5 Common Blind Spots to Financial Progress – Episode #379

When someone is unable to fully grasp the importance of something, it’s called a blind spot. While we all have them, early recognition of personal financial blind spots can prevent us from making costly mistakes. On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan and Matt warn about five common blind spots every dentist should consistently guard against.

 

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Dentist Money Show, sponsored by Dentist Advisors, a no-commission, comprehensive, fiduciary, fee-only financial advisor just for dentists all over the country. Check us out at dentistadvisors.com. Today on the show, Matt and I are talking about a very interesting mystery blindness illness, how that relates to money, decisions, and some of the most common blind spots that we see in all of our lives. We share some personal examples and some other examples from dentists that we’ve talked to recently. And it was a really great conversation. It opened my eyes to some better ways and some higher ways. Throwing a dad joke for my kids. If you have any questions for us, we love answering money questions and pointing you in the right direction. All you have to do is go to dentistadvisors.com, click the book free consultation link, have a chat with one of our dental-specific financial advisors, and we will help you answer your money questions. Thanks, Matt, for your time as always. Thank you all for being here. Enjoy the show.

[music]

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 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, 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. Good evening, good day, good morning, good afternoon to everybody.

Matt Mulcock:
Good morrow, sir.

Ryan Isaac:
Good morrow to you.

Matt Mulcock:
Or good day.

Ryan Isaac:
Where are you? Good day.

Matt Mulcock:
Hello. Good day.

Ryan Isaac:
If you could have any accent in the whole world, Matt, your accent of choice would be what?

Matt Mulcock:
Chris Hemsworth.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah, I was gonna say the same thing.

Matt Mulcock:
No, not Australian, Chris Hemsworth.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, him exactly.

Matt Mulcock:
Just him. Yeah, I wish I could be him.

Ryan Isaac:
Wanna know a funny story? Actually, it’s really painful. My daughter has a friend, she’s 16, 17. Has a friend, her friend comes from a family of means, and every year they spend a few weeks on a very secluded high-end surfing Fiji resort. And in December, in December ’22, my daughter sits next to me and she hands me her phone and she says, “Watch this video.” And it’s her friend sitting on this resort between the two Hemsworth brothers.

Matt Mulcock:
No.

Ryan Isaac:
On this resort, and there’s only like 20 people in this whole resort that even fits, and he’s sitting between these Hemsworth brothers. They had just gotten in from like a three-hour session, they were eating lunch together and they were there for three weeks together with the Hemsworths.

Matt Mulcock:
Who does that hurt more? Me or you?

Ryan Isaac:
It hurts so bad, dude.

Matt Mulcock:
I think it hurts you more ’cause they’re surfing, but…

Ryan Isaac:
It’s just like… Yeah, and the Hemsworths apparently, I have it on good knowledge. You can look it up on YouTube. They are good surfers too.

Matt Mulcock:
I believe it. I believe it.

Ryan Isaac:
Besides being perfect human beings aesthetically…

Matt Mulcock:
I’m gonna throw it out there. There’s probably not a lot that our boy Chris is not good at.

Ryan Isaac:
He’s probably good at everything.

Matt Mulcock:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks for tuning in, everyone.

Matt Mulcock:
The frigging beautiful…

Ryan Isaac:
We’re here to talk about Chris Hemsworth. I’m glad you joined us today on the episode.

Matt Mulcock:
That might get cut, but…

Ryan Isaac:
No, it’s not. I’m gonna refer to it the whole time so that it can’t be cut out. We’re gonna just keep referring back to…

Matt Mulcock:
So keep referencing Chris Hemsworth.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, so it can’t be cut the whole time…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, try to cut that.

Ryan Isaac:
Cut that Hemsworth story. Today, I actually have a story. I was doing what I normally do. My brain is constantly thinking of funny stories to tell on the podcast and then just hoping I can tie it to a financial concept that’s close enough to make it a podcast. But I was going through Reddit, which I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

Matt Mulcock:
Wait, can I ask you a question on that?

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
So, how often would you say you’re seeking it out versus it just kind of comes to you from the heavens?

Ryan Isaac:
At this point, that’s all I think about. My daughters are telling me a story from school, and I’ll be like, “That’s a good lesson.”

Matt Mulcock:
You’re just like, “Podcast, yeah.”

Ryan Isaac:
They’ll tell me something about science class, I’m like, “That’s a good lesson.”

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, pod. [chuckle] Yeah, that’s cool.

Ryan Isaac:
And then I go, “I have so many stupid… ” I’m not even organized enough on this. I’ve got the notes app with literally a few hundred of those little checkbox things, and then links and articles. And then I’ve got a tab on Safari now that they let you do multiple tabs and name them.

Matt Mulcock:
How many tabs do you have open?

Ryan Isaac:
Only three. One is a surfing tab where I just look at surfboards all day long. Another one is just for regular stuff, and then this one is Dentist Money Show tab and there’s like 30 different web pages here with topics to discuss.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, that’s awesome.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m really excited for this. Today though, I was listening to this story of a medical condition. It wasn’t today. But today’s topic…

Matt Mulcock:
You scared me when you messaged me this, by the way. You scared me.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah. I messaged Matt and…

Matt Mulcock:
Should we tell the good people what you did?

Ryan Isaac:
What was my exact… I said… Let’s find the exact words. I said…

Matt Mulcock:
We’re prepping for this.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah. I said, “For the podcast, think of a few things. Here’s what we’re gonna talk about.” And then I said, “I have a story/medical condition.”

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, and I was like, “Okay.”

Ryan Isaac:
When you read that, were you like, “What?”

Matt Mulcock:
And you did the emoji, the surprise, worry emoji. And I was like, “Are we gonna get on here and start talking and you’re gonna tell me how you have some medical condition?”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I’m gonna open up. I’m gonna tell the world first about my med… And then I said…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, scary.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t have it, but I’m gonna talk about it.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, you clarified after.

Ryan Isaac:
So I was reading this story. Now, I don’t… I can’t explain from a medical position exactly how this works or what it is or which…

Matt Mulcock:
We’re not doctors.

Ryan Isaac:
I can’t diagnose this. But it’s really, really fascinating. It’s called Anton syndrome, and the stories go… And from what I can tell from what I’ve read, it’s usually happening in older people and it’s usually in the presence of other diseases, which again, I can’t name or tell you how they’re connected whatsoever. But this is usually the population that this is present in, because most of these people where this is observed are in homes already, rest homes and things like that.

Ryan Isaac:
Anton syndrome is a syndrome that affects the vision and the eyes. And this is… It’s so insane because these people will actually go blind fully functionally, legally blind, completely, but their brains still feed them signals, visual signals from their brains that are totally psychological that they… And they think they can still see. And so what… How a lot of this gets detected…

Matt Mulcock:
Like a human VR set or something?

Ryan Isaac:
Yes. Yes. They still think they are looking at their bedroom, at the walls, at the people walking by, at the TV, at the fish tank, at the window, at the doors, at the ceiling, the curtains, all that stuff. Their brain still feeds them information that’s not real and they believe it. They think they’re seeing something that’s actually not there. And it’s really happening. And the way that the medical staff will start to notice this is the people carry on as if they’re fully functioning, seeing person, and they’ll start bumping into things obviously because they really actually can’t see.

Ryan Isaac:
So they start bumping into furniture, into walls, falling down, making mistakes, but they don’t even realize, and it usually takes days, multiple days for it to actually kick in where they realize that they’re blind and their brain wouldn’t let them believe, it wouldn’t let them see that. They keep seeing. Isn’t that the craziest thing? And I don’t wanna laugh too much.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s one of the most wild things I have heard.

Ryan Isaac:
Because maybe someone here… That sounds like a horrible thing, but it’s unbelievably fascinating that the brain is so powerful, that it can feed you images, live data from your surroundings that’s not even real. That’s not even happening. Which makes me also wonder, are we kind of… If we took away our eyesight, are we also like, are other senses more sensitive than we realize? Are we kind of like bats? Do we have sonar? Can we do that?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I’m gonna say we…

Ryan Isaac:
Is that possible? [laughter] Are we whales?

Matt Mulcock:
I have no idea. [laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Why can the brain be so powerful that it can send signals about get up and walk down the hall and wave high to Johnny and say hi to Sarah and there they go walking by and you think you’re seeing the world and you bump into a wall and you’re like, ouch. That was weird.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. [laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Must not be paying attention then.

Matt Mulcock:
Start going to the bathroom in the litter box and you’re like, what? What’s going on?

Ryan Isaac:
So Anton syndrome, so as my brain is want to do. Want, is that spelled W-O-N-T or A-N-T? When someone says, as I’m want to do, as your want to do, do you know what I’m talking about, that phrase?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, but I don’t know.

Ryan Isaac:
: Sidenote. Someone let us know.

Matt Mulcock:
W-A-N-T.

Ryan Isaac:
Tad will tell us. Our producer, every time we say funny things, we’ll get words.

Matt Mulcock:
We’ll get a long Slack.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s awesome. He’ll send us these messages or like, we’ll mention… Especially when it’s music, we’ll casually mention something like some historical musical person casually because we don’t actually know anything.

Matt Mulcock:
And he’ll send us a report.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. He’ll be like, “I was there. I met him in person at Woodstock.”

Matt Mulcock:
 Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
And then he’ll send us home photos and videos and…

Matt Mulcock:
It’s amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
Wikipedia pages. Anyway, as I’m want to do, I heard this story and I thought… I think, our brains do this to us from, of course a decision making perspective in a lot of areas of our lives could be our businesses, our relationships, our health, our fitness. But in money, since it’s the Dentist Money Show, our brains.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, is that what we talk about?

Ryan Isaac:
Yes. That’s why we’re here. Welcome to the Dentist Money Show. I know our brains do this where it feeds us information it’s like we’re actually blind to something, but our brains, or maybe it’s our… Something is feeding this information that we think we’re seeing something, but really we have a total blind spot there. It’s a total blind spot. We actually can’t see that thing. We actually don’t have the information. We actually don’t know what’s going on, but we think we do. Our brains make us think we do. I actually know in thinking about this, this probably actually plays into a lot of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Which we haven’t done… Will you explain what that is? We haven’t done an episode on that in a while, but that’s also a fascinating phenomenon that’s been studied in psychology by Dunning and Kruger.

Matt Mulcock:
By a guy named Dunning and another guy named Kruger. I think they’re both guys. I actually don’t know.

Ryan Isaac:
I think they’re, it’s two dudes. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
I think it was back in… This is on a whim here, people, so bear with me. I think it was, I want to say in the ’70s.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
They did some research around kind of the relationship between knowledge and confidence.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Right. And there was this whole spectrum basically that they follow. So the whole Dunning… When someone says the Dunning-Kruger effect, what they’re talking about is there’s the beginning of learning a topic. Let’s say for example, you watch a YouTube video on something that… Early on as you’re learning a subject, it’s really easy to have sky high confidence, even though the actual understanding is very minimal. And then as you… And we’ve felt this in our own career. I know I have. And then as you move along the spectrum of gaining more and more experience, you start to realize what you actually don’t know.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s almost like you hit this point where it’s like, holy cow, I actually don’t know anything.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
And even though you’re far more knowledgeable than you were five years ago, because your understanding or your awareness of the field you’re in is so high, now your confidence is so low or is much lower. And then later on you actually gain mastery and then it kind of aligns. So there’s this whole spectrum they talk about, or this whole scale.

Ryan Isaac:
Fascinating.

Matt Mulcock:
Early on you think you’re super smart and your confidence is way high. You don’t actually know anything. Then it hits this point where your confidence goes through the floor even though your knowledge is growing. And then eventually you gain that confidence to match your knowledge.

Ryan Isaac:
I’ve heard people, the phrase Q&A, question and answer. I’ve heard it rephrase. And I actually like this better as a question and response Q&R. Have you ever heard that people say that before?

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, I like that. No, but I love it.

Ryan Isaac:
Because it’s kind of this notion that, you know what, I’m an expert in this field and I have a response for you. And I’m confident that my response is better than my response would’ve been 15 years ago. But I also know that it’s just a response.

Matt Mulcock:
Not the answer.

Ryan Isaac:
It can’t be the answer. It can’t be. Unless it’s like, how much can you put in an IRA this year? And you can have the answer.

Matt Mulcock:
A Google answer. Sure.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
But that’s a… I actually love that because especially in a what we’ll call a soft science in which we work in.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Finance and money is not a hard science. It’s not like physics. There’s no laws when it comes to money. So I actually really love that because every time, I’m just thinking to our webinars that we do what we’ve been calling Q&A as, we should start calling them Q&Rs now.

Ryan Isaac:
Q&Rs. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Because we say this all the time. We’re like, not only is our answer not the answer, it could be different depending on who you are as a person.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Might not even apply to you whatsoever.

Matt Mulcock:
Not even apply to you. I’ll give you my response but it may not be thee answer for you.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, so we’re gonna rephrase that.

Matt Mulcock:
Man, you just rocked my world. I think I’m gonna…

Ryan Isaac:
We’re gonna rephrase that.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I love it.

Ryan Isaac:
The podcast, it’s a totally off subject podcast, has nothing to do with this. The podcast I listen to these people are multiple PhD experts in this subject but that…

Matt Mulcock:
So similar to us.

Ryan Isaac:
Very. Comparing, we’re almost there. For sure. They’re not that much older than us, actually. They’re probably younger than me.

Matt Mulcock:
Don’t tell me that. I already have enough. I already talk to Robbie every week in our one-on-ones, and I’m like, “That’s enough for me.”

Ryan Isaac:
I’m not even sure these people are 40. Actually, they might be 40. But they’re multiple…

Matt Mulcock:
Don’t say they’re 40, let’s say they’re 50.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, multiple PhD level kind of education and decades experience people. But that’s how they phrase their portion of their content that’s question asking. They phrase it as question response. And I’ve just went like, yeah, I wanna start saying that anyway. Anton syndrome with our money. All right. So where are there spots in our lives that… Well actually, I wanna read this about Anton syndrome because I think this is kind of an applicable sentence. Let’s see here. Those who have it are blind, but affirm quite often adamantly and in the face of clear evidence of their blindness that they are capable of seeing. So in the face of clear evidence of their blindness, adamantly saying they are capable of seeing, failing to accept being blind, people with Anton syndrome dismiss evidence of their condition and employ something called confabulation to fill in the missing sensory input. Confabulation ends up being something that is where your brain serves you memories or chunks of information that’s actually not correct, but it fits in this puzzle. It fits these missing pieces of the puzzle good enough where you’re like, yeah, that sounds good. We’ll roll with that. Anyway, I thought that was really, really fascinating condition that the brain is that powerful.

Matt Mulcock:
I’ve heard the word confabulation used more in the terms, and also terms of like, by the way, we’re not gonna get political here, but just in terms of political stance, right? So people confabulate, they basically take pieces of stories in their mind. Or they create a story and they confabulate. It’s like they’re just putting it together and they’re kind of seeing it the way they want to see it on all sides. People not making a statement by any…

Ryan Isaac:
You’re not giving examples here.

Matt Mulcock:
Not giving examples, but just saying you can look at that all side are guilty of that.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s the context you’ve heard. That’s where the context you’ve heard of it.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s the context I’ve had confabulation, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word before or used, but that is man, our brains are just, we are crazy creatures. What an interesting thing that is sitting between our ears in this weird shaped bulb on the top of our shoulders.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s what I’m…

Ryan Isaac:
Mine’s a weird shaped bulb. It’s literally a bulb you have…

Matt Mulcock:
Mine’s a larger, big… Mine’s a larger misshaped… Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
You have decoration on top, so it’s looks nicer. Anyway, I heard this and I’m like, “Man, we, all of us,” and I’m gonna give a personal example as we go through this, all of us go through this where we have clear evidence in front of us, we demonstrate Dunning-Kruger effect kind of symptoms in our decision making, in our thinking. And despite clear evidence in front of us, our brain will just continue to be like, no, I’m fine. I’m good. Or this is true when it’s not true. Or this is reality when it’s not reality. And our brains are really, really powerful mix. And then with money, money has so much emotion wrapped in it, so much baggage, so much social status that it’s like… Then you have cultural and social pressure on top of all that stuff that it’s like, no wonder, man.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
So, I thought…

Matt Mulcock:
And we’re not blaming it. It’s like we, it is totally obvious why it is, why you’re thinking that way.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, it’s totally obvious. And then there’s all these biases. We anchored stuff, for example, I’ll start with my personal example, okay. Of how I think this has happened in my own life just recently. But just to introduce the point. So based on this notion and these things that can happen, we just want to talk about looking back maybe over the last 12 months and say, what are some of the most common maybe blind spots that we’ve seen dentists talk about that they were like, for them we’re aha moments, so that they learn like, oh yeah, this was a problem and I figured it out and I learned it. You taught me and we figured it out. We’re gonna talk about some common blind spots. But I was just thinking, because I’m gonna start this personally because we’re not just talking about other people. This is us. We do these things too.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. We’re people too.

Ryan Isaac:
I confabulate dude, I can confabulate with the best of them. Is that the word?

Matt Mulcock:
You’re such a confabulator.

Ryan Isaac:
I am a confabulator. I confabulate like crazy. So made a recent move, it’s been 18 months, moved from Arizona to California. My monthly expenses increased dramatically. But I’m a spreadsheet person, neurotically a little bit sometimes and built my spreadsheet, built my cash flow. Here’s my income, here’s my expenses, here’s my variables, got a spreadsheet, share it with the wife and we look at it and whatever. I was thinking about this whole notion of blind spots in my own situation, mixed with in my case, anchoring bias. So the last time I really dove into my spreadsheet, it’s been a while. It’s been pre-inflation the last time I dove into it, right? So we’re just cruising along and then last while I’m noticing like, why are we feeling more pinched than normal? What’s going on? And then of course if you don’t approach that topic sensitively with your significant other, it can sound very blamey.

Matt Mulcock:
What are you doing? That has making me feel more stressed about money.

Ryan Isaac:
Where’s this money going?

Matt Mulcock:
Where are you putting all of our money?

Ryan Isaac:
We should have X amount of dollars left over and we clearly don’t right now.

Matt Mulcock:
You’re clearly spending it all, lady.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s your fault. So I dive into it and I realize that groceries, just as one example, are about triple what they were 12 months ago. Unbelievable, dude.

Ryan Isaac:
And since we just moved, my kids left the stuff they were doing in Arizona, and we put them in new stuff, and then they slowly get at it. They join a team, they make a club. They slowly learn what they want to do in the new city and their new friend groups, and they do stuff. But I’m slowly chunking on, here’s a $200 activity, here’s a $300 activity, here’s a $100 activity. The kids are slowly starting to… So I’m anchored to this point, the last point where I really went and did my spreadsheet and my numbers, and then I’m just feeling all this stress and my brain is confabulating, missing details here. That’s not the proper use of the word, I’m sure.

Matt Mulcock:
But no, we’re gonna say it is.

Ryan Isaac:
I just used it. It’s confabulating missing pieces of details. Oh, here’s probably what’s going on and here’s what’s happening. But when I actually dive into the numbers, I realize that my expenses have gone up dramatically, even from 12 months ago. And I have this blind spot in my spending. I have a blind spot in my spending, period. My blind spot was that I hadn’t been keeping close enough tabs on my actual expenses and how they’ve changed. And I had anchored to an expense number that I had for some reason, even though I know this is stupid, but some reason just figured would be static. Here’s our X amount of spending per month and that’s what it’s gonna be. And so it’s like, even though we do this day-to-day, this is our full-time job. We’re all just humans susceptible to this kind of crazy Anton syndrome behavior with money. It’s really fascinating. So that was a good wake up call for me to be like, wow. So I would say a blind spot for me, my personal example was just not paying close enough attention to my budget. Now, guess how we figured this out though? We figured this out not by extreme budgeting, we did have to comb through it, and I did have to redo the numbers.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, you gotta track. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I had to redo my spreadsheet. I had to just swallow the bitter pill of the old expense number that I thought it was, and just put in the new real expense number.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s so painful. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Had to comb back. We had to… And not just me, my wife had to be like, “Okay, I’m gonna pay closer attention to what’s grocery, what’s not grocery, so we can actually see what are our actual grocery expenses.” So we had to go do this exercise, but that was the blind spot that I had to go back and fix and pay attention to. So anyway, I thought we could talk about a few that we’ve picked up over the years, but maybe the last especially 12 months and talk about them. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
By the way, what you just listed is the number one.

Ryan Isaac:
Is that your number one?

Matt Mulcock:
It’s mine, it’s everyone’s on the planet.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, dude.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s, okay. Everyone in America.

Ryan Isaac:
Freaking spending.

Matt Mulcock:
Everyone that we talk to, that is by far the number one blind spot is spending.

Ryan Isaac:
And I was gonna say…

Matt Mulcock:
Especially the last two years.

Ryan Isaac:
Especially the last two years, and I was gonna… I get sidetracked. I start talking about tangents. This is what I was gonna say about that. As I went back to fix this blind spot and try to recognize it and consolidate everything I did what we preach all the time, which is, you can only budget yourself out of it so much. But we had to get reorganized, we had to be accountable, we had to acknowledge what the real numbers are, but I had to add new withholdings that weren’t… I was letting money come into the account, and I was so used to there being enough left over to be like, there’s enough leftover. Then you can move it and you can… So I do this automatically, but I had to do new ones, smaller ones. Like hey, we’re gonna…

Matt Mulcock:
You’re saying drafts?

Ryan Isaac:
Yes. I had to set up new. And they’re just smaller. They’re not meaningful giant chunks of retirement money, but they’re small chunks that I had to automate and just physically get out of our stupid account.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s gone. It’s out. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So it’s gone so that we also mentally know, hey, you will overdraft your checking account now because you’re moving money outta here, so you can’t just keep amazoning to death. And taking kids wherever and shopping wherever and eating out whenever you want. You actually have to go and check your numbers every few days and be like, “How are we?” Check in with your number. So I did both, I did the budgeting route and then I automated some stuff to scare ourselves, man. I just move it to this other account that’s not as accessible, doesn’t have a debit card in our wallets, but now it’s scary because the cushion’s gone on purpose. And now we’re forced to do, and it’s funny because even over the last few weeks our conversations are, instead of one blow up budget meeting every few months [chuckle] we’re like…

Matt Mulcock:
What are you spending your money on?

Ryan Isaac:
Where the hell’s the money? [laughter] Now instead of that, it’s like every few days it’s like, “Hey, what was that 45 bucks? Okay, that makes sense. Oh, we gotta register the cars next month. That’s gonna be like… ” It’s California. It’s gonna be $700, 800 stupid dollars.

Matt Mulcock:
Freaking California.

[laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. They’re just taking every penny I’ve got. So it’s forcing these conversations more frequently smaller, less emotionally charged. And it was like, man, giant, blind spot, cool fix. But I was anchored and I was still believing things that weren’t in front of me that actually I was blind but I thought I was seeing.

Matt Mulcock:
I’ve done this a lot with clients where a strategy we’ll use is I’ll be like, “Look, the number one thing we have to create is awareness. If you don’t have awareness around your spending, I’m not talking of budget.” I’m like, “But we need to set a goal,” and I’ll do this. I’ve done this several times where I’ll say, “Let’s meet at a minimum once a month for the next three months.” Sometimes they’ll request to meet with me once a week for a couple of months just to hold them accountable. And then eventually I’m like, “Look, we gotta transition me out of the picture. We can’t meet every week for the rest of our lives. But you and your spouse, you and your partner should continue this process over, again, whether it’ll be every month or every week, whatever, find something that makes sense for you.” But that alone and I’m not kidding you, that’s the only homework assignment, is we’re gonna meet and we’re gonna talk about your spending or you’re gonna do it with your partner, either way. That alone has a meaningful difference in awareness around what are you spending your money on. And that is honestly most of the battle.

Ryan Isaac:
It is.

Matt Mulcock:
When it comes to spending, it’s not spending money, it’s spending money on mindless things, things that you’re not even thinking about. So you have to have a mechanism. Again, it’s this blind spot. You gotta bring kind of light to that, so you’re more aware of your spending and you’re spending in a more meaningful way. So, it’s just interesting. It’s such a simple thing.

Ryan Isaac:
It is awareness.

Matt Mulcock:
Awareness can create meaningful change in your behavior.

Ryan Isaac:
I like that you use that word. Yeah. It’s just, okay, if we’re aware that spring break is coming up in two months and we gotta take the family, there’s six of us, we gotta go somewhere. It’s gonna cost a lot of money. And we have to register cars that month, and then there’s birthdays that month. It’s like, can I wait to buy my third pair of gym shoes? Can I just wear the other two for a little bit longer?

Matt Mulcock:
Maybe.

Ryan Isaac:
‘Cause they’re perfectly fine. [chuckle] They’re just not the color I like. [chuckle]

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Not the newest one.

Matt Mulcock:
You’re talking to the wrong guy about that. I’ve had the same gym shoes for like seven years.

Ryan Isaac:
My last pair of CrossFit shoes ever bought. And they’re at least 5 years old and they have a hole in the toe. But I work out my garage and I don’t even tie them actually. So I don’t even care. [laughter] But call it what you want. Could be surfboards, raincoats, gym shoes, Lulu. Yes, I don’t know. Whatever.

Matt Mulcock:
Quick sidenote. When we found ourselves out of town a few weeks ago in our favorite place in the world now, Panama. I went to the gym there, the little…

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah. You did.

Matt Mulcock:
Recall the resort? I guess the resort, and there was a dude there with no shoes on. I was wearing shoes. He had no shoes on working out. And I was like, I kind of like that. So the next day I went back to the gym, didn’t wear shoes. And I’m like, this might be my new thing. I kind of love it.

Ryan Isaac:
I was gonna say, try running or jumping or you probably don’t wanna do…

Matt Mulcock:
I don’t do those things. I don’t do those things.

Ryan Isaac:
But I bet somebody could do that barefoot and could argue that they could. Yeah. Working out bare foot’s amazing.

Matt Mulcock:
No, I lay on a bench or sit, I don’t jump around.

Ryan Isaac:
You don’t need shoes when you’re curling in a mirror.

Matt Mulcock:
No. You don’t need that.

Ryan Isaac:
Or when you’re doing triceps kickbacks. You’re just looking at that tricep.

Matt Mulcock:
I don’t need shoes for that crap. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
You don’t need shoes to see that shoehorn.

Matt Mulcock:
I really don’t. Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Or horseshoe not shoehorn. Horseshoe. Geez. All right, let’s move. Okay. So, yes, I like that you said awareness, because I think that that’s the opposite of what’s happening in this Anton Syndrome’s scenario, right? Is there’s this lack of awareness. That’s what they said. There’s no awareness that they’re actually blind when they’re actually blind, because other signals are still feeding you what you really wanna hear. What I really want to hear is our expenses are low and there’s a cushion every month, and I don’t really have to pay too close of attention to it. And it’s easy. That’s what I wanna hear. But the evidence starts to squeeze you until you’re forced to be aware of it and pay attention to it. By the way folks, get yourself a financial advisor like Matt Mulcock, who will be like, “Yeah, I’ll meet with you every week. Yeah, I’m here to actually help you, so get on my calendar. Fine.” That’s a sign of a good advisor who is not just selling you something, but is like, “What behavioral environment do you need help changing? And I will do everything I can to help you change it.” It’s a freaking good advisor. Do you want me to go another one or did you… Let’s do one on your list. ‘Cause I kind of like, that was your list and my list, but I didn’t really mean to take the big one on your list either. That was just a personal example.

Matt Mulcock:
No, no, you’re fine. I had a feeling that we’d have some crossover. Yeah, so it’s funny, I had like 10. I know you mentioned only do three. So I’m gonna pick and choose as we’re talking.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, we’ll have room for two more.

[chuckle]

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. No, no. So, I’m gonna pick and choose, and maybe some of these are… You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna kind of meld some together. That’s what I’m gonna do.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Yeah, cool.

Matt Mulcock:
I think one blind spot that I see a lot, and I feel this personally in my own life, is that it takes a lot of freaking time to build wealth or to get in shape or anything. Anything, any worthy goal takes a lot of time, but let’s put this in the context of money. It takes a long time to actually make meaningful progress, right? That you can look back on and be like, holy cow, look how far I’ve come, so the blind spot here is I think people want to rush it.? They want it to be true. And I’m gonna overlap some of these. So for example, they want it to be true that I can buy a product, that a product can be a plan, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Is the fix. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Is the fix, right?

Ryan Isaac:
The one thing I can buy is the fix.

Matt Mulcock:
Yes, I’m not making as much progress as I want. I’m not making as much progress as I want. And this dude, or this lady over here is telling me that this one thing is gonna solve all my problems and check all my boxes and it’s gonna accelerate my process. But I think the, again, the blind spot is this, that they, people don’t realize they want to see a product as a solution to solve all their problems and fast track the process. But the reality is, the truth is it takes a long time. Building a career takes a long time. Building wealth takes a long time. Creating financial independence takes a long time. Whether you’re doing it in real estate, you’re doing it in the stock market, in a private business. Doesn’t matter. It takes a long time.

Ryan Isaac:
You surfed for the first time ever two weeks ago in Panama. Is that right? Is that correct?

Matt Mulcock:
So much fun. Yes. First time ever.

Ryan Isaac:
That was the first time you’ve ever done that?

Matt Mulcock:
Not behind a boat. Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah. Not behind a boat. Just on a regular… Yeah, by the way, shout out to Elevation Association, Jared Hill, Dan and Ryan.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh my gosh, they, amazing. Amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
Invited us out to go do some CE at their annual group retreat, and it happened to be at a surf camp in Panama. So shout out to those guys. But, yeah, you.

Matt Mulcock:
And truly the best part, I’m not exaggerating, was the people. Meaning the people we were with.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, 100%.

Matt Mulcock:
That grew in Panama at surf camp. And I said this at the end of that whole thing, I was like, “The people were by far the best part of this whole thing.” The Elevation Association, they are incredible.

Ryan Isaac:
What a crew. Yeah, if you’re looking for a good group to link up with good, like-minded docs and people and thinking through life and business. A really honest, candid, open way, no ego way, Elevation Association. Cool guys. Anyway, when you were saying we all, we as humans, we look for the fast path towards everything. What I was gonna say, this is my experience learning to surf and then you started surfing two weeks ago, is like, people do this in everything in their life. So, for example, surfing, people start surfing, they’ll have some fun, and then they realize, I wanna be able to do what that 10-year-old kid over there is doing. [laughter] The one who has a private coach.

Matt Mulcock:
He’s doing some twirls and flips and… Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Who’s homeschooled and privately coached and already sponsored at 10 years old. I wanna do what that kid’s doing or that guy or that person on Instagram or YouTube or whatever. And what people will do in surfing, and I know this is true in other sports, I’ve seen this in the gym a lot too, but they’ll think that, they have to just… It’s a board. They just gotta buy the right board and then that’s gonna change everything, right?

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s not the fact that like… I think I’m just gonna have to do this as often as I can for a really long time and just kind of slowly make progress and really work on technique and have a good time and have fun along the way. They’re just like, I think if I bought that board, I would probably be able to surf better. It’s actually a very, very common thing in surfing that people do and they end up… Really common thing is they end up buying a really short small board, way too short for their current situation. And then they end up hating surfing even more because now they’re even worse than what they were before because they bought the wrong thing to continue their progress. And we do this, man, we do this in all kinds of place in our life. But I like that you said that because we do this everywhere, it’s not just money, it’s not just get rich quick. People do get frustrated with the stock market and then hear a pitch somewhere and think that’s the solution. Like, “Oh, the stock market’s gonna take 20 years to build and it only gets whatever percent per year. But that seminar I went to, that’s instantaneous high cash flow, no downside, high returns.” [chuckle]

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
There’s the solution. It’s nothing meaningful ever works that way. It’s just time. Which is like, what’s the two lessons out of that? You have to have the patience and you have to have the end in mind, but you also better enjoy everything else along the way too.

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
‘Cause you might not even make it to the end, or you might make it to the end. It wasn’t even… That wasn’t even that gratifying and you missed out on stuff along the way.

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
I like that example.

Matt Mulcock:
So, two things I was thinking as you were saying, I just need the new board. I was thinking, it’d be like me buying a new golf club. And be like, “This is the answer.”

Ryan Isaac:
I’m sure that happens in golf, right? I couldn’t tell you.

Matt Mulcock:
And it’s like, I know I still suck. I still suck.

Ryan Isaac:
That happens in golf, doesn’t it? It’s golf.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, yes. That happens to me.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I’m like, “I just need new clubs and I’m gonna be fine.” No, still terrible.

Ryan Isaac:
When I was in CrossFit it would be like, “Oh, I just need to buy those shoes,” or, “I just, I need the weight belt,” or, “I need the wrist wraps,” or, “I need the hand gloves,” or, “I need the bandana.” And you’re like, “No.”

Matt Mulcock:
Yep. [chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
You need to just do this for 10 years and maybe you might be that good. [chuckle]

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
You better enjoy it along the way. ‘Cause you might not make it 10 years. Or you might get the 10 year point and find that that result wasn’t even that fun. It was the stuff along the way.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, go ahead.

Matt Mulcock:
I have another one that relates to this. We can circle back to it.

Ryan Isaac:
Do it. No, finish it.

Matt Mulcock:
You want me to go?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, go.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, okay. This will be my last one and then you can finish this out. But as you were going through this, I was like, there’s another one on my list that I think correlates with this very well. You were talking about progress and the answer being a new club or a new board, whatever. I think there’s also, I was thinking too, this whole idea of this comparison blind spot, right? That what your neighbor is doing matters, or what the dentist you talk to at the event matters. This whole idea you were saying is you’re surfing and you’re seeing this 10-year-old, you told me this in Panama, you’re like bro, I’m seeing these kids, these 10, 11 year olds that are doing stuff that pros used to do 10 years ago.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, weren’t even been doing five years ago.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like this whole idea of, I think that… I’m trying to figure out how to kind of phrase the blind spot. I think the blind spot being that progress outside of yourself or someone else is making, shouldn’t matter to you. The only progress that should matter, I think the blind spot is we’re thinking that what our neighbor, again, colleague, whoever somehow that the progress they’re making somehow diminishes what we’re doing. Or the life they’re living somehow diminishes what we’re living.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s like, no, the only progress you should care about is progress of who you were yesterday, progress of who you were five years ago. But it’s really, really easy to look outside of ourselves on Instagram or whatever. We all do it.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. In all that…

Matt Mulcock:
I do it in the gym all the time.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
So again, the reality is you should only be, focus on yourself. The progress that you are making, that’s really all that matters.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. We kind of addressed this. So, for the listeners and people who follow our webinars, we did every year, well I mean last couple years anyway. We do our Dentist Advisors wrapped episode where we go over previous year’s statistics, benchmarks from other people that we work with that are to an extent helpful I think only in that you can see what other people are doing and what’s possible.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Right. And we did this in Panama.

Matt Mulcock:
What is possible? I love that.

Ryan Isaac:
What is possible. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
What is possible. Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
And we did this in Panama, but we had a a really good discussion with that group there when, before we talked about these benchmarks to your exact point, which is the real benchmarks that matter are your own progress. That’s really what matters because we can’t even really take someone else’s income for example, and say that’s a good income. Well, it’s not a good income if they spend it all, it’s not adequate actually. They’re million dollar income is actually not adequate because they spend too much of it.

Matt Mulcock:
You’re broke.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. They need 2 million.

Matt Mulcock:
You’re rich but you’re broke. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
But your $300,000 income might actually get your life further than their million dollar income.

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Your own personal benchmarks are the really ones. And I’m just thinking the two things you just said is having patience and seeing things as a long-term process, enjoying it along the way, while also still having a goal in mind, and paying attention to your own progress, your own personal benchmarks. I would say that the solution to that is just maybe acknowledging that that’s something you’re doing in your life. You’re trying to, you’re feeling… This is really common, man. You’re feeling really stressed out lately because of the staffing issues in the dental industry, collections are stagnant right now. You’re having a hard time in the practice. You’re wanting to buy a building and that’s stressing you out. And then you go, and then you start to just, you try to fast track other things in your life ’cause you’re taking your stress out on these other things, right? So your investment plan that you were saving and doing it by all means was working just fine.

Ryan Isaac:
You now kind of just wanna blow that up and go do something radically different ’cause you’re taking your stress out from one area and you’re putting it on that because that’s something you can do.

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Feels in your control where that’s something you can acknowledge and recognize in your life. And then you can acknowledge and recognize, yeah, you know what? I’m really being stressed and driven by external things, what other people are doing and I’m not paying attention to myself. And I think one of the best things you can do for that is get a way to get organized. How are you supposed to pay attention to your own data if you don’t even keep your own data? Which nobody does.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Can’t create awareness if you… Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. So, that’s what our business does. That’s why people hire us is so we can put everything on paper and then slowly, multiple times a year over years and years, talk about the progress we’re making personally. And we can look at benchmarks from what your peers are doing. But that only gets us so far in knowing if your progress is adequate or not.

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
I love those two things. I’ll wrap this with 1 1/2 blind spots. This is what I was gonna say. My one blind spot. It’s a half because it’s like, it’s kind of just like an anecdotal thing. It’s been on my mind.

Matt Mulcock:
The one you already told or another one?

Ryan Isaac:
No, no, another one.

Matt Mulcock:
Okay.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. One and a half blind spots. That’s what I’ll end this with. One of them is, it’s first of the year recording this in February. Is this still February? It’s February.

Matt Mulcock:
End of February. Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s almost, tomorrow’s the last day of February.

Matt Mulcock:
Is it? I always forget how short February is. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Dang February. So we’re recording this in February. I think all of our advisors are having a lot of conversations about income from last year. ‘Cause everyone’s PnLs are done, everyone’s taxes aren’t done, obviously, but everyone’s PnLs from last year are done. I’m having personally a lot of conversations just going over PnLs and, we’re not practice consultants. We can’t come fix the hygiene department if it’s broken. We can’t come in and train, front office staff if there’s process problems. That’s what other professionals do. And we know really smart people who can do that and help you find them. But it has been very eye-opening to just go through a basic PnL with people. And I love, you… I think you were saying this. Oh, this wasn’t on there. You were saying one of the things you love doing with clients is reviewing data and going through the hard data.

Ryan Isaac:
I love that too. It’s so nerdy but I love pulling open an insurance policy and showing people their riders. [laughter] Or a PnL.

Matt Mulcock:
Man, we are nerds. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Line items on a PnL. I love that stuff, dude. But, yeah, I’ve been doing this a lot lately, just in the beginning of the year, updating income in our system and just looking at the previous year and it’s been eye-opening for a lot of people who are like, “Yeah, I feel cash strapped,” or, “Things feel a little bit tight.” To go, “Yeah, your profitability is 9% less than where it probably should be”

0:40:56.8 Matt: Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Now, from a simple overview and a PnL in 10 minutes, you can’t exactly say how to fix that. But you can start to identify parts of the business that are gonna be eye-opening. And dentists don’t have time to do this a lot. Nobody in their life really does this for them that often. Some CPAs will, not all, and then most people just don’t really like this stuff, so they don’t. They’re not gonna do it. Right?

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
But one of my blind spots, I would say is probably the most important thing a dentist can understand in their life, at least annually, but I would say it’s worth doing couple times a year, is their PnL and their overhead and what is on my PnL. I can think of… I won’t say any specifics, but I can think of two or three conversations in the last few weeks where we’re going through a PnL and there’s a category, a significant five-figure category that they’re like, “I actually don’t know what that is.”

Matt Mulcock:
What that’s from. Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
And this scares me because I just interviewed a guy named David Harris from a company called Prosperident, that comes out tomorrow or Wednesday. Their company for 30 years has done embezzlement and fraud investigations. And it scares me because the high percentage of dentists that get embezzled from. It’s like, it’s almost a given at some point.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s so high and it’s so prevalent. So that’s on my mind as I interview this guy. And then I’m going through PnLs where people were looking at five-figure category line items on a PnL and they’re like, “I actually don’t, well I don’t know what that money is.” I’m like, “Well, who would pay that expense? Or do you pay that bill? Or is that something that you would categorize?” They’re like, “No, that’s someone in my office who would do that. No, not me.” Not saying that means anything nefarious whatsoever.

Ryan Isaac:
But these are things to me that are a huge blind spot that might be one of the most important tools for a dentist to pay attention to is your PnL. And if you don’t know how or like doing it, a good financial advisor that works only with dentists like we do, that’s… You can ask us to do that for you. You can ask Matt to talk about your budget. You can ask us to go over your PnL or your CPA. If they only work with dentists and they have time to spend with you, you can ask those things. Find somebody if you can’t and won’t do it for yourself. Find somebody to go over your PnL and just question it. And you might find categories that are like, I have one category that says staff expense. I’d actually really like to know how much of that is front office versus assisting versus hygiene.

Matt Mulcock:
To break that out a little. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I’d like to know these things. Or like, “Oh, my spouse is in staff expense. I’d like to break that out.” Or I’m in staff expense, or I’m in the associate’s mind. You might find ways to clean it up and make your PnL prettier and easier to read. So that was my other blind spot. And I think it’s an easy fix because you can find someone to go through that with you. But it’s telling, man. It’s eye-opening.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Isn’t it?

Matt Mulcock:
And it’s actually interesting. I have another quick example of going through this. Like you said, we’re not gonna come in and be able to solve every problem. We’re not consultants, but.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, do you think about, think if… I’m sorry. I was just gonna say, think if you’re going through it and you’re like, “Oh, staff expense is 10% over average.” Well, you can’t… What are you gonna do? Oh, go fire John over there tomorrow.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
You can’t do that.

Matt Mulcock:
But it is interesting that you say that because this is the example of this client in particular where just having this conversation, this happened pretty recently where again, numbers were not looking right. And I’m like, “There’s very little, if any profitability.” And so we’re going through it and they’ve been strapped for cash. And so we’re going through the PnL and all of a sudden they start to kind of self-diagnose. It gave them space to be like…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, we know that this is a problem. And it happened to be their hygiene department. And they were like, yeah. So then we started having a conversation around that. And again, I’m not a hygiene specialist or consultant, but I know enough about it to be like, “Tell me what their production is.” And then we start having that conversation. Well, turns out their hygiene department was a massive problem. So then we get in with a consultant. The consultant starts, it’s just those things where just having space to have those conversations, create awareness around those things, all of a sudden they start… If they don’t have that conversation, they don’t solve that problem.

Ryan Isaac:
You sit on it for a long time.

Matt Mulcock:
They know it’s a problem. Yes, they know it’s a problem, but they’re not taking action.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
Because they’re not even having the conversation.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes. You’re gonna lead me into my point, my half of a blind spot.

Matt Mulcock:
Boo-ya. I knew I would. Natural.

Ryan Isaac:
But dude, perfectly. And I want to comment on that really fast. That for example, someone will know. They just know that there’s inefficiencies with their team. There’s overlap. They’re paying too many people to be there at once. There’s not, everyone’s busy, not everyone’s producing, but not until they look at the PnL and see that they’re 10% over average do they go, “Okay, it’s time to do something about that.” They’ll sit on it for a long time and not judging that. Of course you can. You got a million things to do and it’s not that interesting to go have HR conversations with people, my half…

Matt Mulcock:
It’s not an exciting thing to do on a Friday.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s not exciting. You’d rather go buy a new scanner or handpiece than like…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Go work on HR. You led me into my last point, my last blind spot, which is just being aware but kind of not really, and not acknowledging it and then just sitting on it for a long time. This is on my mind because this happens frequently and just happened again last week. Every month we hold a webinar. It’s usually me and Matt and we…

Matt Mulcock:
Bailed. I bailed.

Ryan Isaac:
You bailed on me for good reason. You got coaxed with NBA tickets. Was it a good game, by the way?

Matt Mulcock:
I did.

Ryan Isaac:
Was it good? I don’t know…

Matt Mulcock:
It was an incredible game.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, okay. Good. I’m even happier.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, overtime. It was incredible. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Win? Overtime win?

Matt Mulcock:
Win.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, dude. Okay.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, you made the right choice.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, it was amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
The other night we held this webinar and we do this, you can see our website for the schedule and the topics. But people are there live, they’re asking questions, we’re giving responses, not answers. And inevitably almost every single time an older person, by older I just mean older in career, maybe all the way retired or about to retire.

Matt Mulcock:
More seasoned.

Ryan Isaac:
More seasoned, experienced person. Almost every…

Matt Mulcock:
Wiser.

Ryan Isaac:
Single time. Yeah, for sure. Wiser. They will always say, I wish I had met some people like you earlier in my career. I wish I had started working with people like you earlier in my career. Now, this isn’t a comment to be like, that’s regret. You should hire Dentist Advisors. What I’m saying…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Look at us baby.

Ryan Isaac:
What I’m saying is, to Matt’s point, I hear this a lot from more seasoned dentists near the end of career that, you know what? I wish I had done something about some stuff earlier. And I know that’s things that we all as humans do. I wish I had paid attention to my health earlier. I wish I had started saving earlier. I wish I had started this habit earlier. Whatever, wish I had spent more time with my kid 10 years ago, whatever. Those are normal human things, but these are specifically comments that we get almost every single webinar when people join us. And to your point, it just makes me realize that it is a blind spot if you’re sitting there kind of knowing that there’s something off, like I’m really unorganized or I make decisions on a whim, or I get really emotional about my money, or I sit on too much cash or I spend too much, or I never look at this stuff. I don’t benchmark my own progress. I have no idea where I’m going. You know these things are kind of stewing and boiling then the invitation this… Make it this year that you do something about that, and that could be, build your own spreadsheet. It could be attend more webinars, listen to more podcasts.

Ryan Isaac:
It could be hiring somebody, take some… If you’re feeling that feeling, take some action because that’s less painful than being the person on the webinar at the end of a career that goes, “Yeah, I wish I would’ve done something about this 20 years ago.”

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
But that comments on my mind a lot because that happened again and I end up having a long conversation with this person. It was great and I really appreciated the insight and this person just being candid, but it just made me think, man, we as humans do this a lot where we know we gotta do something and we just sit on it for a long time, like an oil change. [laughter]

Matt Mulcock:
Totally.

Ryan Isaac:
You know you gotta get that sucker done.

Matt Mulcock:
My wife has to basically pester me for about a six months post expiration for me to get that.

Ryan Isaac:
Or, who’s our freaking audience? How often do people know they need to come in and get their dang teeth cleaned and they just will not come to your office no matter what you do. It’s what we do as humans. So financially, if you got one of those pestering things, make this the year that you just do something about it. It can be little, it doesn’t have to be dramatic, but do something about it. So blind spots, everybody. Anton Syndrome. Blind spots. The show Blindspot.

Matt Mulcock:
The brain is crazy. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
The book Blindspot. The football player from the Blind spot. Blind spots.

Matt Mulcock:
No, Blind Side.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, shoot. Its Blind Side. Dang it. There’s no blind spot football movie.

[laughter]

Matt Mulcock:
That is amazing. Blind Side.

Ryan Isaac:
Shows my sports.

Matt Mulcock:
Sports. Sports.

Ryan Isaac:
But sports in general, blind spots in sports. Matty, thanks for doing this with me.

Matt Mulcock:
Thanks Ryan.

Ryan Isaac:
Again, as always, everyone, thank you for joining us like you do every week. We love it. We appreciate it, we value it. If you have any questions for us, dentistadvisors.com, book a free chat and let’s point in the right direction. Catch you next time, another episode, Dentist Money Show, goodbye now. Bye. Bye.

Behavioral Finance