A Year in the Life of a Dentist Advisors Client – Episode 282

What is it like to be a Dentist Advisors client? On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan and Matt review the Dentist Advisors client journey. Each client starts with an initial consultation, moves on to our detailed onboarding process, and then builds a plan that can be the basis for their financial decisions. On this podcast, Ryan and Matt look at the four phases a client passes through.

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Dentist Money Show sponsored in whole by Dentist Advisors, a fiduciary, no commission, dental-specific, dental only comprehensive financial advisor for dentist all over the country. Check us out, dentistadvisors.com. Today on the show, Matt and I talk about a question and an experience that many hundreds of dentists have had and many hundreds of other dentists want to know on an annual basis, which is specifically, what is it like to work with dentist advisors? We call today’s episode something like; A Day or A Year in the Life of Clients of Dentist Advisors.

Ryan Isaac:
But hopefully, this episode gives two takeaways. Number one, anyone specifically, wanting to know what it’s like to work with Dentist Advisors over the course of a year and years to come will get a lot out of today’s episode. It’s very specific to our company and our service model. But number two, anyone who has a current advisor or shopping around for an advisor, this will at least give some good context to how we define financial planning process, and onboarding process, and ongoing communications, and how frequent they happen, and why they happen. So hopefully, you get a lot out of today’s episode, and hopefully it’s helpful to the decisions that you’re currently making in your financial decisions.

Ryan Isaac:
If you have any questions for us and you’d like to chat with us anytime, you can go to dentistadvisors.com, click on the book free consultation link, and click that button, and schedule a time to chat with one of our very friendly advisors today, or go the Facebook group, dentistadvisors.com/group, and post a question. We’ll post an answer. But anyway, thanks for being here with us. We really appreciate it, and enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consultant an advisor and conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by Dentist Advisors or Registered Investment Advisor. This is Dentist Money. Now, here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome to the Dentist Money Show where we help dentists make smart financial decisions and avoid the bad ones along the way. I’m your host, Ryan Isaac, and I’m here with the, the, the mountain of Hollywood, Mr. Matt Mulcock, CFP.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, wow.

Ryan Isaac:
CFP. Crap, am I allowed to say that? Because they’re really protective of how you can say CFP. I can CFP, right? Can I say it?

Matt Mulcock:
I think you can say CFP, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
They’re really protective about what letter and capitalization and punctuation you’re supposed to use, when you can, when you can’t. I was like, “Crap. Can I say it?”

Matt Mulcock:
Yes. How you use it, when you use it, who you say it to. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Is it a symbol we’re not supposed to speak?

Matt Mulcock:
It pretty much is, yeah. It’s very holy, very sacred.

Ryan Isaac:
It is a sacred, sacred symbol.

Matt Mulcock:
Yo, Ryan?

Ryan Isaac:
What’s up? Yeah, welcome to the podcast. It’s another one. Here we are. Middle of April, 2021. We survived 2020, I guess. I don’t know. We’re still here.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s amazing how fast this year is going by.

Ryan Isaac:
What’s really kind of interesting is lately, when people ask, it’s actually the best time of my almost 14-year career when people have asked what are my returns? Because when people want to know what are my returns for the last 12 months, 12 months ago included the bottom of the 2020 COVID crash in March and April, and so I’m loving right now when people say, “What are my…”

Matt Mulcock:
It’s the best time to be asking that.

Ryan Isaac:
“What are my returns?”

Matt Mulcock:
The only time I literally look forward to it. I’m soliciting people like, “Hey, you want to see your returns?”

Ryan Isaac:
“You want to know returns? Yeah. Usually, I only talk about 10 years or more. I’m like if it’s less than 10 years, we don’t discuss it. I’m just kidding, but it’s irrelevant. But now, yeah. I’m like, “You want to know your 12 month return?”

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I’m like, “Oh, we don’t care about anything but the 12 month returns.”

Ryan Isaac:
When the market was down 38 percent.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
That was a year ago.

Matt Mulcock:
And now you’re up 70.

Ryan Isaac:
That was a year ago, man.

Matt Mulcock:
It was a year ago.

Ryan Isaac:
And crazy times. Today, we’re going to talk about something that we get questions about a lot. People want to know, okay, well, I’ll give a little context here. Our company’s been around for about 15 years. Started with the Big Hoss Reese Harper, which by the way, shout out.

Matt Mulcock:
Shout out. Birthday.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s his birthday. Yeah, Big Hoss.

Matt Mulcock:
Happy birthday, Reese.

Ryan Isaac:
Happy birthday, Reese. Man, and this has to stay, this cannot get cut, okay? This is banned for the cannot get cut. Happy birthday, Reese. So, for a long time, every year, especially since the podcast has been around, so quite a few years now, there’s a lot of people who call us for the first time, and they want to know, what it’s like having a financial advisor, and what’s it all about, and I don’t know.

Matt Mulcock:
What’s it like to be us?

Ryan Isaac:
What’s it like, man?

Matt Mulcock:
Give me the day in the life.

Ryan Isaac:
So today, I wanted to cover a topic and a question that people want to know about us specifically. So we’re going to get kind of specific about our own business, but we’re going to talk about to give some context to what it’s like to work with a financial advisor. Just what’s… I was going to say, a day in the life of, but a day is too short, so a year in the life of a client of Dentist Advisors. That’s what I want to do today.

Matt Mulcock:
I love it.

Ryan Isaac:
And I want to give context not only… Obviously, this will be insight into our business for everyone who listens, which by the way, if you’re listening for the first time or recently joining us, welcome to the Dentist Money show.

Matt Mulcock:
Welcome.

Ryan Isaac:
As we say in the beginning, thank you for being here.

Matt Mulcock:
We say it in the beginning. We say it in the middle. We say it at the end. Welcome, and thank you. We love you.

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome, and if you’re one of these people who is like, “Oh, now I want to chat with you,” you go to dentistadvisors.com, and you click the book free consultation button, and you chat with us. That’s how it works. But if you’re wondering, “Oh, what is this like,” or, “What is it like in general to work with a financial planner,” or, “I’ve had one before. I have one now, or interviewed some other planners, and I want to know. I want some context here. What can I expect?” Like, “I’m going to go the dentist.” It’s a predictable experience to a certain extent, but having a financial planner is zero percent predictable. You have no idea what that… Does that mean I’m going to get a 401k, or someone’s going to sell me an annuity or a whole life policy.

Matt Mulcock:
Nope, you’re going to get a hot stock tip. Come on.

Ryan Isaac:
Hot stock tips? Are we’re going to trade some bitcoin? Are we going to do counseling? Are you going to yell at my spouse about spending too much? What are we doing here?

Matt Mulcock:
Wishful thinking there. “Are you going to yell at my spouse, because I really that, because I can’t.”

Ryan Isaac:
Hey, if you think we’re joking about that, people actually request on the side, like down low. Like, “Hey, can you just kind of get after my spouse a little bit about the spending? Don’t tell him I said it. But can you tell them on their spending?” I’m like, “No.”

Matt Mulcock:
[crosstalk 00:06:06] A 100 percent. I just need it to come from someone else other than me.

Ryan Isaac:
Also I’ll show you data. That’s all I got, okay? Not picking sides. So let’s go through a year in the life of what it’s like to be a client of Dentist Advisors. I hope two things out of this. One, I hope this gives you insight if you’re curious of what it’s like to work with us. And we’ll probably use this episode in the future for new people reaching out to us and we’ll send this to you. And so in the future, if you’re listening to this, what’s up, thanks for contacting us. We appreciate it. And I know we’re going to talk about what it’s like to work with us.

Ryan Isaac:
And the second thing is I hope that this just gives you context about at least what one company does with their clients thoroughout a year. So you can evaluate what your expectations are and what they should be and what you want out of a relationship. So, Matt, I’m going to break this up into four parts. And then we’re going to get steamy here. Hots.

Matt Mulcock:
We’re going to get deep.

Ryan Isaac:
Hot takes.

Matt Mulcock:
Hot takes.

Ryan Isaac:
Four parts. Part number one, it’s the courting process, all right? It’s the dating process.

Matt Mulcock:
I love the courting process. It’s fun. It’s exciting. Emotions are running high.

Ryan Isaac:
Emotions are running high. What’s interesting about our… Well, let me outline these, then I want to dive into these. So we have like the initial process, who are you? Who are we? Are we good fit? Is this going to work long-term? That’s number one. Number two, is an onboarding process. You’ve said yes. We’ve said, yes, let’s work together. All right. Now, what does it mean to onboard somebody? What does a financial planner want to know about someone in the beginning as they get started? Number three, is how do we build a plan? What does it mean to have a plan and get advice and get recommendations? How do we build strategy? So what does that mean?

Matt Mulcock:
[crosstalk 00:07:42] Hot stock tips.

Ryan Isaac:
Hot stock tips all day. And then number four, is what happens after that? Like Ongoing. What is the ongoing? So you’re in the life. Number one though, let’s go back. The dating process of dating a new financial advisor. So here’s the thing I want to just say, I want to be like very nicely blunt about this, okay? And I speak for me, kind and nice are different things. You’re right.

Matt Mulcock:
Yup.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m here. You’re here. We can speak for ourselves. But I do think that I will say what I’m going to say on behalf of the other advisors on our team, pretty sure. And that is we don’t pitch anybody. So I want to make that a point because right off the bat, I want people to understand if they’re going to engage with our company. What I want people to do is to come in and calm and it’s okay. Coming Zen, okay? Because there is a natural built wall with people like this tension in the financial industry.

Ryan Isaac:
I mean, I can hear it often. It doesn’t always happen. Especially, if someone’s like a long-time podcast listener, then they call in and they’re Zen they’re pretty chill about it, because they know how we are. But when they just Google our name and then they call in, there’s a wall a lot of times. They don’t want to say anything because they’re like, “I don’t want you to use it against me. I can feel it when I give presentations in person back in the day when we used to do that sort of thing, like human-to-human, same kind.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. We could actually sit in a room with a bunch of people.

Ryan Isaac:
We breath the same air. I used to feel that, man, I’d get up and just kind of start and you get to see people like arms crossed, [crosstalk 00:09:25] leaning far back in the chair. Because everyone’s going, “What are you trying to sell me, dude?” We don’t pitch people. We don’t have a sales pitch. We have education and we’ll teach you. We’ll answer any question that you want. We’ll be as transparent as you want us to be. We’ll teach you anything. We love teaching. The reason why I want to point this out is because I want people to feel comfortable. And I think that it should be comfortable. If you’re entering into like the initial stages of talking to a financial advisor and it’s immediately like they’re using my words against me to sell me something, red flags, people. Walk. Bail. It’s okay. There’s other advisors out there that you can leave that process. And so that’s what I just want people to know.

Ryan Isaac:
And I also want people to understand in our firm, in our industry, in order to make a good, decent to high paying careers and advisor, usually in the industry, people are out there trying to get 500, 750, a thousand clients per advisor. And the goal is either sell them an insurance policy or annuity or set up an investment account, but like never talk to them. And do it with a thousand people, it’s a good living. But we built our…

Matt Mulcock:
[crosstalk 00:10:33]That sounds good, man. I’m going to go do that.

Ryan Isaac:
That was stress me out, man. I would just feel bad all the time.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, man. I had that life. It’s not ideal.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s not a good business model. Well, we, from the very beginning built a totally different service model. Our advisors cap out at what we think right now is probably 120 to 130 people could be a little bit more, could be a little bit less, but it’s somewhere in that range. And the relationships are just really deep and there’s a high, high amount of communication. And the reason why I’m saying this in conjunction to this whole first little thing here is spiel. Schpiel or spiel?

Matt Mulcock:
Spiel. You schpiel.

Ryan Isaac:
An sch in there, like a schpiel?

Matt Mulcock:
A schpiel.

Ryan Isaac:
This is our schpiel.

Matt Mulcock:
Giving them a schpiel.

Ryan Isaac:
Part of the schpiel, is I want people to understand, our advisors, this isn’t a cocky thing, but our advisors are picky because we don’t have a lot of room for tons and tons of clients. We don’t hundreds of clients. We have small amounts of room for the people we work with closely in our entire careers. And so because of that, we’re not in a rush to twist anyone’s arm. We don’t want to talk the wrong person or the right person at the wrong time into joining us. We don’t have a pitch to convince people of anything. We just have education on correct, basic, tried, and true sustainable financial principles that will get you to the end goal that you want over long periods of time that anyone implement, if you have the right strategy and accountability for years and years of your life. And that’s what we’ve got. And so when we kind of come into contact with people that’s the nature of the relationship. So that’s the courting phase.

Ryan Isaac:
People call up and they’re like what’s this about? And we’re wanting the same thing tell us about your practice. We want to know, how’d you get into the situation you’re in right now? What’s your work life? How often do you work? Where are you headed? Are you a clinical person? Are you a business manager type of person? Do you have desires outside of dentistry? What kind of investor do you like to be? Dream house spending? We just want to know about your life.

Matt Mulcock:
What does your retirement look like?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, what’s your future? How do you envision all that? And so, anyway, and then we’ll do the same thing. Like here’s how we think about planning and here’s the steps we use to execute it. Here’s the team we use. Here’s how we get paid. Here’s how the revenue comes into our firm. I mean, it’s all just super transparent and that’s the nature of kind of that initial stage. And I just want people to feel okay about being chill about it.

Matt Mulcock:
There’s a couple of factors here. So what you said is like, I’m in this for the long haul, right? I’m not looking to sell products and then get out of it. I want to do this for the rest of my life for a very long time. I have no plans to retire ever. I know things can change, but I love what I do.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I feel the same way.

Matt Mulcock:
And it’s not physically taxing. And I just see no reason why…

Ryan Isaac:
You wouldn’t want me to keep doing this forever with people. And these are relations… Again, every advisor doesn’t have a thousand people to work with, these close relationships that you talk to really often throughout every year.

Matt Mulcock:
Yep. So, I mean, we give advice that we, ourselves are trying to implement in their own lives. So you always hear us say balance over burnout, right? That’s exactly how Ryan and I, and our team is trying to approach this in our own life as well. I’m not looking to, like you said, out a thousand people and resell them be on this hamster wheel of sales to make big commissions every quarter and do it again the next quarter. Again, I lived that life. It was painfully. It was horrible.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s the industry.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s the industry. I’m looking to build solid relationships with great people who philosophically align with us and they see value in what we do, right? And the value in what we do. And that in a nutshell is help them get organized. We help them be held accountable to their goals, help them make good decisions, help them stick to their plan over the long-term, and revisit things on an ongoing basis to make sure that as things change in their life, their plan is changing with them. So that’s really what it comes down to. So there was a long winded repeat of what you said, but I wanted it to be clear that because of these things, because we’re in it for the long haul, because we’re not selling products, we’re not a transactional type business. And because we only work with so many people, I’m not interested in pitching anybody because…

Ryan Isaac:
Because there’s no desire.

Matt Mulcock:
Well, and I’m interviewing you as much as interviewing me, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yes. I’m glad you said that. So logistically how it happens, people go to dentistadvisors.com. They click the book, free consultation, they get scheduled with an advisor and it might be a 30 minute call, a little Q&A, and a back and forth and have a nice life. Or it could be one-two handful of calls, like really getting to know each other. And then they hire us and we bring them on board as a new client.

Ryan Isaac:
Step two, when we say yes, and I’d like to emphasize that when we say yes, and they say yes. Like, “Hey, you’re a person I want, as one of my 120, that I want to spend the rest of my life talking to okay.” And I say yes to that. And then you say yes too, yeah, you’re the firm I’m going to pay and trust to manage my investments. And I’m going to call on everything from how much money to save for my kids popsicle stand, which isn’t a thing.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s a thing, maybe.

Ryan Isaac:
All the way up to multi-million dollar decision-making situations, like you’re the person I trust. When we both mutually say yes, then we enter into this next phase, which we call onboarding. Matt I’ll let you describe what is our company’s onboarding process like. How would you describe it?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. So I’ll just kind of take you a step at a time. So we send out the client agreement. It is not a locked in contract. It’s an agreement that basically gives us the legal ability to give financial advice. It breaks down our cost structure, a lot of boiler plate stuff.

Ryan Isaac:
Can we pause this for a second?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
The reason why there’s all this agreement stuff is because… Explain this too as part of this, if you wouldn’t mind. We’re held to extremely high levels of accountability by the SCC and other governing bodies through something called a fiduciary standard. Do you want to explain how?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
The oversight is crazy. It’s kind of crazy.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. we’re highly regulated and for good reason, again, part of coming back to like a lot of things that have gone wrong in the industry that have led to a lot of this regulation. So that’s a good reason. But we can only designate ourselves as a fiduciary legally, if we abide by certain things. And our fee structure is structured in a way, again, being a no commission or fee only sometimes as it’s called a fiduciary advisor. We cannot legally take kickbacks from anybody, from a referral. Like if we refer you to a CPA, we don’t sell products. So we advise on things like insurance, but we do not sell insurance, right? We don’t transact the actual business. We do not get paid commissions for that. So that’s all outlined in that kind of that fee structure and the client agreement that we send out. It’s the legal lease that shows the regulations that we abide by.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. And I want to point out it’s so much that it’s even like our emails, our social media, our texts, our phone calls are monitored. Every time we place a trade for somebody or make a decision, especially when it comes to investments, that’s the most heavily regulated part. We have to have documentation of conversations, showing why we did certain things. If we allocated a portfolio conservative or aggressive we have to be able to demonstrate through context and information relationship with a client, why it was okay in their situation. I mean, it is such a high level of scrutiny that I mean, we just take that stuff really, really serious. And I think that’s an important part of just mentioning what a fiduciary is, as you’re talking about this contract stuff and getting signed up. So, anyway, go ahead. Onboard.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Definitely. Onward and upward. So we send the client agreement, they sign, we sign agree to this, and then they come on board. So we begin the whole process. So the first step of the process generally is going to be an extension of the conversations that you were describing up to that point. So the kind of the getting to know you type stuff, but the context changes a little bit. I mean, actually a lot of bit, because they’re now a client.

Matt Mulcock:
So now we’re going to go deeper, what we call the discovery call. And this could sometimes be a couple of calls, but we just want to get to know that person deeper, their relationship with money, their short-term and long-term goals, their priorities, what’s their values, all these different aspects of their life to make sure that… So I call it this call kind of like understanding the qualitative parts of your life. Because everything that comes after that is quantitative. So the onboarding part after that discovery call is gathering all of your quantitative information, right? So it’s gathering all of your accounts, all of your insurance, all of your taxes, all of your… We’re connecting all of your accounts and building you a dashboard, building you a balance sheet, building you amortization tables, gathering all of your investment statements. I mean, it’s a lot of stuff that we’re getting.[crosstalk 00:19:36] Your spending, your income.

Ryan Isaac:
Your spending, your income what else?

Matt Mulcock:
A state plan document to the company.

Ryan Isaac:
Trying to put values on what is your house worth, and your building? And we’ve got to somehow value your practice and put it on a balance sheet. What is your net worth? And oh, yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Doing stuff that most people to that point more times than not have never done, right? They’re sometimes in their 30s, 40s, 50s in there. And a lot of times I get the answer, like there’ll be like, “Man, I’ve never done this before.” So that part takes usually multiple weeks to get everything organized. We’re hopping on a call with you to make sure we’re getting everything right. We’re making connections with all of your key contacts, so things like CPA, insurance people, all that we want to be the quarterback of those relationships.

Ryan Isaac:
Getting to know everybody. I’ll just say too, the way we do it in our business, since we’re trying to just lend some insight to this is, when people hire us, they’re assigned to a team of two people. So they’re assigned to, of course their primary main financial advisor. And then they’re assigned to…

Matt Mulcock:
[crosstalk 00:20:38] If you’re lucky, it’s Ryan.

Ryan Isaac:
If you’re so lucky.

Matt Mulcock:
You hit the jackpot.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, we can piggyback together.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. And then your associate piggy backing on you. You’re giving the associate to piggyback you.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. And then we also on our team, we have people we call associate advisors. I like to say to clients, data advisors, because I’m really that person’s job is to just stay totally on top of, not on the organizing in the beginning, all of that information once, but continually throughout the year, every single year. And then putting together all the reports and the analysis and the trends on those, we have all this custom reporting that they keep up. And then all kinds of administrative tasks and just logistical things we have to get done. So there’s a team of two people that are assigned to every single dentist and data or associate advisor is the person who spends that first month, a lot of it with a new client, just building that online dashboard and balance sheet and gathering all this information. It’s a lot of work. It’s so many hours, man. And you know what? I, like you said, that you said most people haven’t gone through that kind of an exercise. It’s such a common reaction when onboarding is done for people to just be like, “Whoa, that was thorough. I’ve never seen those numbers before.”

Ryan Isaac:
And it’s also really common. I love when people… And it actually doesn’t matter if someone’s like a brand new associate with like a negative million dollar net worth, or someone just sold a DSO and they’ve got $20 million in the bank. Every time we go through this exercise of organizing people, the reactions are always the same. And it’s just like, it’s relief. It’s relief to finally just admit on paper, good or bad what’s happening and then move the freak on from there.

Matt Mulcock:
Because everyone knows that, it’s like one of those things, it’s like, I know I should do this, right? I know I should get organized. I know I should understand better my finances and my net worth and my spending. I know I should do this, but they just don’t right until someone like us. And so there’s a mechanism to push you over the edge [crosstalk 00:22:40] to get it done, to force you to get it done. And almost every time they finish, there’s always that client, once in a while, it’s like, they’re tracking it in a spreadsheet on their own. They just want us to take over for them. But majority of the time it’s people that are like, man, I’ve never seen my net worth before.

Ryan Isaac:
Never seen it. And we can’t underscore this enough, that up to this point where someone is a month in to working with us and they’ve gone through this onboarding process, and we have all this data and all these numbers and analysis. And we just know so much about their life. I mean, how many hours do you, do you think on average, we’re into this relationship already just from getting to know each other and onboarding, I mean, how many hours is that? Is that 20?

Matt Mulcock:
I mean, 20, my first response was going to be 30.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
If you’re talking completion of onboarding, you’re probably talking 30 hours plus.

Ryan Isaac:
And we’re not saying you’re on the phone for 30 hours.

Matt Mulcock:
No, no, no. That’s the work being done on the backend.

Ryan Isaac:
That our team is completing. And I bring that up for two reasons. Number one, I just want to illustrate that, again, we’ve built an entire business model and service model around high communications with people, deep relationships, deep amount of context and data in order to make decisions. And number two, the thing on a point out and if there’s anything else to say about this point before we move on, I just want to say that we’re this many hours into a relationship before we’ve recommended one single change to your financial situation. We haven’t said by this insurance, we haven’t said set up this account, save this kind of money, pay off this debt, refinance this loan, nothing. We have said nothing about what you should, and we maybe we’ve brainstormed about what could happen, but we’ve recommended nothing up to this point.

Ryan Isaac:
And it’s not like we’re trying to drag our feet. We’re just trying to be like, we need to know you thoroughly before we can tell you what to do with your money, because that’s what responsible financial advice is. All right. Well that’s the first two steps, okay? It’s get to know you, it’s then official or we’re going to work together. It’s onboarding. And by this point, we know more about our client’s financial life and this bleeds in, and we’re not practice consultants, we’re not your practice CPAs, but we know more about your entire life financially than anyone else around you; CPAs, attorneys, consultants, brother-in-law.

Matt Mulcock:
Always the brother under the bus.

Ryan Isaac:
Under the bus. Brother-in-law under the bus. We just have so much. And so that’s where we get to face our step three, which is when all this stuff is complete, then we can start to build strategy and start to build what someone would call a plan.

Ryan Isaac:
Now, the first thing I want to say about the term financial plan is that it’s a misleading phrase. Because a plan sounds like something you can print and like roll up like a scroll and tie up and carry around like a pirate. The way I think about it, and this has to do with, again, this is a product of how often we talk to people. So it’s the luxury we have in our business. But I think of plans as like, what are we going to do for the next four months? That’s literally how I’m thinking about… Now, of course, there’s long-term implementation of goals and strategy, but it’s like, what are we doing for the next four months? What are we working on? Because the second that you spend more money or earn more money or less, or bring on a partner and associate or buy a building or carry more debt or pay off a debt or your taxes got like… Any number of things, your plan’s different.

Ryan Isaac:
And those things are changing constantly, all year. And those are just things we know about. Every year in everyone’s life, there’s always a handful of unexpected things that come up and you just like, “Well, I didn’t see that coming.”

Matt Mulcock:
Or desires change.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, your goals change. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Endless amount of reasons.

Ryan Isaac:
You start out like, “Man, I just want to do clinical five days a week and tell him I’m 65 and that.” And then all of a sudden you realize you’re a great business builder and you want to do clinical one day a week and you want 10 locations. Well, geez. Things are going to… Or maybe the opposite. You came out gung-ho and you’re like, I’m DSL person.

Matt Mulcock:
You want to build five location, 10 location DSL, you get to number two. And you’re like, “Oh, nevermind.”

Ryan Isaac:
I’m almost dead. I just want a one lifestyle practice.

Matt Mulcock:
I don’t like managing people.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. So step three is, kind of our strategy sessions. Matt, I’ll ask you this, what are some of the most common upfront, maybe more urgent or more tangible fixable categories that we can dive into kind of in these initial strategy sessions? What are some of the tangible things that are maybe getting changed or fixed or started for the first time?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, so the ones that come to my mind would be like what to do with cash. That’s usually top three. So got all this cash, what do I do with it? And that seems to be happening more lately, just because of PPP and everything that’s happened coming out of 2020. So what to do with cash? Where do I invest my money? Retirement plans? Debt? Insurance? Those are probably the the big ones that come to my mind.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Well, it’s funny because we always talk about one of the biggest mistakes dentists make is holding too much cash, which always seems like a safe thing. But that happens all the time. It’s like a pretty common thing where people are meeting us for the first time and they’re sitting on multiple hundreds of thousands above and beyond what they need to hold.

Matt Mulcock:
Happens all the time.

Ryan Isaac:
Yep. And which is a whole other subject for how hard it is to finally let go of that money when you’ve been saving up, instead of dispersing it into investments or debt reduction or something along the way. Something besides spending.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s easy to let it go for spending. Yeah, a lot of these common things, you mentioned them what to do with cash, setting up retirement plans, maybe help me fix an insurance policy that’s not uncommon. I don’t know. We won’t get into that too much, but some people are meeting us after making many years of other financial decisions. And a lot of people come to us from other financial advisors.

Ryan Isaac:
Really common is like, “I just don’t think they understand dentists very well. They’re a nice person and I think they’re professional. They do a good job and I think it’s been decent, but we just don’t talk that much. And then, I don’t think they get dentists.” That’s really common actually. Nothing egregious. It’s just, “Hey, I just want someone who understands my professional a bit better and who I can talk to more frequently. So anyway, in this, yeah. So as part of the strategy, this is where we implement new investment accounts. This is where one of the things I will bug people to death about for the rest of my life, and have no shame for…

Matt Mulcock:
Just a little pest, just poke, poke, poke.

Ryan Isaac:
I am. I’m a mosquito with this stuff, man. You can’t swap me, is savings rate. And an automated, automatic monthly savings rate. And we have our targets based on what your income might be of what I want it to be. But I mean, that’s one of the first things too, in the beginning, is what can we automatically automate save every single month starting right now? I don’t care if it’s 50 bucks, we’re going to do something. So we’re going to get in this habit.

Matt Mulcock:
We want to get this going. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And that’s so, that’s how it kind of strategy session works out. Retirement plans, accounts set up, automatic savings, loans, debts. And a lot of times people are holding onto big decision-making until they’ve hired us. They’re about to buy a building, or sign a lease, or bring on a partner, or build the dream house. That’s kind of strategy. So that happens in our firm after this onboarding process, it’s usually in like the second month or so. And it can be as quick as a 60 minute phone call, get everything set up and then takes a few weeks to implement everything sometimes couple of months, maybe depending on what we’re working on, or it could be a series of calls over weeks and months to just really nail down something complex.

Matt Mulcock:
I’d say on average, on about year. But I’d say it’s at least usually two calls at a minimum, like an initial call and then like a followup call.

Ryan Isaac:
Verifying call.

Matt Mulcock:
Verifying everything. Sometimes I’ll have, I mean, I’ve had four or five, six strategy calls as we’re doing multiple different things, if a really complicated situation. So it just depends on the situation. I’d say anywhere from yeah, two to five calls for those strategy discussions.

Ryan Isaac:
And it’s a little misleading too, to call a strategy as if it’s an event. Because what happens in step four? Step four is like, “Okay, now what do we do?” We’ve met, we’ve onboarded, we’ve implemented strategy, now, what do we do? And that’s what people want to know. How’s this going to go for the rest of my life?

Ryan Isaac:
And so here’s a few things I would just mention. A good financial plan, again, is an ongoing kind of organic cyclical thing. I like to think about what are our tasks over the next four months while we’re pushing towards our longterm goals? The basics of financial planning that need to occur during the year, every year, all year. And this is why we have teams of two people working with all of our clients. Constant organization needs to happen, not just one time but it needs to happen constantly throughout the year. And it takes us and the client. Sometimes we compile as much as we can, and we send a report. And we’re like, here’s what we think is true. Will you look at this and check on it with us? But organization tracking of this data and then decision-making is just at a constant evolving, ongoing process.

Ryan Isaac:
So here’s what I would say, my preference as an advisor, everyone’s a little different and every client’s different too, and how they like to communicate. But I would say my preference is I prefer to have like a scheduled conversation beginning, middle and end of year with every client. Like, let’s get it on the calendar. Let’s just, even if it’s 30 minutes could be two hours, I don’t care. But we got to catch up in these kind of beginning, middle end of the year. Let’s make sure we catch everything. On those calls, we’ll talk about anything on your agenda, any decisions you have coming up, any questions you want to cover, anything that’s bothering you, worrying you, whatever. We’ll also cover the data that we’re organizing and tracking. I’ll tell you about your spending trends, and your net worth trends, and how your savings rate is looking, and all that kind of stuff. That’s what I prefer.

Ryan Isaac:
And some people though, like I have clients who are just like, they’ll do it once a year and that’s all they want. And I have other people that were doing that type of engagement, like half a dozen times a year. But in addition to that, every time there’s a question that comes up on the client’s end, from a reactive, they have to make a decision or of any magnitude like, “I want to pay my kid 1,000 bucks this year. How do I do it?” Up all the way until I have to make a multi-million dollar decision. Those calls are probably half a dozen to, could be two dozen different situations every single year depending on the year and the person, that they’re texting, emailing or calling and be like, “Hey, can we chat about this?”

Ryan Isaac:
So those combined with the scheduled meetings and anything we see on our end, because we, again, we’re on the backend, behind the scenes we’re organizing and tracking data. We might see something that triggers a response for us to go, “Huh. This doesn’t look right. Or I’m wondering about like how we can improve this?” And then we’ll proactively reach out in addition to all these things. So from my perspective, I mean, I think that the communication for an average client is probably between calls, texts, and emails and scheduled calls got to be easily, what? A dozen times a year or more? Easily. Like little stuff and big stuff too. So anyway, that’s how I would view it. And again, everyone’s different. Because we don’t take on tons and tons of clients per advisor, we can cater to everyone’s communication style. Matt, how would you describe how you view ongoing communication?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I think it’s the same way for me. And this is something that’s evolved for us at a company level over the last few years of like how we want to structure this and how doing all, do we want to make this kind of like consistent across every advisor? We admit we’re still a growing business. We’re still evolving and trying to figure out the best way to serve our clients. But I would say I’m in the same as you Ryan I’d prefer, and this is something I’m being a little bit more forward with, I’ll say, I don’t want to say strict. The word strict seems too strict.

Ryan Isaac:
Don’t be strict on us.

Matt Mulcock:
But I am trying to be more forward this year in getting my clients on minimum of three calls this year, beginning mid-year check-in, which I’m going to be sending out emails here pretty soon to get in on June. And then end of year check-in or review to do some end of year planning. So, and then what I tell people all the time is look, there is no maximum, there is a minimum. I want a minimum level of engagement, but there is no maximum. You could call me as much as you possibly wanted. You can text me. You can email, that’s what I’m here for. I don’t claim to have the answer in every single facet of all these things, but I’m going to help you find the answer, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. We’ll discuss it together. We’ll work it out together.

Matt Mulcock:
We’ll discuss it together. We’ll walk through it. Again, we’re not practice consultants, but let’s figure it out together and I’ll help you navigate that situation.

Ryan Isaac:
Who could be a practice consultant. Yeah. Let’s figure that out.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly. Do you even need a practice consultant or is there another angle to take on this? So yeah, there is no maximum, but there is that minimum. I agree with you beginning, mid end of year. We do quarterly summaries coming out on every single quarter that’s tracking the high level progress or every single month gathering or keeping your data up to date, we’re running things in the background, we’re just making sure that you’re continually organized. I think what you said earlier is perfect that there is still engagement needed from the client, right? I mean, an analogy that I think our boy Reese, the Hoss said back in the day that I’ve always taken…

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, I love Reese Harper quotes, man. You never know where they’re headed. I love it.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, he is the best. And I’m stealing this from him. But I think it was him. I’m going to give him credit. And it’s like going to a personal trainer. You still got to show up to the gym, right? You can’t just… So we want to offload as much as we possibly can on our plate, on our team for you to make this simple and easy, but you still got to show up every quarter, every month, every year, and help help with the process. That’s part of it is holding you accountable to staying organized and making these decisions. You can’t just shove your head in the sand and be like, “Oh, I hired someone I’m going to move on with my life.”

Ryan Isaac:
The ongoing process is not very different than steps two and three, which is gather data, review it, review the progress, and then make strategic decisions. So although onboarding the beginning takes a month, and the initial strategy can take weeks or even months sometimes because it’s the first time we’re meeting with you really to work out strategy. Throughout the rest of our engagement together, which is hopefully decades, that’s the process that’s being repeated. It’s gathering data, monitoring the progress in those data points, and then working on strategy. And strategy can be little. It can just be like, all right, this next four months we’re just going to work on getting the kids on payroll. You’re going to start paying them 500 bucks a month or something. Or, I mean, it can be any number of things, but it’s kind of just this repetition of gather, update, track, monitor progress, and all these data points and work on strategy every four to six months for the rest of your life.

Matt Mulcock:
And yeah. Oh, sorry.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah. Go ahead.

Matt Mulcock:
I was going to say, one other thing that I was going to say that I’m starting to circle back now, and I’m still again figuring this out of whether I want to do this each and every year or every couple of years, but I am starting to, now, with some of my clients circle back to that discovery call, I mentioned at the beginning.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

Matt Mulcock:
Or some iteration of that, of like, let’s just take the money stuff off the table right now. Let’s just revisit the why behind your decisions, the emotional stuff, the mushy gushy stuff that I know. People don’t… I shouldn’t say people, a lot of people actually do love it. People aren’t going to do it freely like unsolicited, right? They’re not just going to, in most cases, they have to kind of be forced to have those conversations. And I think it’s super helpful to circle back to those every once in a while. And because we know the client so much better at that point, as we circle back for the second or third rediscovery call, we’ll say,” I think it’s really, really critical to have those discussions.” Again, taking the quantitative stuff off the table and just refocusing on the qualitative every once in a while.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I love that. Well, and I mean, the longer a financial planning relationship goes, the more, I mean, the deeper that relationship gets and it does, it becomes very intertwined with, it’s not just math in logistics of investment accounts and savings rates and paying off debt. Money’s emotional and it’s your career. It’s your relationships, it’s your balance in life. It’s your hobbies. And how does all the money and the wealth and the savings boost up and improve your relationships in your quality of life, in your balance, in your hobbies.

Matt Mulcock:
Or is it making it worse, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Making it worse, is taking away from it. I mean, those are the conversations that start to be unfolded and uncovered over longer periods of time with an advisor, because you have a closer, more trusting relationship together. And those are the meaningful things, man. Because that’s the meaningful stuff in life.

Matt Mulcock:
Personal finance is more personal than finance, every time.

Ryan Isaac:
All right, we’re ending with that.

Matt Mulcock:
I stole that quote too.

Ryan Isaac:
We’re ending with that. Personal finance is more personal than finance.

Matt Mulcock:
Boom.

Ryan Isaac:
That is so good. All right. Well, thanks for going on this little journey with us, everyone. Again, what I hope you got out of that would be two things. If you’re curious about our company specifically, which I hope you are. I hope this gives insight to kind of the process logistically and how the relationship looks like with an advisor in our firm, in the service, in the company that we’ve built and why we’re doing it certain ways. And I also hope that if you have an advisor already or if you’re starting to think about it, I hope this just sheds light on what is a possible option as you’re out there looking that you can compare against and be like, “Yeah, I mean.” Then you have context on what it could look like.

Ryan Isaac:
All right. Well, thanks for joining us today, everybody. If you have a questions now, if you’re listening to that, you’re like, “Oh, I got to talk to these guys.” The good news is it’s pretty easy to reach out.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s very easy.

Ryan Isaac:
Simple to get in touch. You go to dentistadvisors.com, click on the book, free consultation, link, and chat with one of our advisors. Other ways to get in touch. Obviously, you got the, or hear about us or learn stuff. You got the podcast, obviously, you’re here.

Matt Mulcock:
Here we are.

Ryan Isaac:
You know about it. A couple of times a month, we run webinars. We’ll interview someone in the dental space, or we host webinars on one of our own financial topics. We’re choosing it’s usually the last week of the month. And you go to dentistadvisors.com/events to check those out. Also if you want to ask us a question kind of noncommittal, if you want to ask a non-committal question? All right?

Matt Mulcock:
I don’t want to get on the phone with these yahoos. I just want to ask a question.

Ryan Isaac:
I want a whole phone call, guys.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s fair.

Ryan Isaac:
I just want a phone call and I totally respect that. Go to the Dentist Advisors discussion group on Facebook to very civil Facebook group. Okay. It’s very rational, civil place.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s friendly, it’s fun.

Ryan Isaac:
Comments do not dwindle into attacks on mothers within two or three lines, right? It just doesn’t happen.

Matt Mulcock:
That sounds oddly specific. Like you’re referencing another group.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, do you obviously, is social media.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s so true.

Ryan Isaac:
So Dentist Advisors discussion group, and you post a question, we’ll post an answer usually in the form of like a little Facebook live video and we’ll answer your question. So we think that’s pretty cool and we love doing it. So anyway, thanks for joining us. Thanks for tuning in. We really appreciate all the love and support and we’ll catch you next time. Take care.

 

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