An In-Depth Look at the Elements Scorecard – Episode #374

Dentists face financial complications that far exceed a normal person’s. How to conquer that complexity was the proving ground for the development of Elements. The Elements app is now ready and Dentist Advisors is using it with clients. On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan and Matt explain how Elements helps people get organized and find financial peace of mind.

 

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Dentist Money Show, brought to you by Dentist Advisors, a no commission fiduciary, fee only comprehensive financial advisor just for dentists all over the country. Check us out at dentistadvisors.com. Today on the show, Matt and I are tackling a little bit of New Year’s goal setting resolution, with a twist. We’re talking about the new Elements app and Elements Financial Planning system, how that can be the basis and the foundation for your future smart financial decision making. And a couple tips on how to set, maybe some better financial goals for this year. And give yourself a pat on the back for a few things too. So many thanks to Matt, for, being here and lending his expertise and his wisdom with us and spending time with us today. And many thanks to all of you for tuning in as always. If you have any questions, go to dentistadvisors.com. Click the book free consultation link. We would love to help you and point you in the right direction, help you answer your money questions. Thanks for being here, and enjoy the show.

Jess Reynolds:
Hey, there, it’s Jess with Dentist Advisors. Did you know we recently launched a new service called the Dentist Money Membership? It’s an affordable way to support your personal financial strategy with cutting edge technology and guidance from dental focused CFP advisors. The Dentist Money membership includes the Elements Financial Monitoring app, an annual financial checkup, CE courses, an automated investment platform, and more. To learn more about the Dentist Money membership, and to get started, go visit dentistadvisors.com/money.

Announcer:
Consult an advisor. Conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principals discussed during this program, do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by dentist advisors, a 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. I am Ryan and I’m here with Matt. Welcome Matt. How you doing, buddy?

Matt Mulcock:
I’m doing great.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s a Friday.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s a Friday. It’s always nice.

Ryan Isaac:
It is nice.

Matt Mulcock:
You know, we’re back at it. It’s like holidays are done.

Ryan Isaac:
New year new you.

Matt Mulcock:
Here’s my question, here’s a question. What’s the statute of limitations on…

Ryan Isaac:
New Year’s…

Matt Mulcock:
Happy New Year?

Ryan Isaac:
On Happy New Year. On the wishing of?

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, the new years resolution it’s like two weeks, but yeah, those are already done.

Ryan Isaac:
Statute of limitations. I think I put it in an email a week ago.

Matt Mulcock:
Okay.

Ryan Isaac:
I sent out an email just to all my clients first of year, like, “Hey, let’s schedule some meetings beginning of the year.” And I think I sent a Happy New Year salutation in that email. So I got…

Matt Mulcock:
I feel like through January, you’re good, right?

Ryan Isaac:
I think so.

Matt Mulcock:
January is like a happy new year month.

Ryan Isaac:
Maybe happy new year is supposed to end when the Christmas decorations come down.

Matt Mulcock:
Which I have a… I have strong opinions on that one.

Ryan Isaac:
Are you, which…

Matt Mulcock:
I have strong opinions.

Ryan Isaac:
December 26th, kind of guy.

Matt Mulcock:
No. No. Like after, the new year…

Ryan Isaac:
I used to be.

Matt Mulcock:
After the actual new year but here’s my problem. I drive around my neighborhood. Or like just neighborhoods where I’m driving and I see Christmas lights on.

Ryan Isaac:
Still…

Matt Mulcock:
Through like March.

Ryan Isaac:
That bothers me. It feels really depressing to see it.

Matt Mulcock:
It bothers me.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t like it.

Matt Mulcock:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t like it.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s like, okay, I’ll give you through the month of January. And then I’m gonna come and I’m gonna probably pull them off the house for you.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re gonna put a notice? You’re gonna put a notice, tape a…

Matt Mulcock:
I’m probably gonna power box you.

Ryan Isaac:
Speaking of weather as we are right now.

[laughter]

Matt Mulcock:
Of course. Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Of this time of year. So, have you guys, you… Okay, we’re gonna talk about the rain. That’s, where we’re starting with today’s episode. We’re talking about the rain. Did you guys get slammed in Utah with snow? Has it been like, just deeper than deep?

Matt Mulcock:
It’s been one of the…

Ryan Isaac:
Best years?

Matt Mulcock:
Biggest winters that I can remember.

Ryan Isaac:
Really, for a long time?

Matt Mulcock:
Which is amazing yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Are you still a snow guy? Like are you getting up and shredding the gnar?

Matt Mulcock:
It’s like…

Ryan Isaac:
Do you shred the gnar?

Matt Mulcock:
It’s kind of a sensitive subject right now? So this is the first year in my adult life, I do not have a seasons pass anywhere for skiing, just time of life, kids, work. It’s just been really hard. But yes, I do love to ski and I need to get up there. I have not been up yet.

Ryan Isaac:
You have shred gnar in the past and you will shred gnar in the future.

Matt Mulcock:
I love to shred gnar.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. All right.

Matt Mulcock:
Bruh, bruh.

Ryan Isaac:
Bruh. Lots of, snow. So the reason why I ask is because, here in California, the water, the rain has been unprecedented. It’s precedented, it’s rained like this before, but we’ve…

Matt Mulcock:
I thought California was all about moderate, [laughter] but they do not know how to do weather moderate anymore.

Ryan Isaac:
No, no it’s gonna be 67 and sunny next week for.

Matt Mulcock:
Okay there you go.

Ryan Isaac:
For like 10 days straight. But that seems moderate enough.

Matt Mulcock:
That seems moderate.

Ryan Isaac:
The rain here has been crazy. I don’t have a measurement. My story has a measurement, but it’s historical. But lately it’s been crazy. And people have probably seen like, flooding in all kinds of cities. People are like paddle boarding down the streets of like Santa Cruz and all the cities up north, like LA flooding. It’s been pretty wild. And it’s crazy because it coincided about two weeks ago with a swell of, a wave swell out of the ocean that was, hasn’t been seen that big in decades. And man, it was like the perfect storm because there had been a weak straight of rain and it’s just flooding everywhere inland. And then this one day the waves came in bigger than they’ve came in, a decade mixed with an extreme high tide. So… [chuckle]

Matt Mulcock:
You can’t avoid it.

Ryan Isaac:
It was gnarly, man. The videos coming out of so many coastal towns, it was like washing into homes and you go… I don’t know if… Are you familiar with Mission Beach down in San Diego? Do you know?

Matt Mulcock:
I mean, somewhat.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s like…

Matt Mulcock:
I’ve been there.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s kind of like Newport in, or it’s like one of those beach towns where the sand is really wide out to… There’s tons room out to the water and then there’s a boardwalk and then rental homes and vacation homes and like a little kind of deal. The waves were like covering that entire sand stretch over the boardwalk into the homes.

Matt Mulcock:
Into the houses.

Ryan Isaac:
And we’re talking about a lot of sand, it was a wild time, so lots of rain. I watched a video, thank you Instagram for, prompting me for podcast ideas. [chuckle] I watched a video on, it’s like, it was about historical rain in Los Angeles and it just coincided with all the rain that has been going on. It’s probably why they showed it. So here’s the deal, back in 1938 Southern California, probably California as a whole, but especially in Southern California, like LA, Orange and San Diego County received one year’s worth of water in five days. And this was over… It was like in February, March, kind of end of February, end of March. Five days.

Matt Mulcock:
Wow.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. A year’s worth of water in five days. In today’s dollars, it was like $1.5 billion of damage, and I think over a hundred people died in it. It was pretty gnarly.

Matt Mulcock:
Dang.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, it was very, very destructive. And this was before the city of Los Angeles had built any kind of system to push water out of the city and off of the streets and neighborhoods and everything. So I’m watching this video and here’s what struck me, is this guy, he’s a teacher of… What would we call, hydrodynamics? Is that the… Is that the word?

Matt Mulcock::
Sure. Let’s go with that.

Ryan Isaac:
Hydrocity. [chuckle]

Matt Mulcock:
It’s probably hydrocity thermodynamics. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s probably thermo. I think the word is thermo. Space? No, I know for a…

Matt Mulcock:
Astrology? [laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
I know for a fact we have clients and listeners who have engineering backgrounds and engineering spouses and partners. So call into the show and let us know.

Matt Mulcock:
So they’re rolling their eyes at us right now. You idiots.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, but this guy he teaches that kind of stuff. Okay.

Matt Mulcock:
Thermo hydraulics.

Ryan Isaac:
Thermo highs, thermo space hydraulics. [laughter] That’s what they’re called. Anyway, so 1938 this happens and then the city decides, okay, we are going to build something to kinda mitigate this problem in the future. And they chose between two paths. And this is what struck me as I watched this video, is the city chose between 51 miles of, and not consecutive, but just a stretch of down the LA River, 51 miles of green space of parks that acted as retention pools with grass, natural retention.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, just soaks it all up.

Ryan Isaac:
Arizona’s actually really good for this. If you drive around neighborhoods all over Arizona, you’ll see like sunken… You’ll see the neighborhoods, and then in the corner of a cul-de-sac, you’ll see one giant lot that’s actually just of green space. Green for Arizona. Air quotes Green. Green space, a rock space. But it’ll be like sunken down and it’s water retention. They do a really good job with it, I think. Anyway, the choice was like 51 miles of this or to build like concrete [chuckle] water pathways through the whole city. What do they call those? [chuckle] Oh, what’s the word for all those? Like, you see them empty and they skateboard in them. You know what I’m talking about?

Matt Mulcock:
Hydraulics.

Ryan Isaac:
Hydraulics. What am I thinking of? [chuckle] Not corridors. What’s the dang word? Something. Anyway, they opted to build…

Matt Mulcock:
Caverns. [chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
Yes, that’s it.

Matt Mulcock:
Survey says.

Ryan Isaac:
Survey says. So anyway, they said, “Hey, let’s just cover everything in concrete…

Matt Mulcock:
Catacombs.

Ryan Isaac:
Catacombs. Let’s make miles and miles of concrete catacombs. And that’ll solve the problem. Fast forward to today, and then like over the last month, rain happens. These things just… Concrete doesn’t absorb water. It doesn’t retain water.

Matt Mulcock:
I’m no scientist. I don’t know hydraulic science, but I do know that.

Ryan Isaac:
You do know this. It doesn’t retain water. It doesn’t feed water back into the water table for the severe drought that the west has been in for decades. It just funnels water in rages.

Matt Mulcock:
Somewhere else.

Ryan Isaac:
Somewhere else. And actually it just ends up in the ocean. And the ocean’s actually so dirty. For all those of you don’t know if you ever visit California and it just got done raining really hard. Don’t go swimming in the ocean for a couple days.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, you educated me on this.

Ryan Isaac:
Very scary. It washes everything. Just so much pollution and bacteria and all kinds of things out to the ocean. Anyway, the thing that struck me from this video, besides being a pretty interesting story because of this last couple of weeks and seeing all this rain and this pooled water just rushing down these concrete, whatever they’re called, it’s gonna hit me at the end of the show. And then flooding all this stuff and being kind of crazy. The video was saying, okay, here’s a quote from the video. He said, “We have this problem today. Not because we didn’t do something, but because we did something the wrong way.” I was like, oh yeah. ‘Cause this guy…

Matt Mulcock:
So he obviously selected the concrete.

Ryan Isaac:
They selected the concrete, and the guy’s like, “Well, what would this have been like if we had just had 51 miles of like, green space and park and water retention?” And not only the way it looks and feels, but how would that have been for the drought situation?

Matt Mulcock:
Did they talk about at all, the motivation, the incentives? Was it…

Ryan Isaac:
No, I didn’t dive into that, that’s a really good question. I mean what would you assume it would be incentives?

Matt Mulcock:
I’m gonna assume good old capitalism.

Ryan Isaac:
Money. [laughter]

Matt Mulcock:
And the green space was probably taking up some pretty valuable property.

Ryan Isaac:
This was 1938, so we’re coming off of the Great Depression. After this happened. I don’t know when it got built. All these things got built, but they… Yeah. It’s gotta be money. That’s gotta be the… They probably just projected budgeting and then forward looking budgets of maintenance. And so anyway, that’s the line that caught me, an interesting story and timely for the weather that we’ve been having. But that’s the line that caught me. I’ll just repeat it. He said, “This didn’t happen, not because we didn’t do something, but because we did something the wrong way.” First of the year. Happy New Year. Statute of limitations. It’s open so we can say it. This is like the goal setting time of year. This is the time to lay our foundations folks, [chuckle] start afresh, do it all new.

Matt Mulcock:
‘Cause we’re so pumped to get that body we’ve always wanted.

[laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It’s almost February, so we’re kind of… We’ve given up on that, right?

Matt Mulcock:
I’ve given up, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes, it’s over. This whole concept of doing something the right way, it just reminded me of, people’s money decision, all of our money decisions. Some of these things that we decide to do, they’re a foundation and some of them are foundations are gonna be like, really helpful down the line, we’ll be glad that we did them. Some of the foundations we build we might look back and be like, “Geez, this is really hard to turn back now, but this is kind of a problem.” A great example of that, that everyone… I think everyone can relate to is spending. You build a foundation of out of control spending unchecked, un-budgeted.

Matt Mulcock:
First thing I was thinking about, yeah.

[chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
Unrestricted spending for a long time. How do you walk that back?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
They’re like, “Sorry, kids we’re taking out of every activity, we’re selling everyone’s cars,” And like you can’t walk that stuff back, you know? So…

Matt Mulcock:
The only way you do is if you’re forced to.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
: Honestly.

Ryan Isaac:
You get forced to.

Matt Mulcock:
You’re forced to. That’s the only way, you don’t choose to walk back your lifestyle.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, yeah. I mean, so what will happen, like if you take that same example like LA County, is there a point where the flooding gets so bad and the waste of all of this water that happens, gets so bad that they’re forced to go and rip up all the concrete and build water retention and parks and… You get forced to do something that ends up costing you way more down the line than had you just done it in the first place. Like in 1938, I’m sure they weren’t thinking, “Oh, the West is gonna be in like a 50 year drought that has like no end in sight and it’s not getting better.”

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
They weren’t thinking about that.

Matt Mulcock:
No.

Ryan Isaac:
But we could use the water.

Matt Mulcock:
They were thinking about that prime real estate.

Ryan Isaac:
They were thinking about that concrete. Who got the contracts for that? You know what I mean?

Matt Mulcock:
That is a good question.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s like mafia time. Heyday, yeah. Like LA mafia, right?

Matt Mulcock:
For sure.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m guessing, I don’t even know what I’m talking about, but it sounds like that would be cool. Anyway, so let’s talk about, I wanna have a discussion about probably two subjects here. One would be, we’re gonna make it our goal throughout this year in moving forward, especially, we’ve been… A lot of our listeners know about the elements financial planning process that we’ve built for years and years, but it’s become its own technology, which has been like a three year project, and it’s finally this year, 2023 going to be integrated into our practice at Dentist Advisors into a lot of our service models. And so, I mean, we’re really excited about that because we’ve been working on this process for so long and we had to wait long enough and it’s still not perfect, but it’s tech, but we had to wait long enough for it to be like, is this thing stable [chuckle]?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Can we introduce it to hundreds of dentists? So we’re doing that this year, and we wanna make a goal this year of, just having a discussion around an element every single month. Because that was kind of where elements was born from, is like, how can we make a proactive cadence of just taking care and watching over and monitoring things in bite-sized chunks? It’s not overwhelming. That’s where it really started from. So I feel like this would be a good kickoff to talk about the fundamentals of financial planning and that’s really how the elements were built, is built on these fundamentals. So let’s talk about that, building the fundamentals the right way in the beginning, and then maybe a little bit of kind of goal setting since it’s the new year. And I’ve heard… This has to come from somewhere. My wife’s been talking about it a lot, and she’s like plugged into all sorts of like really smart, like self-help people and like just mentor coach people. Like she’s really into that stuff. But she’s been talking about, start, stop, keep, as a form of goal setting. Justin in our business has been talking about that. Do you know where that comes from? Is that like a popular thing, similar?

Matt Mulcock:
I don’t know the origins, but I know that the self-assessment, the audit of habits and stuff like that and the start, stop, keep type approach has definitely been popular recently.

Ryan Isaac:
I just googled it and I think people are calling it. All right, so people actually call it start, stop, continue. But I’m seeing this Forbes article’s from 2016, so I don’t know.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, there you go.

Ryan Isaac:
This is someone, here’s where this probably comes from, is someone who just had a good brand in marketing, probably just built something in the last few months, and then it’s just like all over Insta. Like someone good at social media. Anyway, start, stop, keep, or start stop, continue. I like keep, I don’t know why they just…

Matt Mulcock:
I like keep better too.

Ryan Isaac:
‘Cause then if you’re cool you can just be like SSK.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Should we SSK this?

Matt Mulcock:
tattoo right there?

Ryan Isaac:
SSK. So let’s… With those two things in mind, here’s the introduction I wanna make. For those who might not be familiar, maybe new listeners who haven’t really dug into, much of the process that we deliver at Dentist Advisors, you can push pause and go to our website, dentistadvisors.com. And you can see all this there in quite a bit of detail. But our firm started 15 years ago and from the beginning in really laughable ways. Honestly, when I think back, our huge focus of our firm, which was kind of weird at the time since we were broke and brand new and the profitable thing would’ve been to just go chase down people’s investments or sell insurance, probably [laughter] Shout out to Reese Harper because we were, burning cash the little that we had being obsessive about, data organization, benchmarking data, analyzing data and analyzing trends and trying to figure out what pieces of a dentist, financial life, business and personal, are important to track. Like which indicators tell a story and which ones are fluff. Dude, I can remember a time… Oh, I wish… Reese took a picture of this and it lives somewhere and I don’t, Reese has…

Matt Mulcock:
It’s somewhere out there in the Universe.

Ryan Isaac:
So there was a time I came to the office one day and Reese had, I don’t even know how he got it there. He bought a piece of whiteboard that was as big as an entire wall. I mean, the wall, I’m looking at your wall right now. The wall had to have been a 12 foot wall by whatever, nine feet. He hung this piece of whiteboard on the wall, gigantic. And then he, this is so Reese, he had hired one of his friends who was a PhD math student at the time. So this person now is like a genius, to come in and seriously like good will hunting on this wall, [laughter] at night. So, I’m not kidding, man. This guy, and I wish I could remember his name, he would come in at night and Reese gave him, it was probably like, 10 to 15 factors. And he said, “Look, here are the factors that I think are important that will tell a story about a dentist’s financial life. Here are the numbers, here are the ratios,” Like whatever.

Matt Mulcock:
And this guy’s just writing an equation.

Ryan Isaac:
And Reese told him to write an equation to give us one score. It never happened.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
But he wanted the one score, the financial health score. I’m not kidding. This wall was full of a math equation. It looked like the whiteboard, the chalkboard on goodwill hunting.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
It was the, and we took a picture of it and I can’t remember. Wow.

Matt Mulcock:
But nothing ever came of it?

Ryan Isaac:
No, it was too hard to boil down. But that was the beginning of starting to think about scores in a dentist’s life and like which scores tell which stories. And eventually we broke them down. So if you’re not familiar, we broke them down into 12. The idea, the thinking behind that, was that we could break it down into one score a month to just kind of think about. It doesn’t mean you have a meeting about it, or that there’s even something to do about every score per month, ’cause that’s not true. You don’t drastically take action every single month and change something. But it’s something to think about in bite sized chunks as opposed to trying to do it all at one time. That was the other part is we realized working with dentists early, that they’re very busy. And you can’t grab a dentist for four hours and bore them to death with numbers. [chuckle] We want to.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, we’d love to.

Ryan Isaac:
And some do like it. You were gonna say that. Some do like it.

Matt Mulcock:
Some do. Some like it.

Ryan Isaac:
So, this whole idea of a scoring system was born, and it breaks up into 12. It’s like it’s your investments kind of a score on your investments. And these are all just very high level categories. They have subcategories into the maybe dozens. But it’s your investments, it’s your income. Where does your income come from? And part of that sub conversation is like, “Are you profitable in your business?” It’s your insurance disclaimer. We don’t sell any, we don’t make any money from it, but we consult on it and we score it. What percentage of your net worth is covered if you got sued by liability insurance? What percentage of your spending is covered by disability insurance if something happened? What percentage of your net worth and your family’s future spending is covered if you passed away?

Ryan Isaac:
So, there’s an insurance score, there’s four cash flow scores. What percentage of your money goes to spending, savings, debt and taxes. And then there’s five net worth scores. What part… How much of your net worth is liquid? How much is in retirement plans that have a penalty? How much is in private business? How much is in real estate? And if you add those together, how long could your net worth sustain you for? If you retired today with your current spending, how long could you live? Five years, 20, 10? So, we kind of… That’s where it came from. That’s what the elements is. And dude, you’ve been here forever, you know it used to live on… Where was it? I know from the whiteboard the next step was this gigantic. We hired a guy named Kyle. Wink. Wink, hey Kyle. [laughter] We hired a guy named Kyle to sit in the back, and he built the biggest spreadsheet I’ve ever seen. I do believe it had some pivot tables. [chuckle]

Matt Mulcock:
He was pivoting.

Ryan Isaac:
He was hot-keying.

Matt Mulcock:
He was hot-keying that pivot table.

Ryan Isaac:
He was hot-keying the crap outta that pivot table. But it was this giant spreadsheet. I think every client had a tab, and we started to rank some of these things. That’s where the fir… What do you remember? Where did the Elements? What was the iteration when you… Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
When I came in, Elements was mainly living on the website is kind of like, “Here’s the Elements table.” And then how we delivered it was individual PDF reports that we built via Adobe.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
We designed everyone. We pulled their data, every client’s data from our software that we basically housed all their data. We pulled it through to Adobe and every single month we would build out every single person’s insurance rate summary. The next month it was every single person’s debt rate summary. And then you and I, would hop on and we’d make videos.

Ryan Isaac:
For every single report.

Matt Mulcock:
Literally for every single report, for every single client. I remember sitting on soapbox for hours, and you’d finish a video and you’d, “Okay, next one.”

Ryan Isaac:
Crank another one. We’re like, “We either have to quintuple our fees or we gotta stop doing this.”

Matt Mulcock:
Yes. [laughter] that lasted not very long. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So before… I’m trying to think before that, it went from that giant spreadsheet to a software called Smartsheet. Which we actually still use for people who upload data securely. It lived in this Smartsheet thing where they had red, green and yellow indicators like a stoplight. And there would be like… This was when most of our clients, by the way, we were still local in Utah. And so, we would meet people in person. We’d have these meetings and we’d have like… We’d print out the Smartsheet list, and it would be like 200 items. Yellow, green, red. And so, green was good. Yellow was caution, let’s talk about it. Red’s like stop, and we gotta fix something. Then it went…

Matt Mulcock:
Was our own start, stop?

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, my God. It was start, stop, keep. That’s what it was. You’re so right dude. That’s exactly what it was. Whoa. We used to play start, stop, keep. Then it was what you said, then it became Adobe mixed with some of our backend stuff in where we house data, individual PDF reports. And then it became a cool spreadsheet, really beautifully designed and now it’s the app finally. So, the point of saying all this, that’s just the evolution, it is kinda fun to reminisce about it. But the point of all this is that, that was all born out of a foundation that we felt was more important than figuring out what mutual funds to buy. Or more important than which type of insurance you’re gonna buy. Or more important than paying off debt versus investing. The foundation was organization, it was tracking data in key indicators, like key areas of your life that really tell a story about your financial health. And then it was making decisions around what that data was telling us, and having a one-on-one money companion. [chuckle] I was gonna say money guide, but that’s a software.

Matt Mulcock:
I was gonna say a money buddy.

Ryan Isaac:
Money buddy.

0:24:42.3 Matt: Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
There you go. And then having a money buddy to make sure that you followed through with those decisions, and carried them forward for years and years to come. ‘Cause that’s the only way you make progress. We coined these terms in our business, a little more fancy marketing as Organize, Analyze, Decide, and Act. But that was… If you ask me what’s the foundation that a dentist should lay before they make any like, “Am I gonna be a real estate investor, or am I gonna buy stocks? Or am I gonna build a DSO? Am I gonna pay off my debt? Am I gonna invest? Am I gonna?” Whatever. You should be organized. You should have data, you should analyze that data and you should have someone to follow through with that data and keep you accountable. That’s the foundation that would be 51 miles of parks.

Ryan Isaac:
Skipping that and going right to just like building a portfolio or chucking some money at some debt or like buying the boat or the dream house too soon or building the building too soon. That would just be building a bunch of concrete rain corridors. I still can’t think of the freaking name [laughter] It’s driving me crazy.

Matt Mulcock:
Not catacombs.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s not catacombs. So anyway.

Matt Mulcock:
Ducts.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh aqueducts.

Matt Mulcock:
Aqueducts there you go.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh my gosh I’m so stupid. Aqueduct. That’s the equivalent of just laying like aqueducts that are gonna be really hard. Like you entrench yourself in your spending. You build a giant building way too early in your career. You buy the dream house too early you buy the wrong kind of insurance and dump tons of money into it. You’re whatever. That’s you building aqueducts and then looking back at me like I should have had parks.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah and what’s the quote again? It’s not that you didn’t do anything it’s that you did…

Ryan Isaac:
The wrong thing.

Matt Mulcock:
You did the wrong thing.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
You did something wrong.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Not because we didn’t do something but because we did something the wrong way.

Matt Mulcock:
The wrong way.

Ryan Isaac:
Not the wrong thing because it still prevented an entire city from flooding completely.

Matt Mulcock:
Sure.

Ryan Isaac:
So that might be… That’s like saying you had some cash flow and some money but before you laid the foundations you opened some random accounts and then you bought like a rental home and then you like built a big building and then you spent a lot of money at home…

Matt Mulcock:
By the way you’re describing people we talk to every single day.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. This is normal stuff. This is normal behavior.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And it’s not like those things were wrong but some of them probably could have been done in different orders and more efficiently and at different times to make your life smoother.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I mean we want the same things for our clients as we selfishly want for ourselves which is like…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Money and career should just be the making your life better and it shouldn’t be just like heaps and heaps of stress and anxiety.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So yeah like not the wrong thing but doing things, what is the correct…

Matt Mulcock:
The wrong way.

Ryan Isaac:
The wrong way, yeah. Doing them the wrong way. That’s kind of the first message, beginning of the year message about Elements. And we talk about this all the time. I like to stress and I mean I feel very genuinely about this. We built this software and the system when it was software or a spreadsheets or PDFs or it didn’t matter what it was start stop keep, stop lights. We built that because it was a very natural extension of a philosophy that works. The philosophy of being organized and tracking data and analyzing and making decisions from it and then having accountability to that data. That’s a philosophy that works. And these tools were just they naturally grew out of that philosophy. That’s different than like just getting some like shiny cool thing that doesn’t… It’s just like a widget just for the sake of being a widget.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
This is a very very natural extension of a philosophy that actually works as a foundation of 51 miles of parks for your rainy days.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So…

Matt Mulcock:
Love it.

Ryan Isaac:
So that’s the message about Elements to kick it off. In subsequent months we will hit like one at a time. Maybe we’ll pull some data from the… I mean the database now is so like concentrated beautifully man. We can pull some really good averages. Maybe we’ll talk about averages throughout the month. We’ll talk about case studies around each one of those Elements. Maybe we’ll describe like how it’s used in the app, all kinds of things. Along the lines of goal setting and start stop keep, you and I talked about maybe a good financial goal for this year. Well first of all let me stop there. What do you think Matt about goal setting and maybe specifically financial goal setting? Like what do you think about what have you noticed when people set like financial goals in the beginning of the year?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I see this in my own life specifically and my thought process on this has evolved a lot around goal setting. I’m still very much for goals. I’m still very much a goal oriented person and…

Ryan Isaac:
Totally. Knowing where you’re headed, right?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I think they’re great. I think where I have… I’m not gonna speak for anyone else, I’ll speak for myself and then hopefully people will relate to this. Where I have failed with goals is I focus too much on the result. I’m too result minded of so I’ll give you an example. A couple years ago I was like you know what I wanna read 50 books this year. Right. I don’t know why I set it at 50 it sounded like a fun number. It was like whatever. That would be a lot of books in a year. So that was it. That was my goal. I put no thought process into breaking that down.

Ryan Isaac:
Into why.

Matt Mulcock:
Well, first of all into why. It just sounded fun.

Ryan Isaac:
Sure.

Matt Mulcock:
So there’s no real why behind it. And then second of all I didn’t break it down into like incremental process or input focused.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s a book a week dude.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah it’s a book a week right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
And then what does that mean? So a book a week means okay I roughly read at this pace which is pretty average or slow. And so I gotta read X number of pages a day or X number of minutes a day or whatever. I didn’t do that work. And I think that’s where I know I have failed is like answering the question why okay. It’s great to have a direction and I think the whole idea is like goal-set the direction but the real magic like the real extraordinary results come from focusing more on the inputs. It’s like the ordinary everyday habits you’re creating. James Clear talks about this way better than I could but it’s all about building… So James Clear has, he wrote Atomic Habits. It’s like one of the best books ever on this subject specifically. He has a quote in there that says and this was kind of an iteration of an old military quote but it’s, We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. And it’s kind of the whole idea. It’s great you can have goals and aspirations. Awesome. If you don’t have the habits or the systems in place and you’re not putting the work in there your goals mean absolutely nothing. And I think that’s where I failed a lot. By the way spoiler alert I did not read 50 books that year.

Ryan Isaac:
How many did you get or did you read?

Matt Mulcock:
I don’t even remember.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Matt Mulcock:
But it wasn’t 50, probably somewhere in the 30s or something. I don’t know.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah that’s such a good… I really like that. Especially what we were were just talking about you fail… What was it? You fail to the level of your systems, you fall to the level… You don’t raise to the level of your goals.

Matt Mulcock:
No, you don’t. Yeah. You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. And you can think about this too like especially in this conversation about this Element system. When you have a system that reminds you frequently that you could be saving more money or that you might be spending too much, or that, maybe it reminds you that your net worth is actually growing faster than you think it is. Maybe you’re down on yourself because you’re only making minimum payments on all of that business debt and you’re only saving X amount of dollars per month. But it doesn’t really feel. But then if you have a system that’s telling you, “Actually, you made a lot of net worth progress in the last 12 months.” You didn’t think you made any, you thought you went backwards. And you made a lot. Those systems in place, they’re so little, they’re just basic and they’re in theory very simple. But having them…

Ryan Isaac:
I think all the time, I was just on a conversation last night with a very successful client, saving up some cash for some big projects coming up, but it’s been a while I think we have enough cash and just this indicator in front of us saying like, savings rate is this number and it should be this number. They were like, “Oh yeah. You know what? I do need to kick that back on and I can do more than I was doing before,” but that wouldn’t have happened because we were talking about tons of other stuff. We were talking about kids and business stuff. And… But that indicator made us think about that, so that basic foundation of systems in place saved us and it will do that over and over and over again.

Matt Mulcock:
So it’s funny that you just used that story because I was thinking that we call elements a system, which it is for sure. It’s an organizational system for advisors.

Ryan Isaac:
Yea perfect.

Matt Mulcock:
And for clients right, to stay organized and monitor their financial life. But what it actually does is what you just described, which is I think at its core, it uncovers for people if you have the right inputs in place or you have the right systems in place from like a savings, from a spending. It is literally the exposer. It exposes, do you have the habits in place to get where you want to go. And I think that’s the main difference between something like this versus a lot of legacy traditional software out there, is I think those are very goal-oriented or very, results-oriented where Elements is very much exposing the input.

Ryan Isaac:
Today?

Matt Mulcock:
Today. Right now.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Because you’re referencing traditional financial planning software that you input like six to 10 different variables that you can totally manipulate.

Matt Mulcock:
Or more. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. [laughter] and then project it out 30 years and be like, that’s where we’re headed. But the thing that…

Matt Mulcock:
Which is great.

Ryan Isaac:
Which is great, it’s needed. We use that stuff, but what we operate on is a system that tells us today, what is happening today and what is being reflected in today’s numbers. So I guess, when you run and you could again push pause or end this episode and go to dentistadvisors.com, go look at the 12 elements and as a good financial goal, if you haven’t set one yet for this year, think of it in terms of start, stop, keep, go to those 12 elements and ask yourself, what do I wanna start doing in this list here? What does not feel complete to me? Maybe I know I wake up every day and I know I’m underinsured. I know, I’ve got $4 million of debt and I’ve got $500,000 of life insurance, [laughter] and six people in my family like don’t… You know that when you wake up, like maybe that’s your start thing. Pick one.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Just pick one. Yeah. Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Pick one that you’re gonna start doing differently this year. Pick one that you’re gonna stop, I guess. Is it stop spending? Is it…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Maybe it’s cutting some spending.

Ryan Isaac:
Cutting something. Maybe it’s, you’re gonna stop worrying about a certain area of your financial life because it’s okay. Or it’s causing you stress. It doesn’t, isn’t necessary. Maybe that’s your stop. Maybe there’s something you’re gonna stop doing. Maybe, it’s as simple as I’m going to stop doing my savings where the money goes from my business to my personal checking first then I save whatever’s left over 30 days later. Maybe you’re gonna stop that and you’re gonna start removing money from the business account first CPA approved. Pending CPA approval.

Matt Mulcock:
Of course.

Ryan Isaac:
And you’re gonna start, maybe that’s your start stop. And then you’re gonna start saving your money directly from the business before it comes home.

Matt Mulcock:
Maybe you’re gonna stop being obsessed with individual stock holdings in your portfolio or what the market’s doing.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
Maybe you’re gonna stop obsessing over day-to-day market trends and movement. You’re gonna set up a system for long-term investment goals and strategy and then you’re gonna go enjoy your life.

Ryan Isaac:
Such a good point.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s one I think of.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I’m glad you brought that up. And the reason why I love the keep thing, is because a lot of times… This is what bothers me I think about New Year’s resolutions, is it kind of, that mindset can tend to negate or discount all the other stuff you’re doing well up to that arbitrary [laughter] change of days.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly. It’s like December 31st to January 1st. Like somehow your life has changed.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It’s all totally different and nothing in the past matters. I love the keep idea. So look at that list and acknowledge something you’re doing well and say like…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I do love that. That’s a really, really good point.

Ryan Isaac:
What do I wannna to keep doing?

Matt Mulcock:
It’s like let’s acknowledge what you’re doing well.

Ryan Isaac:
Acknowledge it. And it might be like, one of our indicators has to do with income, which is directly tied to your profitability and maybe you run a really profitable business and you… There’s not a goal there, you’re doing it. So keep doing it. And that’s a fantastic place to keep doing, but acknowledge it because that acknowledgement… This comes into play too. Like acknowledging the success that you’re having. Again, this is why a system like this and a set of indicators like this is so helpful because there’s a lot of people… This was actually my conversation yesterday too. There’s a lot of people in very successful situations that don’t feel that way. They’re like, “Oh my gosh, I have to just keep grinding for 20 more years. And I don’t know if I, if I can do that. Like, is this even helping? Have I done anything good? And I think I just suck at this and everything’s a mess and a problem. And… ” But then if you look at the numbers, you’re like, “No, you could retire today actually. [laughter] Did you know that?” Or like, you’re probably five years away. Did you know that?

Ryan Isaac:
And the shift in pressure, it can inject a whole new like long forgotten passion and love for your work that you just haven’t had for a long time because of all the stress and the anxiety. But that’s what numbers do though. They can tell a scary story sometimes they tell you to knock it off, but they all can also tell you like, “Hey, you’re fine and you’re good.” So.

Matt Mulcock:
And that happens all the time to people.

Ryan Isaac:
All the time. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Where like, they haven’t taken the time to stop to gather all these numbers, to get organized to look at their situation. They just feel like they’re a chicken with their head cut off running from patient to patient to home to back to the office.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, it feels like that.

Matt Mulcock:
It does. I think it totally can. And to your point, I think that’s an underrated value in this process of take a deep breath, take some time to get yourself organized and see where you stand. And, you can’t even perform a start, stop, keep analysis on your financial life until you’ve actually taken a little bit of time to even understand where you are at the moment.

Ryan Isaac:
Well said. Well said. So with that, go to dentistadvisors.com and, if you would like help getting organized for this year and you would like help identifying a start, stop, keep, that’s why we exist and we would love to help. So dentistadvisors.com, book a…

Matt Mulcock:
We’d love to start helping you start and I’m just kidding.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, we would like to start helping you stop bad things and keep good ones. I don’t even know, I like where you’re going with that. You can just keep going.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Sure I was going somewhere, but I just stopped.

Ryan Isaac:
Keep going. Dentistadvisors.com. We’d love to chat with you. You can just book a quick, easy, no pressure chat, with one of our advisors and we will help point you in the right direction. So Matty, thank you very much. Happy New Year, by the way. [laughter]

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Happy New Year.

Ryan Isaac:
Happy New Year to you.

Matt Mulcock:
I think that the next time we record, we will not be saying that.

Ryan Isaac:
I guess yeah, it’s getting late long in the tooth as they say…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. [laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
In the business. All right. Thanks Matt.

Matt Mulcock:
Thanks Ryan.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks everyone for tuning in and listening. We’ll catch you next time on another episode of the Dentist Money Show. Take care now. Bye-Bye.

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