Dentistry’s Great, But Are You Running in Circles? – Episode 313

Making random decisions about money over the course of a long career can lead to financial disaster. Isn’t it time you determined exactly where you want to go? On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan and Matt explain how to avoid the small errors that cause you to stray off the path of financial success. Following these three steps can help you reach your long-term goals. 

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Dentist Money Show, brought to you by Dentist Advisors, a no commission fiduciary, comprehensive financial planner just for dentists all over the country. Check us out at dentistadvisors.com. Today on the show, Matt and I are talking about a really funny story about people walking in circles while blindfolded. And how this applies to our money making and financial decisions. And what you can do to make better ones in your life and avoid some mistakes along the way. Thanks for being here in this conversation. If you have any questions, post them in our Facebook group, that’s the Dentist Advisors discussion group on Facebook or if you wanna chat with us, go to dentistadvisors.com, click the Book Free Consultation link, have a chat with us. We’d love to do it. Thanks for being here. Enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consult an advisor or 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 am Ryan Isaac. And I’m here with a very tired, yet very powerful Matt, the Hollywood Mountain, Mulcock. I was weird. I said it weird. I did it like Matt, and then middle name, Hollywood Mountain Mulcock. Either way it’s you. Matt has done the thing that all of us have done multiple times. He moved.

Matt Mulcock:
Matt Mulcock: I did.

Ryan Isaac:
And he’s dead.

Matt Mulcock:
This is the worst of them all, Ryan, let me tell you.

Ryan Isaac:
The worst move.

Matt Mulcock:
Man, I am exhausted. It takes it out of you. Again, anyone out there, which I’m guessing all of you at some point have moved, which is the first time I’ve moved a full house. And first time I’ve moved with kids. ‘Cause we moved into this house that we just moved from, we didn’t have kids when we moved in. We had two kids while we were living there. And then just moved them out to this new house just down the road. We even had movers. We hired movers this time. And man, let me tell you, I’m exhausted, like…

Ryan Isaac:
So our audience…

Matt Mulcock:
Can barely function.

Ryan Isaac:
Dude, our audience has gone through this a million times. I wonder… I’m curious if anyone relates. And we were just talking about this before we started recording. I’m curious if anyone listening relates to this, as many of our old time listeners know one of my biggest fears in life is inconveniencing strangers.

Matt Mulcock:
We just talked about this.

Ryan Isaac:
When I hire movers to move my stuff, I can’t… I either have to leave, which I can’t do. Or I just get involved and I start moving stuff. I have to help because I just feel…

Matt Mulcock:
‘Cause you feel bad.

Ryan Isaac:
I do. I feel bad. I don’t like to inconvenience people I don’t know. The people I do know, I don’t really care.

Matt Mulcock:
So that’s what’s so funny. So we just talked… My wife and I just talked about this, ’cause this is the first time we ever hired movers. Normally, you get friends, family, one of the neighbours.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, it’s small enough, right? Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, this time I was like, “No, we’re gonna go with movers.” I’ve talked to a lot of people that have been like, “If you move, you gotta use movers.”

Ryan Isaac:
The best money you ever spent.

Matt Mulcock:
I had enough people tell me that. But I was like, “We’re gonna do it.”

Ryan Isaac:
No question.

Matt Mulcock:
I feel way more guilty when it’s family and friends.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, volunteer.

Matt Mulcock:
‘Cause it’s like… And then you’re like, “I’ll lift all the heavy stuff. ‘Cause I don’t wanna make you do it. And I wanted to give you these easy stuff.” And it takes four times as long. I was amazed. These dudes showed up. They were good at what they do. They were efficient.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah. They know how to get it done.

Matt Mulcock:
And I didn’t feel bad ’cause I’m like, “I’m at least paying you for this.” Other than… And I’m not paying my friends and family, no.

Ryan Isaac:
Your buddy, whoever owns a truck showed up to help you move.

Matt Mulcock:
Literally. It’s like a caravan of trucks.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, glad you…

Matt Mulcock:
Nevertheless, I’m still… I am exhausted.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re very tired.

Matt Mulcock:
If I’m nodding off during the episode, I’m sorry.

Ryan Isaac:
We’ll keep it exciting for you. If you’re just… Let’s just say this. I actually don’t know when this episode’s gonna come out. I think this is probably one of our last of the 2021 year, which is crazy.

Matt Mulcock:
Unbelievable, like we’re already there.

Ryan Isaac:
What a year… I’m just curious if… Well, we’re gonna do this on another New Year’s episode. But I was just gonna say, I hope everyone had a good year for the most part. Besides not being able to hire anybody right now, which is a big problem for some people. For the most part, I think people had a pretty decent year in 2021. A lot of people haven’t…

Matt Mulcock:
Business wise I’d imagine, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Revenue and collections and making good money, still sitting on some cash from 2020. So I hope that was the case for you if you’re listening. If you’re new to the program, as they say, the program…

Matt Mulcock:
Do they say that?

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t know. Someone says program. My grandma…

Matt Mulcock:
Program.

Ryan Isaac:
My grandma used to say program.

Matt Mulcock:
Yes, my grandma says that.

Ryan Isaac:
If you’re new to the program, we just wanna welcome you here. And new episodes every Wednesday. And we hope they’re helpful to you, so that you can have a good life in business. And if you’re returning to the show as a long-time listener, then thank you for doing that, because we love that.

Matt Mulcock:
Also, welcome.

Ryan Isaac:
Also, welcome. And thank you. Today, I’m gonna start… I have a story to tell. It’s about a weird piece of human behavior. And I kinda wanna test this myself. But I don’t really know how I would do this. I think you just need a big open space outside to test this. But I heard this story that human beings… It’s just such a human thing. And I’m not surprised. Human beings, if they can’t… If they don’t have landmarks in this study, they’re blindfolded. But if you can’t see big landmarks or anything, we will walk in circles instead of a straight line. So for example… Well, I’m gonna get to this in the story. But basically, that’s it. There’s something in our brains, there’s like a glitch in our brains that causes us to walk in circles, if we don’t have very, very clear landmarks to guide our walking.

Matt Mulcock:
Is it a glitch or is it a feature to protect you?

Ryan Isaac:
It might be… You don’t know.

0:06:00.1 MM: So you don’t walk off a cliff.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, you don’t know. Maybe somewhere back in the cavemen brain, there was like… We evolved to walk in circles, somehow.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, the ones that didn’t walked off cliffs or into a saber-tooth tiger’s mouth. While the ones that just stayed in circles like a little idiot, lived.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m gonna give you a little background here. This story comes from science.org. So, that’s how you know it’s real.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s real. It’s.org. It’s real.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, so this was researchers, they were just trying to confirm this common belief that people walk in circles when we’re lost. And it’s just so fascinating. So the idea came from… There’s this German science TV show called… How do I… Let’s see if I can pronounce it. It’s Karpsball, Karfball. K-O-P-F-B-A-L-L, kopfball. It literally means head ball, apparently, if any German speakers can post in…

Matt Mulcock:
The German audience.

Ryan Isaac:
Dentist Advisors, discussion group on Facebook, tell me about Kopfball. Anyway, it tries to answer viewer’s science questions, and anyway, they got this idea from some scientists and some viewers who study perception and action, these scientists do, and they wanted to find out if the… Apparently, it’s a common belief, and I guess that’s true, that we… When we’re lost, we walk in circles, and they just wanna see if this is really true, and they said, “We didn’t really know, but we thought it was an interesting question”. So they… The show collaborated with some scientists and researchers, and they did this experiment, so here’s what they did. They took 50 people…

Matt Mulcock:
It’s like this… This is like German… This is like German version of MythBusters?

Ryan Isaac:
Probably.

Matt Mulcock:
Old Kopfball?

Ryan Isaac:
Kopfball. [chuckle]

Matt Mulcock:
Old Kopfball, MythBusters style.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s basically… It’s called head ball, translation, I think. But MythBusters, same thing.

Matt Mulcock:
Got it. Yeah, German MythBusters.

Ryan Isaac:
You made the connection.

Matt Mulcock:
It made sense.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, exactly. You’re on it. So okay, they did this experiment, they blindfolded people and then outfitted them with GPS receivers, and then put them in a big field, and they just tried to get him to walk in a straight line, so here’s what’s crazy, is these people know they’re… They know they’re in a field, like they drove there. It’s like…

Matt Mulcock:
They could see before, and they knew where they were.

Ryan Isaac:
This wasn’t a maze. They drove to the field, and they looked at it, and it was open, it was a giant open field, and they said, “We’re gonna put blindfolds on you, we just need you to walk to the other end of the field”. That’s it.

Matt Mulcock:
Couldn’t do it.

Ryan Isaac:
And they couldn’t do it. Someone to read from some of this here, it’s like… But don’t you think, if someone drove you to a football field, and you’re standing in one end zone, which is where the touchdowns and the scores happen, for all of you non-sports people.

Matt Mulcock:
Where all the points are scored and the baskets are… Yeah, sports.

Ryan Isaac:
Where points are made. If you were standing in one end zone, and they said, “We’re gonna put a blindfold on you, walk to the other, you’d be pretty confident that you can just walk to the other end zone, right?

Matt Mulcock:
Oh yeah, yeah, this is one of those things I’m like, I know for sure it’s so easy, and I would do it, and then I’d end up in the stands.

Ryan Isaac:
So most people in this large field, they said “Meandered”, which is a great word, I think…

Matt Mulcock:
That is a great word.

Ryan Isaac:
We need meander more. All over the place, occasionally walking in circles as small as 20 meters in diameter, which…

Matt Mulcock:
C’mon. Do they just sit there and circle?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Doesn’t that seem the most like… Who’s doing that? And these aren’t drunk people.

Matt Mulcock:
Please tell me they filmed this, by the way.

Ryan Isaac:
This wasn’t a drinking game… Yeah, it actually, it was Episode 207… Oh no, it was an episode… There’s a link to it. It aired in 2007. Kopfball, check it out. I’m gonna off… Maybe we’ll fine, we’ll post the links in here. Anyway, and so here’s some things they thought, they were trying to eliminate… Well, here’s some reasons why they thought this might be happening, they thought maybe it has… A lot of us have a slight difference in length of each leg, so a longer leg on one side make you veer to one side. So they found that there was no strong bias based on leg length or discrepancies in leg length. And they even put a little thicker soles on one side of people’s shoes just to see if that would affect it, and it totally didn’t. So they’re eliminating… They’re eliminating all these possible causes. The finding suggests that it’s in the brain. That’s what I’m saying, it’s like a glitch, maybe it’s a feature, we don’t know yet, but yeah, when they’re blindfolded, these people, they would try to walk in a straight line, but it would just end up being in circles, and they think it’s just in the brain, it’s like muscles and joints and sensors in the brain and there’s…

Matt Mulcock:
They lose track, and they just go in circles.

Ryan Isaac:
So here’s what they said, I thought was an interesting sentence, we’re gonna tie back, they said… I’m just gonna read this here, “When people are blindfolded the brain has to plot a course for straight ahead based on limited information, including input from the vestibular system”, someone tell me what that is, “Which informs the sense of balance and movement sensors in the muscles and joints, all those signals have very small errors, and so what happens is all these small errors when people have limited information combined with small errors over time ends up leading people in circles”, which is the best time.

Matt Mulcock:
Interesting.

Ryan Isaac:
Then they did this same thing… I’ll just fast-forward. They did the same thing in a forest and in a desert, and in a forest, people could do it on a clear day, they could walk in a straight line on a clear day, not blindfolded by the way, they just put them in a forest…

Matt Mulcock:
I was gonna say that’s really mean. You gonna put them in a bunch of trees and be like, “Hey, let’s see what happens”.

Ryan Isaac:
They did it in a forest, not blindfolded, but on a clear day when there was sun, they could… There was a clear enough navigation point, and they could do it according… They could walk in a straight line, but if it was cloudy, and they couldn’t see the sun, they would walk in circles, so it goes back to the sentence that our brains in these situations have limited information, and then all those signals that… Coming from our brain to our bodies, there’s small errors that kinda add up in the…

Matt Mulcock:
They just add up.

Ryan Isaac:
And then the desert was the same thing, if it was bright and sunny, they could go with the sun and then the shadows, but if there was clouds or something, cloud cover, then they couldn’t do it.

Matt Mulcock:
Just go back to the circles.

Ryan Isaac:
So why are we talking about this? I heard this story, and I was like, A, humans are funny. [chuckle] We are just some funny creatures.

Matt Mulcock:
Humans. Gotta love them.

Ryan Isaac:
We are funny creatures, but we do this with our money because of limited information and because of small errors that we inevitably make, some of them avoidable, many probably, we as human beings typically will walk in circles with our money and our financial decisions for our whole lives, and that’s why we’re kind of just…

Matt Mulcock:
And then wonder why we didn’t reach our goal, as in make progress.

Ryan Isaac:
And then we wonder why we didn’t get to the other side of the field. Why didn’t I make it where I clearly thought I should be at? But you’ve been going in circles the whole time. So I guess here’s… We’re gonna be kind of just flow and be open with this, there’s a few topics we wanted to hit on, but I think here’s an invitation I would make to people listening is, I would say that as you listen to this, if you’re recognizing parts in your life where you’re like, Gosh, I’m not making the financial progress I thought I should be making after maybe all this time or all this… All these huge collections, or maybe I am making progress, but I really can’t see and I can’t tell… Just be thinking of the areas that you feel like maybe you’re struggling to make progress in, and it’s possible that you’ve been walking in circles because of these two things mentioned, lack of information and small errors along the way, and then not knowing any better, you just kind of keep going in circles. So I kinda wanted to bring up a few pretty common areas where this happens, and more importantly than just bringing them up, I wanted to talk about some things that people can do to proverbially, take the blindfolds off, If you will.

Matt Mulcock:
If you will.

Ryan Isaac:
If you will, and be able to have more information and to eliminate small errors, we’re still gonna make mistakes along the way, but… I liked that they put that in there, that the body and the brain make these small errors that… They accumulate over time, I liked that that was in there because you’ve seen this, Matt, we’ve all probably seen this. You can ruin a big net worth, you can get rid of high income, you can waste your wealth, not even making huge mistakes, you can ruin that stuff with enough small ones, and health and wellness are the same thing. You don’t have to have a big health incident to ruin your health, you can ruin your health with enough small missteps for a long enough period of time, so this limited information and small errors along the way are just really fascinating to me because we do this as humans in our money too, so we can kinda go back and forth here Matt. I have a few I kinda wanted to list and what I think is the antidote to making these errors and then being able to walk in a straight line and I guess I wanna say…

Matt Mulcock:
We gotta provide the solution, right?

Ryan Isaac:
You are gonna have the solution. I wanna say this though too, a straight line for… Someone’s straight line is not everyone’s straight line, and that’s probably worth saying because not everybody has the same end point.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I was gonna say, not even the line, but the end point itself.

Ryan Isaac:
Where you’re going is gonna be different than someone else. Right now, this very day, I’m discussing with two clients, a potential buy-out of their practices from a large organization, which is very common these days, and it’s funny how the end points for each of these people are different, and the motivations are different, even though the financials are fairly similar and the financial outcome is very similar, there’s still other non-financial outcomes that make it different from people, like one of these people might say yes, and the other one might say no, and it’s just kind of interesting ’cause the deals are really similar, financially from the numbers perspective. So not everyone’s end point and straight line is the same thing. Matt did you… I don’t know if you wanted to bring it up on this episode or not, but did you have something you wanted to say about… Like there’s this concept, since we’re talking about direction and being able to travel in a straight line and end up in the right end point for you instead of going in circles, there’s this concept of direction and then direction and speed. Did you wanna say something about any of that stuff?

Matt Mulcock:
So yeah, we had talked about this as we were preparing for the episode, and that’s the first thing that came to my mind when you were telling… You were alluding to the story and obviously, you told me all the details yet, ’cause you like to throw it out and surprise me.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I like that.

Matt Mulcock:
No, but we had talked about the concept, and the first thing that came to my mind was there’s a blog, and I think I’ve mentioned him on this show before, Shane Parrish, he does a blog called Farnam Street, if you have not checked it out, it’s awesome. He also has a podcast, but he does a lot of stuff released, he’s talked a lot about direction over speed, and I know that’s not unique, just to him, this is kind of a… This is maybe a cliche thing, but there is a quote that I think is really important is… So the quote is… This is again from his blog, If you’re pointed in the wrong direction, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re traveling. Inversely, if you’re locked on to your desired destination, all progress is positive, no matter how slow you’re going. You’ll reach your goal eventually.

Matt Mulcock:
So I just… It kinda comes back to this whole idea of, if you’re moving around in circles… I think a lot of times, one of those mistakes that we’re talking about people make is they’re so worried about the speed in which they’re moving, how quickly they’re gonna get to X, Y, or Z thing, before they’ve even decided what that X, Y, or Z thing. I think that’s probably the number one mistake… I shouldn’t say number one, but one of the top things we see is exactly what you’re talking about these two different clients. Step number one is figure out what that direction even is before…

Ryan Isaac:
What do you want.

Matt Mulcock:
What do you want before you even talk about the speed in which you’re trying to get there? That’s a mistake I see a lot of times with clients is, let’s first establish what is success to you, what direction are we headed in, and then we’ll start talking about the speed in which we’ll get there and the things we have to do to calibrate that speed if you will.

Ryan Isaac:
I think that’s a great place to start. We’re often asked, “What’s the number one mistake dentists make financially?” And I usually will answer, and I’m still convinced of this answer that it’s just… It’s being on too unorganized. Dentists have surprisingly complex lives, just based on that complexity, I think and I’ll always answer that question, number one mistake is just being too unorganized and making random decisions with money over the course of a 30-year career can be disastrous sometimes.

Ryan Isaac:
With what you’re saying, man, I think mistake number one is just doing exactly that and the antidote or the fix to it would be to just get some organization in your life, which when you start organizing things… I’d love to hear your perspective Matt on what you’ve seen with clients when you go through this, when people hire us for the first time, the first thing we do is we spend at least… It’s usually about a month, but sometimes it can go on for a couple of months of onboarding, which is just organizing data and organizing more data than any single person knows about our clients in their whole lives. So it’s everything from the value of all of their assets, not just like the easy stuff, like their bank accounts and investment accounts, but let’s put a value on your business and all of your real estate and your house and other assets that you’ve got, and then let’s list all of your debts, and let’s look at not only the balances but let’s look at what interest rates you have on all these things and how many months are left and what are they for and… So a full balance sheet, and then there’s income and tax return and profitability and overhead, and then mixed in there are…

Matt Mulcock:
Then there is insurance.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, insurance and spending and what do you save in a year, and then what is your net worth? And all these things… This is what we do in the beginning. I think that’s the first step to not only combating the problem of being too disorganized and making random financial decisions in a career, but it helps what you’re saying Matt, which is like, “What do you even want? Do you want out of dentistry at 50?” And if so, how wealthy do you think you’re gonna be at 50 getting out of dentistry or want to be, or can you see yourself playing some role in dentistry until you’re 65? Whether you own the practice or not or you’re teaching or you’re an associate, or… Can you see yourself doing that? And then along the way, are you a five-day a week person, are you a four, are you a two? Are you no clinical and all administrative? What do you want out of this business and this career, and then everything else outside of it with family and friends and hobbies and…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, what does that vision look like when you really put yourself in that situation where you’re no longer working? Imagine tomorrow you’re waking up and you’ve got no work, let’s say you’re there. What does that look like to you? What does that life look like? That is vastly different from one person to the next, and I just don’t think enough people actually define success. I agree with you, absolutely, number one, get organized, that’s number one, but a very close second for me is define success, define what that… Not someone else’s version of success, their definition of success, or what you see on Instagram or anywhere, what is your definition of success for you and your family? And like those two… And one and two, if you got those two things down, you are on a very good path to moving in the right direction, at least. And then from there, again, it comes down to the strategy and tactic sort of how to get there quickly or…

Ryan Isaac:
What to do.

Matt Mulcock:
At a certain time frame… Yeah, what to do, but you gotta do those two things first.

Ryan Isaac:
Where am I going? And it’s funny, you probably found this too, when you ask someone that question before they’ve been meticulously organized and you’re like, “What do you want? What do you want out of this?” The answers are really kind of general, right?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, for sure.

Ryan Isaac:
They’re like, “I don’t know. Retire early.” You want, well, I don’t know, $5 million, 10. They’re always round numbers in increments of 5.

Matt Mulcock:
Always 50.

Matt Mulcock:
They’re always like increments of $2.5 million increments, 5, 7.5, 10. No one ever actually says 12.5 to be honest.

Matt Mulcock:
I don’t think. And I have never really heard that one.

Ryan Isaac:
I would really enjoy hearing that from somebody, a 12.5.

Matt Mulcock:
I have calculated, I need 13.74.

Ryan Isaac:
I would like that. But once you get past some of those things, then you get more detailed answers on what do you want? Actually, you know what I want? I wanna coach my kid’s soccer team, and that’s on Thursdays, and I work Thursdays, and actually it turns out that I want someone else to come cover Thursdays now, and I don’t have an associate, so. Yeah, you start to get organized in all of those financial things, then your answers and what you really want out of life start to become more specific, and the other thing too is… And I’ll just say this from an experienced midlife crisis, or… What you want out of life changes as you get older.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh yeah, definitely.

Ryan Isaac:
Where you live. Where do you wanna live, Matt?

Matt Mulcock:
What are you talking about? What are you talking about, Ryan I don’t even…

Ryan Isaac:
Where do you wanna live? Yeah, it changes. And when those things change, just having that organized data is just so key in helping you define your changing goalpost and how to get there, and then what strategy to employ as you get there. So I think that’s a good number one to start with, that will… Just that step alone will take off more of the blinders and reduce more of the errors than almost anything else will, because when you’re really organized and you’ve actually defined what you want, and you’re not just… ‘Cause a lot of us… It’s normal to go in circles in a career. It’s easy to wake up on a Monday, get to work, get through the week, have a weekend, and then just do that over and over for years and years and years. And that’s kind of a circle in a way… I’m not like a big…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, definitely.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m not like a big rich dad, poor dad, get off the treadmill, you’re all hamsters and everything’s a rat race. It’s cool to have a job and it’s great to work for some companies, and… That’s not what I’m saying, but it’s easy to just put your head down and work and kind of go in a career circle and not really ask yourself, “What do you want out of a career? And man, I’ve watched over all these years doing this job, dentistry is evolving so much and it’s becoming so diverse in the types of career paths you can choose that I think it would be… I think you would miss out if you didn’t take some time to get very organized and really ask yourself some deep questions about what you want in the career of dentistry, because it’s no longer like come out of school, hang a shingle, be the only doc in the practice, work five days a week and then sell it or let it dwindle and then just…

Matt Mulcock:
And then retire at 60 and whatever. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Or 70 or lock the door and don’t come back Monday.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s so diverse that there’s so many really, really good options that can allow for more flexibility, more lifestyle or way more money than previous generations of dentists ever had. It’s all possible. And I just think it would be a huge mistake if you weren’t taking an opportunity to get really organized and asking yourself more questions about, “What do you want out of this job thing, out of this career thing as time goes on?”

Ryan Isaac:
Matt, it’s time.

Matt Mulcock:
Time for what, Ryan?

Ryan Isaac:
It’s time to book a free consultation at dentistadvisors.com, just click on the big book free consultation button on the homepage and talk to one of our friendly advisors today.

Matt Mulcock:
I have found… And Ryan, I’m sure you’ve seen this many times is… Step number one, again, to re-emphasize, get organized. And then after that is to figure out what you want. I think what a lot of times I’ve seen happen is you stop sacrificing today for this some day in the future. Meaning, you start to get organized, you start to have these conversations around, “Okay, what do I actually want?” You just gave a great example, well, I wanna coach my kid’s soccer game on Thursday, but I don’t wanna do that when they’re done playing soccer, I’m gonna do that now. So you start designing… It almost comes down to like… You start to realize, “Oh, I can design this lifestyle that I want now while I’m working and make this meaningful and have intention behind this and make this where maybe I don’t have to push and have this date in mind that I’m gonna walk away and hang up the handpiece.” It’s, get organized, define what you want and what is success to you, and then start designing that lifestyle. But that doesn’t happen, you don’t start moving in that direction until you do… Until you get organized first. You gotta realize where you stand and then also again, have that conversation with yourself or ideally with someone else, where you’re like, figuring out what success even is, and then start moving in that direction.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, for sure, man. And I think, unfortunately, again, it’s easy to just get stuck in the status quo and just kinda do the thing for a while. I don’t think a lot of people realize, because of the diversity in dentistry… Diversity of career options, I mean, that it doesn’t have to look the same forever. That crazy six day a week schedule when you’re building the start-up definitely likely isn’t how you’re gonna be doing it in your 40s. And even with a more scaled back schedule in your 40s with a successful practice and peak income, that doesn’t have to be how you do it in your 50s. I don’t think a lot of people realize that you can start… You can start selling off chunks of your equity to incoming partners, you can give yourself a job in your own practice while having a minority ownership in it with some partners. And you can go down to that two-day a week schedule as you get into your 50s and 60s, while still maintaining the benefits of having longevity in the career of dentistry, because again, even if you’re working a day a week or a day and a half a week as an associate into your 50s and 60s and you are bringing in a 100 grand a year, that’s significant income that doesn’t have to come out of a portfolio and so…

Matt Mulcock:
Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Doing these things along the way, like you are saying, and taking the time to have these adjustments and really looking at what you want out of this thing, it’ll give you the longevity and it’ll just kind of ensure that you don’t burn out. Or the other thing that happens is people don’t make decisions on what they really want until life forces them to, with something usually not that great.

Matt Mulcock:
Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Like something bad happens or traumatic, which is normal, it’s just how we operate, but something traumatic has to happen before we take a step back and be like, “Where am I… Why am I doing this? Where am I headed, why do I live here? Why am I working this way? Why am I running my businesses this way, why am I spending money on these things?” Unfortunately…

Matt Mulcock:
That’s usually associated with stress, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
Those decisions, if it’s forced upon you, are associated with stress as opposed to coming from a place of choice and intention and more positive emotions of, again, being intentional. If it’s forced upon you, it’s always gonna be more stressful rather than you having the freedom…

Ryan Isaac:
Slowly kind of coming to that design…

Matt Mulcock:
: And flexibility to slowly design what you want.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, which is harder, though. So I guess this is what we are saying…

Matt Mulcock:
Much harder.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, and this conversation took a different turn than I thought it was going to be, to be honest but…

Matt Mulcock:
It always does. It always does.

Ryan Isaac:
It always does… I like where it ended up though, because what we’re seeing…

Matt Mulcock:
I feel like it’s my fault, Ryan. I feel like I divert us.

Ryan Isaac:
No, no. And this is exactly where it needed to go, this is… The universe led us here, it’s beautiful. Yeah, but see, the harder way, and it’s not as enticing is to go, “Okay, everything’s fine, I love my life, but I’m going to just start getting some different opinions and a different pair of eyes to look at my situation. I’m gonna hire a financial advisor, I’m gonna have them scrutinize every penny of my life coming out of the practice, going into my personal life, and then where it goes from there. And we’re gonna start asking some questions. But if you can do that, if you’re lucky enough to not have a traumatic thing happen in life and you can start doing that earlier, it will lead you to just… It’ll lead you to better questions. Maybe you don’t know all the answers, but it’ll give you better questions to start asking, and it’ll lead you down those paths that you were talking about, Matt, earlier in life, where you start to get… You just start to ask where you want things to be, you start to be more intentional with what you spend your money. Maybe you live in a place right now that is really expensive, like a really expensive house, and that used to be an old goal of yours maybe that’s not your goal anymore. Maybe it’s time to get a less expensive house, so you can actually put your money where you really want it to go, but you won’t know…

Matt Mulcock:
You wanna travel more now.

Ryan Isaac:
Or travel more… Or maybe it’s the reverse, like maybe you’re in a cheap house, or a cheap city and it’s great ’cause you have all this money left over, but you would rather pay the price to be in a different spot because of whatever. Lifestyle, people, like, whatever, smaller commute, whatever the thing is for you, but just having the chance to be… I think this is the message, and this goes perfectly to the whole analogy of being blindfolded, not having context, no data. What did they say in the article, they put it like, “They didn’t have information.” That was it, they didn’t have information and they made small errors along the way that piled up in a direction that finally derailed them.

Ryan Isaac:
You do those things and it starts to take off the blindfold. It gives you more information and what will happen when you do this is you’ll find that all of the little things that you have to deal with as a dentist are small from like, “Should I pay 20 grand in cash for this handpiece replacement thing or should I just get a loan for it? I pay my kid five grand a year, usually. Do I do that on payroll, what are the pros and cons?” All the way up to, “I’m leasing this building, but I could buy it now for $2 million or I think I kinda wanna partner or an associate, what does my life look like.” Or, the other thing that’s surprising to me, we’ve talked about this before, is there’s a lot of people that walk themselves into circles, they don’t realize that they can actually stop walking.

Matt Mulcock:
They’ve made it.

Ryan Isaac:
They’ve made it and then they’re walking in circles at their destination and they don’t realize you can stop walking now, you’re done. Without data, some people keep going really kind of a little anxious and stressed not knowing that they’re there, they made it, they’re at the place they wanted to arrive at and they can stop walking in circles.

Matt Mulcock:
And they’ve no idea.

Ryan Isaac:
They don’t know. And you’ve seen that. I’ve seen people do that and then all of a sudden, be like, “Oh my gosh, I can take my foot off the gas pedal and I can scale back my time.” What’s funny about that though, is I’ve seen the people do that and then actually end up having more energy for their practices and then continue to grow even more, purely ’cause it’s fun.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, it’s just passion at that point.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s just passion, it’s not a have to. Anyway, if you’re listening to this, I’ll just end with this and then Matt, you can send us off with some words of parting wisdom there…

Matt Mulcock:
Heck no. No.

Ryan Isaac:
Before you go back home and have to unpack more boxes in…

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, my God.

Ryan Isaac:
You know what’s the victim of moving every time, the last thing that ever gets organized, at least in my case, is the garage, every time.

Matt Mulcock:
100%, yes.

Ryan Isaac:
The garage is the dumpster of everything, we don’t know where it’s gonna go.

Matt Mulcock:
Just put it in the garage, I don’t know, put it in the garage.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s like the running joke between me and my wife now, it’s like she’s like organizing things and she’s just like, “Throw in the garage.” I’m like, “I work out in there.”

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, well, we now have this little storage area concrete thing down in our basement, off to the side, it’s going there too.

Ryan Isaac:
No organization, just packed. It’s stressing me out to think about the state of my garage right now. I don’t even know, honestly, where I was gonna go with that other than you gotta go back and do this. Here’s what I’ll say. Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say. If you’re listening to this, this will come out, I think before the first of the year, it’s a great time to just reset. You know, you’re listening to this, we can give you examples of where people get wrong, we talk a lot about common mistakes dentists make on our content, but you know the areas of your life where they feel like it’s just a circular motion, like you gotta get out of that pattern and you gotta take the blindfold off and you gotta head in a new direction. You know what those areas are. So if you’re listening to this and you’re filling that and you’re like, I know what they are, then…

Matt Mulcock:
You know.

Ryan Isaac:
Then just reach out to us, let’s have a chat, I promise you we will be educational and teachers. We’ll teach you what we think would help, and if it turns out it actually might help you then we’ll be great partners together, and then you’ll hire us and then we’ll work together and we’ll get you walking in a straight line and not a circle, but go to dentistadvisors.com, click the Book Free Consultation link. Chat with one of our advisors. We’re dental specific, we only know dentists. If you are an animal doctor, I probably don’t know how to help you the best, but if you’re a dentist, we know.

Matt Mulcock:
I think they call them veterinarians, but… I don’t know…

Ryan Isaac:
I like animal doctor…

Matt Mulcock:
That’s the thing, we don’t even know them.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t even know what they’re called.

Matt Mulcock:
So we don’t even know what they actually called.

Ryan Isaac:
I proved my own point, but reach out, have a chat with us, we’d love to do it. And first year gets busy for this reason, I think so, yeah, reach out, we’d love to hear from you, but thanks for being here and tuning in, if you have any questions you want us to actually hit on an upcoming episode, just go to the dentist advisor’s discussion group on Facebook and then post a question. We’ll answer it, but then we’ll usually use it as podcast fodder, which fodder has negative connotation…

Matt Mulcock:
Fodder for the old podcast.

Ryan Isaac:
But we’ll talk about it. We’ll answer it. Anyway, Matt, thanks for being here, man. Any other parting words…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan Isaac:
You wanna leave to us or do we…

Matt Mulcock:
No man, I think we hit it all.

Ryan Isaac:
Beat it to death.

Matt Mulcock: We diverted, I’m sorry. But hopefully it’s still ended up useful.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s good, I love it. Thanks for being here, everybody. Thanks, Matt and we’ll catch you next time, buh-bye.

Getting Organized