at what age did Warren Buffett become a billionaire? With a B.

Ryan Isaac: Let’s go.

Matt Mulcock: 65.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, I’m going to say 60s, 63, because it is hedging.

Jake: Really old.

Rabih: He became a billionaire at 56, according to this research that did. What was his net worth at 65?

Matt Mulcock: Dozens and dozens of billions. 25 billion.

Rabih: 12 billion and that was at age 65. He’s now 90 something. What is his net worth right now? Over 140 billion, right? So just look at the difference between 12 billion to 140 billion and then look at the difference between net worth zero to net worth 12 billion and see how long it took just to get the 12.

Matt Mulcock: undreds of yeah.

Will: Trillion.

Rabih: And then how quick it took until you get to the 140. And this is what we really mean by there are no shortcuts. You have to sit there and let compounding work for you. I actually have more numbers for you. And this is very simple, you know, back of the envelope calculations. If you have a 100K right now and it’s compounding at 8%, how long will it take until it becomes a million dollars?

Ryan Isaac: Compounding at what? Eight? What is that, like nine years?

Rabih: 8 % it’s 30 years because it’s just that 100k you’re not doing anything for it and it’s going to multiply 10x right but at what year do you think so it’ll take 30 years from 100k to become a million invested at 8 % how many years will it take until that 100k becomes 500 halfway through

Taylor: To you, Jim.

Matt Mulcock: 20 years. 25 years.

Rabih: Yep, that is right. It’ll take exactly 21 years to get there. And you look at it, okay, so it takes two thirds of the way to get half the amount, right? Like there is a mismatch here between the money. So how much is the amount when you go halfway through time? So in 15 years, how much is that 100k? That 100k is only 300k. So on the road to a million, if you start with 100k, you’ve already crossed half the distance by only moving your money from 100k to 300k. And this is why it means there are no shortcuts. You have to go through this compounding path where it feels really bad at the beginning, but later on you’re in a much better position. And to link this to Dentist,

Ryan Isaac: Whoa. you

Rabih: How absurd would it be if I go to your clinic and tell you, I really do not want to brush my teeth every single day, but please guarantee that my teeth are going to be, they’re not going to fall off in 20 years from now. You look at me and it’s like, you know, just go and brush your teeth every day. And the same thing happens with investing. There are no shortcuts. You have to stay invested. And that’s how you guarantee good returns.

Ryan Isaac: Thanks for that example. mean, all of us can think of clients that we’ve had, especially over many years where you watch them go from nothing or very little in terms of net worth or investments and savings and just given time and nothing extraordinary, very average performance, average savings rates, average practices and income. These people amass multiple, multiple six figures and into seven figures. And it’s really cool to see that. Anyone can actually make that and that’s what’s so cool about that too is ⁓ that secret of just taking time and no shortcuts is accessible to everybody. It’s not ⁓ an investment only, you know, available to the very rich or the people who like really know, you know, from a seminar or something or tick tock.

Will: Do you guys know if there are any like health or fitness analogies that we could tie into this?

Ryan Isaac: That’s a good question.

Matt Mulcock: Any new analogies from fitness that are fresh from the mind?

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Will: I was just going to say, so I’ve been talking about this a lot on year end calls with clients where to Rabih’s point about compound interest and everything, think obviously your investment account that makes sense that you’re playing the long game. But I think just the career path of a dentist in general is the exponential curve. It’s the hockey stick, right? Where it’s flat for the first 10, 15 years. That’s just kind of the way it goes. It’s harder to get the ball rolling. It’s harder to get the debts paid off and get the income to grow. It’s a slower slope.

Ryan Isaac: Thank you.

Will: Half of your career, and then you hit the hockey stick and really the second half of your career. It’s you start jumping and you start seeing, my practice debts paid off. There’s eight grand a month. That’s now I’m just have now. And now I can put it into my investments. And you start seeing the snowball get going quicker and quicker down the Hill and accumulate more snow. And it it’s the long game. You can’t eat one healthy meal. You can’t work out once. You got to be doing this forever. Right. And that’s the, that’s the reality of it. And, ⁓ I love the teeth brushing too. Like you’d get, got to just do it the rest of your life. And if you do, you’re going to be in great shape. You are.

Matt Mulcock: I love that. I love that wills bring it forcing the net, the analogies on fitness.

Taylor: This is wild. Hey, boy.

Will: I’m the most in shape one here, so.

Matt Mulcock: Ha ha ha ha.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, Taylor, what are you gonna say?

Taylor: And this is why most of the financial advising industry is still very product focused because we as consumers want the magic diet pill. You know, we want the thing, the quick solution. want the shortcut. And so it’s really, really easy to pitch somebody a product that is a shortcut that’s going to get them to wealth quickly, just to get them to sign the dotted line and give them some of your money. Right. And it’s really, really hard to preach. Hey, if you increase your savings rate and pay attention to your spending and organize your data and pay attention to your collections for 25, 30 years, then you’ll be in a good spot.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, 20 years. Yeah, doesn’t seem very fun. So you better find ways to enjoy your life along the way, because it’ll happen if you let it, if you don’t get in its way. Yeah, for sure.

Matt Mulcock: Well, this is when Rabih was going through that, like I can’t, I couldn’t help but think like, this is what makes investing hard is what Rabih just said. You can be 10 years into something and still be like, what, where are the results? Like, I feel like I should be farther ahead than I am. Cause it is, and we’re, we’re acknowledging that it is really, really hard. It is really hard to Will’s point when it comes to health and fitness, it’s really hard to, to, take the truth, is. You’ve got to grind every day and put in, like you said, well, you can’t have one healthy meal in bag. Where’s my six pack? It takes a long, long time. And it’s, it is really difficult. The other thing I was thinking of during this is going back to the first one about expectations, not matching income. We’re all out here just copying people’s results and not, not thinking about the work it took to get those results. And it’s never been easier to see people’s results, whether they’re real or not. lot of them are fake and people.

Matt Mulcock: Pitching kind of their results after 30 years of grinding and they’re trying to sell you a course. You guys, you ever see on X or Twitter or whatever, something that took me 20 years, it’ll teach you in three days, in five minutes, in a thread. That is the quintessential microcosm of what’s wrong right now with social media and all this stuff. And to Taylor’s point, what’s wrong in our industry.

Ryan Isaac: You a thread.

Matt Mulcock: Is people trying to copy results as opposed to copying the process and realizing like to get to that result of wealth or the good looking body or whatever, it’s going to be a grind and it’s going to be a process. And truly there are no shortcuts. There’s no overnight success.

Ryan Isaac: Mm-hmm.

Jake: Well, first of all, if they’re selling you if they really are rich, why are they selling you a course?

Matt Mulcock: Exactly. Grant Cardone. I’m looking at you calling them out.

Ryan Isaac: Let’s move right into number five. think this Jake’s piece for number five here ⁓ kind of speaks to that question. Like, why do we then, if we know this is true, it’s a principle that works in like every part of everywhere in life. Why do we get in our own way? What happens in year seven? Why can’t we get to year 15 or year 20? ⁓ Jake, balance over burnout and burnout being a huge topic for dentists. What you got?

Jake: Yeah, I mean, we can even hit on this one pretty quickly because I think it’s a lot of the conversation we’ve already had, which is kind of, yes, we’ve been talking about the investment portion, but if we just want to move to more of like the career lifestyle portion of this a little bit as well, I think too well, I’ve said this a lot too often we treat personal finance like corporate finance, which is like the main objective of pretty much any business is to make a profit. Just like how can we make as much money as possible? Right? Kind of what’s just the bottom line there. Personal finance is not like that. Personal finance’s end goal really is to seek to maximize happiness or life satisfaction or contentment. Whatever word you want to use there. It’s really not to make the most money. Like that is like, how can I make as much money as possible is not a financial plan, unfortunately. First of all, there’s always going to be more money to make. So that’s like not an achievable goal. There will always be someone richer than you. There will always be another dollar to be made. Second, again, there’s no really reward for being the richest person in the graveyard at the end of your life, right? There’s no one patting you on the back for that. In the end, all we have is our life that we want to live in. So our goal or the goal of personal finance and planning is really to try and figure out how to make the money you’re making work for you to live the best life possible for you, right? We call it your rich life, right? We talked about a lot. know Rumi Sethi talked about that too. Just like, how can we use your money to…

Ryan Isaac: Okay.

Jake: Help maximize the happiness or things and purpose that you want in your life. And this is not just making the most money as possible. So for dentists, I know all of us have experiences with, okay, I graduated dental school. Now I opened up my own practice. Things are going well in a few years in. What’s the next step? Maybe it’s so everyone just tells me I need to do a new location and expand to that. Then after I open up that location, maybe I’m to do the next location and the next location is going to keep expanding and keep growing. For some people, that’s maybe an awesome goal. Like they just want to serve and help a lot of people. But you really need ask yourself, is that the right thing that you want to be doing because that is going to be adding on stress and work and risk to your plate. it’s like, is that really those career and financial goals that in line with what you really want out of life? Are you really working towards your ideal lifestyle or your ideal week? ⁓ Anyway, those are my initial thoughts on that. I know if you guys want to piggyback on that at all.

Ryan Isaac: Thanks Yeah, whether you’re a barber or a dentist, mean, you can derive the same amount of fulfillment and satisfaction independent of the money. It just depends what it means to you and how you use it. Totally agree. And you know, burnout was a big topic of ⁓ last year’s, this year’s, dentist money summit. Is it still this year? ⁓ Yeah. It really does. Boredom and burnout seem to be one of the biggest obstacles that successful dentists:

Jake: Yeah, any profession.

Matt Mulcock: This past year, yeah.

Ryan Isaac: Trip over in the middle of their careers. And there’s, you know, it’s perfectly logical why they get there, but it’s a very, very common and relatable thing. Anyone else? Balance over burnout. Any comments?

Matt Mulcock: The only thing I’d add here is just, get to define for yourself what balance means. And I think this is a real, this often gets thrown around. This is kind of like in now this whole like work life balance and I’m like, I’m not opposed to, I’m really not. I, I, just, I think there’s a step that goes beyond that, which is you define what that means for yourself. You define what burnout means for yourself. And that’s a really critical piece of this is I don’t like you define like is. Is balance to you mean a daily balance? Like I’m only working so many hours a day, or is it balanced? Like I’m going to grind for the next 10 years. Cause I want to eventually, I’m going to retire sooner than, than at like you, like what you get to find that for yourself. ⁓ we have a view on like what we think generally makes dentists the most fulfilled and happy. And it tends to be a balance over your career and not sprinting to some number. But I guess I just want to emphasize that we’re not here to define that for you. You have to define that.

Jake: Yeah. If you want to work 60 hours a week in the practice, that’s awesome. If that’s what you love doing and helping people, that’s fantastic. But it is identifying that, right? Being intentional. We talked about all the time is just what do you actually want, which is hard. know like everyone says that and oftentimes we don’t even know what we want really. And it changes over time and we need to test out different things. Like, do I like working a lot in the practice? Do I like doing two days a week? Do I like having an associate or doing everything on my own? We can test some of these things to see what makes sense.

Matt Mulcock: Yes.

Ryan Isaac: And it changes you

Jake: But Matt, to your earlier point you said in the podcast, oftentimes we just mimic what other people want or what people tell us what we should want. And I think a good, an important part of planning is let’s try and figure that out for ourselves. What actually makes us happy? What actually makes us happy in the practice or with our family or financially and try and lean into those things.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, it’s actually, I think it’s Jared Hill from, ⁓ know, shout out friend, client, Jared Hill from Elevation Association, who in a lot of their trainings and teachings at Elevation, they talk about harmony instead of balance, just that change of words. Because there are days, weeks, months, and even years where things are out of balance because they have to be. You have to work more. You have to spend more, like whatever it might be. ⁓ But you can still find harmony even in imbalance.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Love that.

Ryan Isaac: And that is a constant flow of things as life changes.

Taylor: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: I’m glad you brought that up, Ryan, because, ⁓ I think. I love that because I think sometimes the dark side of this whole balance thing sometimes can lead to unnecessary guilt for a dentist or anybody out there of like, I’m not balanced enough. It’s like, but I like, I know exactly what you’re talking about when I think it was Dan who brought that up at that, that last elevation event that talked about the word harmony. And, I love that distinction. I think it’s a really good point.

Ryan Isaac: Totally, for sure. Okay, yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I was I interviewed once ⁓ old friend of the show, ⁓ very well known dentist out of Arizona, Brian Harris, cosmetic dentist, he was talking about some coaching he was doing with a mentor and a coach and ⁓ he worked a lot and he loved working because he’s creative and he builds and he’s built a really big empire in his own in his own world and he’s influenced a ton of dentists and the industry really. And he got to this point where he, to your point, Matt, he’s feeling a lot of guilt at the amount of time he spent working versus being home sometimes or being with the family sometimes. And he would, he told this story how his coach would ask him, what’s the most important thing to you? And he would, he would repeat the answer he thought he was supposed to say, which, which is like, my family, family time, spending time with my family. And the coach was like, you’re lying. No, it’s not because you don’t. And ⁓ in that moment, he realized that of course his family’s like, you know, top of his priorities, but also working was something he highly valued. was very fulfilling to him. Creating and building and work was like central to who he was as a human. And he said, once he just accepted that that’s part of what made him him at that point in his life, he was actually happier in the time that he did spend with his family and he was more present and he was more grateful and he let go of the guilt of it. So, you know, part of it is just finding like what does bring you that? flow and that harmony and it doesn’t have to be, I like what you guys keep saying, it doesn’t have to be someone else’s answer. I love that.

Matt Mulcock: Such a example.

Jake: It’s so deep. All these topics we could talk about for a full episode.

Ryan Isaac: So, okay, let’s go to number six, throwing it back to you, Matt. Most things you worry about don’t matter. I worry about the waves conditions, know, the swells and the tides and the wind a lot. And I would argue strongly that, you know.

Will: Matters though,

Matt Mulcock: Those do matter. Yeah. I think at the, this one’s risky, I think, in the sense of I don’t want it to come off. I really don’t. I want to just call it out first. Like I don’t want it come off like preachy. Like you don’t, what you’re worrying about doesn’t matter, but I think it’s so if there’s a better way to phrase this, please, please throw it out. ⁓ but I do think it’s worth highlighting, ⁓ that the day and I guess I’m calling myself out like thinking back and reflecting on things in your life, use the day to day stresses. I’m just going to make up a number here because that’s what we do. think like 90 % of the things we stress about day to day end up not mattering as you stretch out the timeframe. ⁓ and unfortunately it tends to take as I think we all know, ⁓ whether it be like a parent getting sick or someone you love dying or on the positive side, ⁓ shout out Megan on our team. She just had a baby. And I think it takes these moments in life to highlight what actually does matter. It’s like those big moments, whether they be sad or really, really happy. And I just think this is, I wanted to bring this part of this one up because I think when it comes to our work and the things we talk about with clients all the time, it’s really easy to get lost in the minutia of the spreadsheet, the minutia of the returns this year, uh, or what the S and P whatever. Um, when really what this comes down to is we’ve talked. At the summit, last, ⁓ the Dentist Money summits last couple of years, we all know, right? We all know it’s cliche at this point, but I think things are cliche for a reason because they’re so true that the only things that really matter that our focus should be in and everything in service to is our health relationships and our purpose in life. ⁓ you know, we talked about at the summit, I think, I don’t know if it was this year or the year before, but the Harvard study, the most, I think it’s very, very famous at this point. The biggest study, ⁓ cross-generational study that seeks to find out what was literally the most important thing in people’s lives that led to happiness, the strongest corollary to happiness. And it was unequivocal that it was the relationships in our life. so again, at the risk of sounding preachy with this one, I just think it’s worth kind of bringing back people to this idea that again, day-to-day stuff, you know, for the most part ends up not mattering in the end.

Ryan Isaac: Surfing. Yep. Thanks Yeah, this reminds me of a book and a list that we’ve talked about on a few episodes and throughout our content over the years is the book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware, where she spent years ⁓ in hospice care with people at the end of their lives in their homes and interviewing them and writing their stories down, categorized everything into the top five regrets of all these people that she met who were passing away at the end of their lives. and yeah. ⁓ It does recenter. I could read them if you want, yeah. Yeah. These are the time they’re phrased in the voice of the people. So number one is I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me, which you guys have been saying we take on everyone else’s dreams and be like, yeah, I should live that same way. Number two is I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. That was a very those stories hit really hard.

Will: What are the, yeah, what they’re just, mean, essentially it’s like work less, spend more time in relationships.

Ryan Isaac: Number three is I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. Four is I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Thanks guys for being here. And number five is I wish I had let myself be happier. So yeah, Matt, think, it’s not, most things you worry about don’t matter. I think that’s a true statement. Anyone else? Jake Taylor, will probably Jake. Yeah.

Jake: I think it goes to that last one, right? Like I wish I’d let myself be happier is probably like on the other ends. Like I just wish I would have stopped worrying about some things that don’t matter. One quick thing. I know I’m talking a lot here, just like on a more even like a less grand scale kind of like we’ve been talking about. If we just want to talk about like the investment side of things and like headlines there that people get worked up about. I’m telling you the headlines that you’re going to hear over the next like couple of weeks or even less. You’re just not going to matter to a portfolio. They’re just not going to matter to a longer.

Ryan Isaac: And you could

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, there.

Ryan Isaac: Just play that clip ten years from now again:

Jake: They are just not like even even big ones like who is the president of the United States or are we in a trade war or any of those monster ones are not going to matter to your portfolio over the:

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: And by the way, Jake, you can test this, go back to one year ago from today and go look at the headlines and see if A, any of it came true and B, what impact it actually had on anything. the answer is you can’t find anything that the headlines of a year ago, hell a month ago that actually mattered today.

Ryan Isaac: Mm hmm. Totally. OK, let’s keep it going. We’re pretty good on time for being a number seven. Kicking it back to Will. Time is greater than money. Huge yes to that. Take us through that, Will.

Will: I’m just gonna give a shout out to one of the greatest ⁓ books slash movies of all time and read you guys a riddle. My daughter’s like super into riddles right now. I think I hope you guys know what this is from. ⁓ This thing all thing devours birds, beasts, trees, flowers, gnaws iron, bites steel, grinds hard stones to meal, slays kings, ruins towns and beats high mountains down. Who said it?

Ryan Isaac: Okay.

Taylor: Bilbo Baggins.

Matt Mulcock: Taylor new.

Will: Not what golem says it:

Taylor: Bilbo.

Ryan Isaac: and

Taylor: dang it.

Will: Gollum gives him the riddle in order for him to get the ring and Bilbo’s asking. He accidentally answers it asking for more time to solve the riddle. And he says time. He says, need time time. And Gollum’s like, freak, you answered the riddle and iconic. Great. You got to go back and watch the movie. Read the book. Like I’m kind of a.

Ryan Isaac: Can you say that again now, now that I know the answer? it again. The Riddle.

Will: Yeah, so that’s the, this thing, this, this thing, all things devours birds, bees, trees, flowers, gnaws iron, bites steel, grinds hard stones to meal, slays Kings, ruins towns and beats high mountains down. Time is just, time’s coming for you. Father time is undefeated. A hundred percent. Um, you’re, you’re going to get old. Your bones are going to get, you know, weary. You’re going to get tired. You’re going to get old. like,

Ryan Isaac: Go.

Will: The point of this, think this is hopefully semi-obvious, is time is your most scarce resource and by far your most valuable resource. All of the things we’ve talked about up into this point ring true with this, but find your purpose, find what matters, use your wealth to buy back time, not just to cumulate more of it. Take the day off, go on the trip, you know, that’s all you got. So what do you guys think?

Ryan Isaac: I think every, sorry, I think most people hit a certain part in life ⁓ where they start to really relate to this a lot more. And we see this in dentistry specifically with money and financial planning and career decisions. It’s when people start thinking of like, maybe I should get an associate or a partner or a bigger team or more help. Maybe I should outsource more stuff. I need more time.

Matt Mulcock: Love it.

Taylor: Yeah, well this one’s hit home for me recently, just thinking again, I’m crazy, I have three little kids right now, fourth one on the way. I can’t keep up with Will, no one can, but we’re trying. And someone started talking about holidays in terms of just numbers, right? Like with my child, I only have 18 Christmases. I only have 18 of these. And of… Of those 18 Christmases, they might only remember 12 tops, right? And when you put it in… Yeah. And when you put it in context of that, it’s like you really have just like some key moments in your life that like, they’re only gonna happen once. You’re only gonna have a handful of them and you need to be there for them, right? And when they’re there, you need to have the flexibility.

Matt Mulcock: Snd they’ll want to be with you on five.

Taylor: The balance, the harmony in your life that you can be present for those moments because you’re only going to get a handful and then you’re never going to get them back.

Matt Mulcock: So true.

Jake: Again, freaking existential on here.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, well.

Matt Mulcock: Well, I think, I think this is connected to the one previous, right? The most things don’t matter. This is the thing that does right. And what you just said, Taylor and everything you just said, well, and Ryan, that our time, our attention where we’re putting our energy, we got to be really thoughtful about that.

Will: And your, your time’s not guaranteed either. That’s kind of the point is like, some could happen and you don’t have your golden years, right? You don’t have your, this, you work all these years to get to this arbitrary retirement age where you’re going to go travel the world and do all these things. And I mean, I don’t know if it’s more often than not, but I think frankly, fairly often, a lot of people don’t get to ever live out their golden years for one reason or not. So what, why are we wasting all the time getting there?

Ryan Isaac: Mm-hmm.

Will: And we can enjoy it along the way.

Ryan Isaac: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: Taking a big risk there. talk about risk a lot in our business. That’s a big risk, honestly, that people don’t think about is banking on the future being there. Banking on the golden years to your point, Will. And this doesn’t mean frivolously spend and don’t save and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s, yeah, no, for sure. And again, we’re obviously financial advisors. So table stakes, we’re saying we need to be thinking about the future, but not at the expense of your, of

Jake: Still save your money please. Still please.

Ryan Isaac: Your old self is gonna want a little bit of money. Yeah.

Will: you

Taylor: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: These moments along the way and losing sight of the things that matter. ⁓ so like you said, Jake, we’re getting existential, I think it’s important.

Taylor: And even Even if you have those golden years, do you have the relationships that make those golden years golden? Right? Did you maintain them? Did you you know? Shout out Jake. He says sometimes to be a good friend. You have to be a terrible spouse. So, you know,

Ryan Isaac: Mm-hmm.

Jake: I believe that.

Ryan Isaac: I want that to be a whole episode by itself. Number eight. Sometimes to be a good spouse, you better. Yeah. That’s a really good.

Matt Mulcock: You could reverse that though, Jake, right? To be a good spouse, you have to be a terrible friend. Yeah. I kind of love that.

Jake: Yes. Yeah, trade-offs with everything, right? We can’t have it all. Yeah.

Taylor: It’s usually when Jake wants me to go golfing with him, he says I have to be a bad guy.

Jake: It’s exactly in that:

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake: Scenario. It’s like, you know what? I tell my wife, I Taylor needs me. I need to be a good friend today. I gotta go golf with them.

Ryan Isaac: You’re a good man, Jake. Way to make a sacrifice. Number eight, Taylor, keep it here. ⁓ You know, this subject is dentists carry a lot of stress for a lot of reasons in a lot of different ways. This might be one of the number one ⁓ tests or benchmarks of dentist stress. What is it, Taylor?

Matt Mulcock: So good.

Taylor: ⁓ yeah. Number eight things that we still believe after 10 years, and this is kind of a hot take, but it’s liquidity, not debt is the truth. Stress test, stress test. Right. And I think this is a really common thing. You know, a lot of dentists, the average dentist right now graduates with $350,000 of student debt. So the new recent caps at 200,000 for professional student debt. don’t know what’s going to happen there. So that’s.

Ryan Isaac: Totally agree. Yep.

Taylor: Headline and a worry for another day. But long story short, a lot of dentists, their first marriage is to debt, right? Before anything else. And debt is going to be a big proponent in their life. And so it’s something that’s constantly on their mind. It is very stressful, but you’re probably going to graduate dental school with $350,000 in debt. If you want to buy a practice, you’re going to add another million dollars in debt. If you want to buy the practice real estate, you’re going to add another million dollars in debt. If you’re going to buy a home in today’s real estate market at another million dollars in debt. I mean, it’s not uncommon for a dentist to be just an average dentist, right? Not like a really big, crazy dentist that’s got multiple locations, like just an average dentist to have three to $5 million in debt. And that can be really scary and really stressful. But what I found working with hundreds of dentists over the years is more often than not the Biggest thing that really caused Dentist stress is not their debt load. is their liquidity. Right. If I have a client that’s really stressed out, I can almost pull up their dashboard and see that their cash is going to be low without fail. Right. If cash and liquidity levels are low, people are stressed. Right. It’s not typically the debt load that brings that stress as much as not having enough cash on hand. And they can definitely be tight. Right? You know, if you have a lot of debt and you have a high bar and there’s things that preventing you, just from a cashflow perspective to build up that cash. But specifically what I found is a lot of times people are very, very aggressive with their debt reduction strategies and they want to pay off their debts as quickly as possible. But when you find people in those situations, a lot of times they’ll get to the end of the road and they’ll be debt free.

Ryan Isaac: You

Taylor: But they’ll have low liquidity and they’re still stressed, right? Because liquidity is flexibility. Liquidity is freedom, right? If I have $500,000 in debt, but $300,000 of liquidity, I’m usually not that stressed. But if I have $0 in debt, right? Or if I have, let’s say I have, have, $200,000 in debt and zero liquidity. My net worth is the same in both situations, right? I’m more stressed with $200,000 in debt and no liquidity than I am $500,000 in debt, $300,000 in liquidity, right? And just to give a quick story on this, I think it was Jake that brought this up, but he was talking to a client or prospect years ago that she’d come out of school really aggressive with her debt reduction, wanted to get her student loans paid off quickly. And then her hometown practice became available sooner than she thought it was going to be. Right. She thought she had several years, but it actually became available and the dentist wanted to sell and be done. And they approached her and were like, Hey, do you want to buy this practice? And unfortunately she couldn’t because she’d been so aggressive with her debt reduction. She didn’t have enough cash on hand. The banks wouldn’t give her a loan. And that’s just like a really, really sad story that highlights you need to have liquidity to give yourself mobility, freedom, flexibility to make moves in your career.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, thanks, Taylor. Anyone else? Jake, Will, Rabih, Matt? I mean, this is a topic we talk about all the time. It’s literally like the how stress as a dentist, look at their liquidity.

Jake: Yeah, I mean, this is like what makes you feel better like having a debt paid off or knowing that you could pay off this debt if you wanted to. You you have an adequate liquid assets and things like that probably feels just as good.

Ryan Isaac: Thank Or yeah, yeah. Options, flexibility. Yeah, totally agree. We get this question a lot too when people ask about ⁓ the way we do planning or build investment portfolios and we build ⁓ a dentist financial plan and investments around a lot centered around building liquidity. There’s a lot of places you can put money, a lot of buckets, lot of tax, you know consequences or advantages, different asset classes, but it really doesn’t matter if you’re a dentist who’s trying to build a lot of locations, your dentist who wants a lot of real estate, or your dentist who just wants a lot of liquidity as part of your net worth. It’s going to be really central and key and it’s going to keep your stress, it’ll indicate where your stress is at, high or low for sure.

Matt Mulcock: I don’t think I’ve, I don’t think I’ve ever had a dentist, truly, if you’re out there, let us know. But honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever had a dentist who’s lived this, who’s taken this advice and gone this route of building up liquidity and not being aggressive with debt. I think we are batting a thousand when it comes to this, dentists coming back to us and saying, Holy cow, you were totally right. Liquidity, the lack of liquidity is really what is making me stressed and not having liquidity into Taylor’s point cashflow.

Ryan Isaac: Million percent.

Matt Mulcock: We’ll make the dress that the sorry, we’ll make the debt, ⁓ feel that much more stressful. It’ll like magnify it, but it’s not the debt. It’s the, it’s the liquidity. So I’ve never had anyone tell me otherwise.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, for a little story time, I’ve had ⁓ recent conversations with three different clients who are near the end part of a career. They’ve accumulated a lot of net worth. ⁓ These three people particularly, totally different parts of the country and different lifestyles and careers, they were highly just personality. They were highly interested in a lot of asset classes. They wanted to spread their money to a lot of different things, a lot of private investments, a lot of real estate nothing wrong with those asset classes inherently just generally speaking. But it’s been really interesting to watch all recently all three of them come back and say like, kind of tired of this actually, it’s it’s too I just want all of this sold. I want all this money sitting after tax in a brokerage account. And I want to think about this anymore. It’s been interesting to watch people who literally have spent years building a balance sheet that grew to dozens of line items of different kinds of illiquid investments and then come back and go, I don’t know, I’m too tired for this. I’m too stressed. I just, I want to just sitting there. I want options and flexibility and access. I want to access to my stuff like immediately. And I don’t want to think about it anymore. It is, it’s a really fascinating thing to watch happen over the, over the career and life of a dentist. Let’s go something kind of similar. There’s a question we get all the time when people call us ⁓ or schedule on our calendar to meet with us and see if we’d be a good fit for them, they’d be a good fit for us to be a client of dentist advisors. People ask, what is planning? What does financial planning mean? ⁓ That term itself always comes across like it’s a one-time event that you do, you print out and you’re done, which is not the case. It gets sold like that to Taylor’s point. It’s advantageous to our industry to package it like that, to sell a product one time. But going to Jake now. Planning is a process. Take us through this for a minute, Jake.

Jake: Yep, this is something we believe 10 years ago, we believe it, I think still today, we will continue to believe it 10 years from now. Here’s the deal planning and strategizing is very important. And it is never going to end. That is the thing. Just I just we’ve talked a lot today, I think about life is short. And we got to enjoy the time to life can also be long. I think on the opposite end of the spectrum, you know, sometimes if you’re lucky enough, life can be long. Yeah, if you’re lucky enough.

Matt Mulcock: My grandma would say that right now, 89 years old. She’s like, this has been a long ride, yeah.

Jake: Just think about everything that has changed in the world over the past. Like just go to the year 2000. I guess I was going to say 30 years, but let’s go back to the year 2000 and just try and think about everything that’s changed, not only in the world, but in our lives. Like I’m thinking about myself 25 years ago. I think the only thing I really cared about at that point was like Hot Wheels. At that point, just like the

Taylor: Were you born, Jake? Were you born back then?

Matt Mulcock: I’m ⁓

Jake: Life can be long and over not even just the course of a career that we expect to be 20 to 30 years, but once you retire, maybe sell the practice, reach financial independence, there could be multiple decades of planning on top of that. Like that is not the end point, right? There’s a lot of planning from there. And so this is something where life can be really long and there’s going to be a lot of ups and downs and things that we cannot predict, not even just in the world, but in our own lives. We’ve talked about, we’re really not great as humans about predicting what’s going to make us happy or what we want. And that’s going to change multiple times over our lives. And whenever you create a financial plan, it’s going to be out of date, just over like a couple of months and not likely at all, especially over a year. And so what we like to do is not just do a one time plan and set and forget it. What we really would encourage is let’s set a plan. Let’s make some assumptions and get on the right track right now. And then let’s revisit that multiple times a year, at least yearly, but ideally multiple times a year. And let’s just keep tweaking that plan as we get new information. And usually if you do that, you’re going to end up in an awesome spot down the road. And it’s kind of like, I think there’s some freeing. It’s kind of freeing to admit, I don’t know what’s going to happen really in 15 to 20 years, but I do know how I feel right now. And I can have a pretty good guess of what’s going to happen over the next year. And so let’s plan for this year. And then let’s plan the year after that. And then the year after that, and before you know it, you’re probably going to be in an awesome spot down the road.

Ryan Isaac: Thank,Yeah, know, Will talked about this earlier when he mentioned the ugliest shirt we’ve ever made in the history of Dentist Advisors, which I think I have the coolest one. The Dentist Money Show original t-shirts that are just like the softest, coolest ones. The design.

Will: Yeah, see you. The shirt was fine. We just chose to put the print on the back shoulder for some reason.

Ryan Isaac: So bad. But the four pieces to what a financial plan is, organize, analyze, decide and act. ⁓ Although that is something that happens in the beginning of like an onboarding process when people work with us. There’s a lot that goes into that and it takes, you know, months to get going and started. But really that’s a process that gets repeated every year and sometimes multiple times a year. We update data again. We analyze the data again. You’re making new decisions based on new things that have come up in life and you’re taking new actions and having new accountability. So yeah, it’s a process that never, never ends. And over the course of many years of a dentist career, they have so many decisions that they have to make that they often just don’t think that they’re going to have to make. A lot of times they’re small ones, but they’re dozens every year. And then sometimes there’s a handful of big ones, but it’s constant. It never ends. And kind of back to the last one you were talking about, Jake, with liquidity ⁓ or whoever that was. Is that the last one? Yeah. Taylor. The amount of times a dentist needs money in their career for emergencies or opportunities is crazy. It’s so frequent and often unpredictable. Like to your point, Jake, you don’t, seeing past 12 months from now is a really hard thing to do. So yeah, anyone else? Planning is a process. Anyone else have anything to say?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, Taylor. I would just say, the way, I mean, we, this is why we set out to have our, business engage with Dentist across the whole career life cycle, because what Dentist don’t often think about is planning gets even more complicated after your career. And I think a lot of times Dentist want to believe people want to believe that it’s like, I’ve reached the top of the mountain. We’re good. I don’t need this anymore. It’s like, no, actually descending that mountain. The game has completely changed. Rules are different. Stakes are higher.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Yeah. I just take a little money and yeah. Yep. And the stakes are higher because you don’t have income anymore. Yep.

Matt Mulcock: Emotions are way different. Go ahead, Jake.

Jake: Just thinking about  this, what if you would have like explained crypto to somebody in like 2005? Like, isn’t that funny to think about? And just like, what’s the next thing? it’s just, yeah, we’re just, what it is we go along here.

Matt Mulcock: My gosh. Yeah. Yeah, or like a Labooboo, you know, who knew what a Labooboo was 10 years ago. You know what I mean? I just learned. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac: Hot topic on the team these days.

Jake: Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac: Let’s round this thing out as it should be with the closer. Let’s the keynote speaker. Thanks for listening to all of the warm up acts. We’re gonna kick it to Rabih. The topic is there’s no magic asset class, which is that’s a hot take. actually…

Matt Mulcock: With the closer, with the closer, by the way.

Will: Mariana Rivera.

Rabih: Do you guys think there is one?

Jake: just said it crypto I just said.

Matt Mulcock: I have.

Taylor: Thank

Ryan Isaac: I think liquidity is the magic asset class.

Matt Mulcock: I have beliefs of what’s the better, what has a better asset class for most, but I want to hear you, Rabih.

Ryan Isaac: Same. My opinion is too, but Rabih,

Taylor: Insurance, right?

Ryan Isaac: No magic asset class.

Rabih:  Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, of course. Whole life. Yeah.

Will: NFTs, NFTs, NFTs.

Ryan Isaac: You

Rabih: Their reality of things is that there is no magic asset class. Every asset class has its trade-offs. know, we think of real estate and we like that it’s tangible, but the trade-off is that you’ve got lots of illiquidity and lots of leverage. We think of private equity and we think about, you know, the bragging rights that you invest in companies before they go public, but you’ve got very long lock-up periods. They’re usually scammy and they’re opaque in their pricing and you have to navigate that you think of crypto Jake and You really love the the narrative and you write it but the trade-off is I’ll just I’ll just say it you’re investing in something that does not complete the economic cycle, right and then ⁓ You do public equities and we like how consistent in their long-term returns are but the trade-off for those is That you’re gonna get drawdowns:

Jake: It’s fake. It’s not real. Yeah.

Rabih: And you have to have some emotional endurance while you’re investing in them. And then we have bonds where we like how stable and defined the return is. But the trade off is that you’ve got inflation risk and probably not enough growth. So if you look at it, there is really out there in the market, there’s no magic asset class. But success comes when you match your needs, liquidity, your behavior, temperament, all the stuff that we’ve talked about to the profile of that asset class and stick throughout the course. And that’s when success happens at the intersection of these two. So since you guys told me to close it, I’m gonna be a little bit cheesy. There might not be a magic asset class, but we can get very close to one because if you’re a dentist who’s like alleviating pain, giving people confidence, employing others, providing for your family, encouraging the community.

Matt Mulcock:  Yes, yes.

Rabih: And you’re extracting from the markets and asset classes what suits you and not get swayed by it. Then you, the dentist, you’re the magic asset. You’re the one who’s really making a difference.

Taylor: Wow, Rabih.

Jake: Dude, I was just going to say that I was literally thinking as this came up, is a dental practice the closest thing you get maybe to a magic asset?

Ryan Isaac: Agree, yes. As a dentist,

Matt Mulcock: Boom. Dude, Rabih just freaking nailed that, dude. We said he was the closer, he closed that.

Ryan Isaac: As a dentist, yes. Your career, yeah. Yeah.

Will: That was a 110 mile an hour fastball to my face.

Matt Mulcock: Dude.

Taylor: You

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, seriously. Just strike three. We’re all out. Yeah. It’s amazing.

Jake: Just a slider, a 100x power slider.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, thank you. ⁓ Thanks, Rabih. Thanks, Taylor, Jake, Will, Matt. ⁓ Anyone want to… This is really cool. think we did 10 years,

Matt Mulcock: So it’s fun, guys. 10 years.

Will: You’re the best.

Matt Mulcock: Can we just really quick 10 years, 3 million downloads. ⁓ like you and you, when you and Reese did this, you and I have talked about this Ryan. ⁓ and we’ve talked to Reese about this. When you guys started this 10 years ago, everyone looked at you like you were idiots. Like, what do you do a podcast? Yeah. They weren’t a thing.

Ryan Isaac: Never would have thought. No, never. No. I looked at me like I was an idiot. I thought Reese was crazy.

Will: Guys weren’t really a thing. Yeah.

Taylor: Why would I?

Ryan Isaac: I thought Reese was crazy. was like, that’s like a radio show. What do you mean? He was gonna listen to this thing. How are you gonna find it? Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:  Yeah. Yeah, so cool. Honestly, just such a fun ride. ⁓ so I still talk to Dentist, we, you know, we talked to Dentist every single week, not just clients, but, but, know, Dentist out there calling for consultations and I’d say three out of four, if not four out of five, nine out of 10, whatever you want to call it. Most of them, it’s just so cool to hear like, man, I love the podcast. I love what you guys do, the value add. So. ⁓

Ryan Isaac: Every week, every day I must. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: Super cool. And thanks everyone for being a part of this.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, thanks for tuning in and listening. Let’s just remind you of ⁓ probably the most important link that you can click today for sure. Maybe this month and maybe this year. Maybe you’re in your lifetime. And that link is dentistadvisors.com/10 years because you’re going to get yourself a dentist money show mug. And I do wish you know what? I wish I had our mugs on the mug, which would have been kind of a funny mug inception. But.

Matt Mulcock: I want one so bad.

Ryan Isaac: DentistAdvisors.com/10 years. And while you’re there, the number 10, one zero. And while you’re there, we love talking to you guys. We love answering your questions, pointing you in the right direction, helping you make smarter financial decisions. And so if you wanna have a chat with us, click the book free consultation link and set up a time to chat with one of us today. So anything else guys? Or we close the thing out, shut her down.

Will: The number 10 to 1, 0.

Matt Mulcock: You guys are great. We love you.

Ryan Isaac: Okay, well thanks everyone:

Will: Bye.

Ryan Isaac: Thanks for tuning in and listening. Thanks guys for being here. It’s a pleasure as always. We’ll catch you next time on another episode of the Dentist Money Show. Bye bye now.

Keywords: expectations, income, financial advisory, client goals, stress, career, collections, 10 year anniversary, financial principles.

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