Flow Like Water: Key Lessons Learned from “Be Water, My Friend” – Episode #563

On this episode of the Dentist Money Show, Matt, Will, and Victoria dive deep into Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee by Shannon Lee. Inspired by Bruce Lee’s philosophies, this book explores the transformative power of adaptability and resilience. Matt, Victoria, and Will break down the core teachings of Lee’s “be like water” mindset and discuss how these lessons can be applied to everyday life. Tune in for actionable insights that will help you cultivate flexibility, embrace change, and strengthen your personal journey through the wisdom of one of the most iconic martial artists of all time.

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Podcast Transcript

Intro: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the dentist money show brought to you by dentist advisors. We have another great show today. A book review of the book, be water, my friends by Shannon Lee. It is the story of life lessons, from the legendary Bruce Lee. will Victoria and I take these lessons and share our thoughts and our insights about these lessons, how they relate to, dentists and their lives, building wealth, investing, and just living a more meaningful life as always. Thank you so much for being here. Hope you enjoy the show.

Matt Mulcock: Okay. Welcome everybody. Thank you as always for listening. today we are doing something a little different. I mean, we’re doing a book review, which we’ve done before, but I think it’s worth noting, I don’t know how you guys feel, but like how different this type of book is. I don’t think we’ve done anything like this. Or really talked about anything like this, which I think is cool. I like that. Like you wouldn’t read this book and be like, Oh, this is a financial planning or investment advisor type book. Right. But I kind of like that. I kind of like being able to make connections to things that aren’t directly connected of like everyday life type stuff.

Anyway, so that’s why that’s the first thing I’d say reading this book is you wouldn’t think direct connections to like financial planning, just more like general life stuff. So, anyway, what the book we’re going to talk about today, this is a throwback to my childhood. One of my favorite topics of childhood, which is Bruce Lee. So the book being be water, my friend. The teachings of Bruce Lee by Shannon Lee. we’ll just jump in. Will, do you want to just kind of give us a synopsis maybe of the book, high level first

Will Gochnour: Bruce Lee is a legend. I think, I think he’s probably a household name. Everyone should know who Bruce Lee is. He’s kind of permeated pop culture through, I feel like, long enough time frames. Basketball players, so like even the young kids know there’s like a Bruce Lee Nike. That like a lot of basketball players wear it’s like yellow and black.

Victoria Ferguson: Oh, really?

Will Gochnour: I think like, I, I’m pretty sure. And again, like growing up, he was a big topic of conversation among my friends. Cause he was just like a quintessential, you know, I guess

Matt Mulcock: So household, household name will have you. Okay. So one of my favorite movies of all time was into the dragon

Will Gochnour: I watched it.

Matt Mulcock: Like recently.

Will Gochnour: Yes. This weekend.

Matt Mulcock: Okay. So one of my favorite movies, what did you think?

Will Gochnour: I thought it was awesome. It like kind of was a throwback. It was, it felt like kind of terrible acting and

Matt Mulcock: Oh yeah, it’s a 1993 movie. Terrible, but it’s so good. Yeah.

Will Gochnour: So good. And they talk about that in the book, like the lead up to it, which was pretty, pretty cool to have the backstory behind it.

Matt Mulcock: Super

Victoria Ferguson: Seen the movie, now I have

Matt Mulcock: Well, there’s, so there’s multiple Bruce Lee movies. There’s ones that he did like the Bruce Lee himself. He was an actor and then this into the dragon was made in 1993. It was, I believe his nephew who plays him in it. Cause he, he had already died.

Victoria Ferguson: Oh, got

Matt Mulcock: Super good movie. I love it was like a movie I grew up on.

Matt Mulcock: It was like Conan the Barbarian, Arnold Schwarzenegger classic, and then enter the dragon with about Bruce Lee was like iconic movies for Young men.

Victoria Ferguson: I feel like older, I don’t know, back then baddies is like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and like Chuck Norris come to mind.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. Yeah, for sure.

Will Gochnour: So yeah, the book, awesome book. I mean, like you said, Matt, it’s not really like a finance book, but it’s, and I don’t even call it like a self help. I guess it’s a self help book. It’s a lot of like just a life book maybe. and there’s a, yeah, philosophy, cool. And a ton of really good stories about Bruce Lee’s life told by his Shannon Lee is his daughter.

And I thought it was interesting. Shannon, So Bruce Lee died when Shannon was four, you know, it says. And so that was, it’s kind of interesting that she has learned a lot about her father by not actually knowing him that well. So she runs like the Bruce Lee foundation now and is like the Bruce Lee lady in the world.

 Right. so she said this book was mainly, I mean, she knew she’s learned a lot about her dad over the years, but. There are just tons of, somebody has done really good record keeping of the archives of all the things he taught, said, journals, those kind of things were very important. So, I thought that was interesting, and then the, you know, the premise of the book, Be Water My Friend, that’s the name of it, is, this is one of the most famous Bruce Lee quotes, right?

 And, the story is that, the beginning of the book, it tells the story that he was training. and I can’t recall exactly what he was training for, but it was some sort of training with some master, Taekwondo master or something that he couldn’t get right and he couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t get right.

And the harder he tried, he was still not getting it right. And every time that he would try this master, what’s kind of like, send him home and be like, go, you know, you don’t have it today, go try again. And he was so driven, so like passionate about it, that he just wanted to get it right. But he. Went one night to, I think it was like a lake and he just started punching the water, like incessantly punching, decking the water probably as hard as he could.

 And he noticed that like the water was receiving the punches, but it wasn’t punching back and it wasn’t really giving way and then you let it like go for a minute and it would just. Chill out and calm down. And that’s when he realized that water moves in response to its environment. And it’s always ready to do whatever it needs to do, but it was still and poised.

And, I think the quote that I really liked was like effortless action. So it’s, and that, so then the theme of the book kind of compares water to, if we can be more like water, then we can be better people,

Matt Mulcock: Love it. I couldn’t help but think throughout this entire book, as we were preparing for this, something that a former teammate of ours, our boy D D Y shout out D wise, if you’re out there, when we worked together years ago, he said something, he, he lived by something, a saying he would use all the time that literally I’ve never forgotten.

Matt Mulcock: And it’s constantly in my head as I’m. Doing anything in life, with work or kids or whatever, which he always said, be fluid, flexible and unfixed and I water. And so I literally, as I was reading through this, I was like, Oh, fluid, flexible and unfixed. And I’m always thinking about that. And so in this book, it’s kind of what you just said, Will, and what he’s talking about.

Matt Mulcock: Is that concept of the power of being again, fluid, flexible, unfixed in opinions and an approach to life and realizing you don’t have as much control as you’d like to think. So that was my main takeaway is that saying there?

Victoria Ferguson: Well, and then the other side of it, too, where she talks about, like, water always finds a way, to, like, seep into your house, or, kind of find all the nooks and crannies. So, yes, the flexibility and whatnot, but also the strength it has to create potholes in the road every freaking winter, um, and always.

Will Gochnour: The entire grand Canyon,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Victoria Ferguson: Canyon. And so I, I loved the metaphor throughout the whole book. It was, it was really, really

Will Gochnour: I think she said there were some comparisons to like water really is can be the most Terrifying and powerful force in the universe like you know a bat Think of like a fire hose coming at you or like a massive wave crashing on you like the the power that water can carry Is immense, but also it can also be the most serene thing in the universe, like the serenity that it can provide, provide as well.

I think of like a flowing stream or like a, you know, a, a still pond. Like, it’s pretty cool how it has the entire spectrum. It’s so versatile. And like Victoria said, it can. It’s deferment. It’s, you know, it can do whatever it wants to do. It’s going to get, if it wants to get into your house, it’s going to get into your house. If it wants to carve a canyon, if it wants to shape a rock, it’s going to do that over time. And just, it may not be immediate, but it’s, that’s the beauty of water is it’s always consistent.

Matt Mulcock: I think the key there, Will, what you just said is important. Again, this is where we’re going to try throughout this entire discussion to, I think, make connections to something that doesn’t maybe feel like a direct connection to the work that we do. but what you just said there is so critical to something we talk about all the time, which is time, the power of time and like the power of like persistent, effortless action as you’re talking about with something like carving the Grand Canyon.

Victoria Ferguson: Mm-Hmm.

Matt Mulcock: The feet that can be created by simply time persistent action over time and what water can do I think there’s a lot of parallels there to what we talked about with Saving and building wealth. It’s like really the only secret is time

Victoria Ferguson: Yeah. Grand Canyon was not carved overnight. That took millions of years.

Matt Mulcock: Yes Okay. So first of all, you guys did such I say you guys I did nothing on this outline. I am just here But such an incredible job organizing this outline You And I think we just want to kind of go kind of have a flow to this. No pun intended flow. Ha ha. See what I did there. but kind of, kind of have a flow to this of just some general topics.

Matt Mulcock: And I love this first one. I think this is a critical one to start with being the power of purpose. He talks a lot about this, Victoria, what are your thoughts on this part, just how powerful purpose is.

Victoria Ferguson: Yeah. This. Part of the book really stood out to me because we, I feel like we beat the dead horse, beat a dead horse with this. We’re always talking about purpose, purpose, purpose. I feel like I even remember you two having a conversation about how in retirement, one of the biggest risks is loss of loss of purpose, right?

 Like we don’t talk about that nearly enough as a retirement risk. Right. And. We’ve all seen this, and you too have seen this, and people, who don’t have that, it’s very clear, and I think one of the biggest symptoms of not having a sense of purpose or clarity around that is, what we call the random acts of finance.

Right? Like if we see that happening, then that’s a pretty big red flag to me that there is no sense of purpose here and there, that we need to dive into that a little bit more. so that piece really stood out to me. He talks about, Bruce Lee has a quote, like function from your root. And I really like that because, you know, you’re grounded in yourself.

And so that makes it a lot easier to make, other decisions from there. But I don’t know, what did you guys think about that part?

Will Gochnour: I like how you compare it to finances because we’re, that’s us.

Victoria Ferguson: I’m trying to dot the dots. I’m trying to thread the needle here, you guys.

Will Gochnour: I think it’s important to have, like, I think every client should have a statement of financial purpose. Like, why are we doing what we’re doing? What’s, what is this all for? And I think you’re right. When you start seeing kind of random. Things that people do with their money. It’s because they don’t really have purpose. They’re just thinking this is maybe what I’m supposed to do. And I, I like, there was a quote in the book that said, if you are doing things because you think you should do them, the key word being should, then that’s not the right things.

There should never be should, it shouldn’t be because you, because somebody else is then influencing you. There’s a reason why you think you should do them, not because you want to, but because you think somebody else wants you to, but I think that’s powerful and purpose is doing it because you want to do it, doing it because that’s what you’ve decided is your life purpose. And I mean, this book is just like knowledge bomb after knowledge bomb. It kind of feels like you’re reading like a, something that Yoda wrote where it’s just like every page is something that Bruce Lee said that was like, Oh my heck, that kind of is like crazy.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. I, totally agree with you guys. I think the price of not having an understanding your purpose throughout your life is so high and we see this, this is why we beat this particular horse. Right. Victoria. I mean, we talk about it so much. And I think a lot of times it can be, people can take it and be like, okay, cool.

 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But again, we see this so much, especially in the dental space of like how connected the dental space is. It’s a small. it’s really a small world in dentistry and it’s really, really easy to compare yourself to the next person. I think the way you get away from this comparison being the thief of joy, I think the way you kind of stave off that thief is by having a very personalized purpose to what you are trying to accomplish and why.

Like understanding your, why will, like you said, having your statement of financial purpose is so critical, to again, getting away from the shiny object syndrome or. We’re getting to a place in your life that you’re like, what the heck? Why am I starting my third location? I’m dying here. I actually also thought of, at our summit, Daniel Crosby spoke incredible job, and he references a quote that I thought of during this section, which is a Nietzsche quote, he says, he, who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow.

And they talk about this, if you have a why, you can, anything that comes at your light. And so, Victor Frankel talks about this, another incredible, probably the best, one of the best books ever written being a man searched for meaning he was, in a concentration camp for three years and survived.

Matt Mulcock: He talks about this exact thing, not to get super heavy, obviously, but again, I think if we’re talking about the, having that purpose, having that, why Can take you through a concentration camp and can also give you purpose in your life of like when you’re building wealth Kind of across the board and they talk about this in this book right in this section I think Victoria you wrote the section here They’re talking about when the obstacles come when the things and those obstacles could be like when you are in the mundane aspects of your life or the boring parts of your middle ages of like Why am I doing this?

Matt Mulcock: I think being able to define that purpose is huge

Victoria Ferguson: Yeah, totally. I think it saves you a bunch of money too.

Matt Mulcock: for sure. Yeah. any other thoughts on this section of the power of purpose, having a purpose or direction from this part?

Victoria Ferguson: a quote to tie a bow on this one. knowing who you are, what you want and what you love, will serve you faithfully. And then having clear objectives and clear dreams will set a trajectory, a direct trajectory from which you will not easily be deterred.

Will Gochnour: Oh,

Victoria Ferguson: Bow tied.

Matt Mulcock: That you tied that bow

Will Gochnour: It felt like a lot of might drop quotes in the Bruce Lee book.

Matt Mulcock: So many.

Victoria Ferguson: Many mics are being dropped

Will Gochnour: It felt like Shannon knew that, like she would just hit a quote and then end the chapter and it

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Ferguson: Yeah.

Will Gochnour: Mike Breen bang voice.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. okay. So next part, I love this. And again, this is so well done on the outline. I think so many like big themes that we pulled out of this. so we talked about purpose. The next part, I love this talking about process and embracing the process. we’ll just start the section with a quote being right from Bruce Lee.

Matt Mulcock: The enemy of development is pain phobia, the unwillingness to do a tiny bit of suffering.

Victoria Ferguson: This one stood out to me so much. And I think the reason why is like, I hate feeling stupid. I hate not, Like knowing

Matt Mulcock: I love feeling stupid, but.

Victoria Ferguson: Well, I I think maybe it just I get really insecure about it and I’ll be honest. You know, I hate you know, starting something new because then it’s like, Oh, I’m sorry from square one and I know nothing and I hate feeling stupid.

Victoria Ferguson: And I think in the past, that’s actually deterred me from growing and trying new things because I hate the feeling of not being good at something. don’t worry, I’ve worked on this a bunch in therapy, we’re fine. But that’s deterred me in the past, it really has, because I hate being like at the bottom of the barrel and starting off, right?

Victoria Ferguson: So I really related to this.

Will Gochnour: It’s reminded me of the shout out our summit again, cause our speakers were kind of awesome. And,

Victoria Ferguson: Be next year. Stay tuned.

Will Gochnour: So this is exactly what James Lawrence, the iron cowboy basically talked about the whole time and the main theme that he kept bringing up was this inner bully and The inner bully kind of like basically told him mean things like, you’re not good enough.

Will Gochnour: You can’t run this race. You’re not going to finish. You’re not going to be fast enough. And he had, his whole thing was like he had trained this inner bully to kind of be a motivator rather than a detractor. And basically saying like, if you can’t do something hard, then you’re never going to. Do anything like you’re going to just sit and be kind of like a fluffy pillow on a couch and it’s just soft as can be.

Will Gochnour: And so his recommendation was like every day, do something that you don’t want to do. And that literally trains your mind to do harder things, do like, be a better, more refined, person in general. So I think about that a lot when I’m like, I mean, he, I think he used the, like the cold plunge example, like do a cold plunge, cause nobody wants to do that

Victoria Ferguson: Absolutely not.

Will Gochnour: And It tells your brain, I don’t want to do this, but I’m going to do it anyways. And you’re training your brain to know I can do things that I don’t want to do, and I can do hard things.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, That’s what I’ve read. A bit speaking of cold plunges. It’s like, there’s not a ton of data that it does anything like physically for you, like physiologically, but to that point, well, it’s like training. It’s like more of like a psychological. Thing of like, I can do hard things and how that translates the rest of your, to the rest of your life. Yeah, we talked a lot about this when we did our book review, right. Together before we obviously did the show, our team comes together and talks about the book. And I love this part too, of just how easy this is in theory to understand of like this paradox of avoiding pain and how it can create like long term suffering.

But once you kind of read this or see this and like actually conceptualize this, you see it in every aspect of your life. Right. Of like, I love what they say, like having this pain phobia and how that can create bigger issues. So weird. I’m going to make a fitness reference. but like being,

Victoria Ferguson: Do it.

Matt Mulcock: Just thinking as simple as like avoiding the pain of a workout, right? Cause working out is painful. You know, lifting weights is painful. Avoiding that pain leads to long term suffering, right?

Matt Mulcock: You sit on the couch, you’re avoiding that pain, but how much more. And I love this saying the enemy of development, like you’re not going to develop, or we’ll use an example of what we do, like tying this to, to investing or to building wealth, think of like an investment portfolio, like your ability to overcome that phobia of the ups and downs of the market is what’s going to lead the development of your wealth.

Matt Mulcock: So I think. Well, as you’re saying, being able to kind of flex that muscle or that brain muscle and build that emotional kind of tolerance to this pain can lead to a lot of development in your life. So I think this is, this is a great one. And what are the thoughts do you guys have, if any, of focusing on a process or being process oriented?

Victoria Ferguson: She hadn’t made that connection. Your muscles don’t get stronger without being broken down first. So it’s very fitting to

Matt Mulcock: Thank you, Shannon.

Victoria Ferguson: Fitness analogy, but she talked, yeah, she talks about, You have to experience discomfort. And that’s something I say to myself a lot is leading into that discomfort.

Victoria Ferguson: And then I like that parallel that you drew well with the, the inner bully. Cause I think James Lawrence was saying like, when the inner bully comes up, it means you’re growing. And so he kind of gets excited when the inner bully, presents themselves, because. That’s a really key indicator that you are growing and you are flexing that muscle.

Victoria Ferguson: So it sucks being bullied by your, your own self, but in a way it’s almost exciting because you know that you’re, you are growing right then and there in that moment. and then lastly, I really like how she, puts it as people grow by skillful frustrations. I think that was just such a clever way of putting it.

Victoria Ferguson: Because obviously you shouldn’t go out there and experience pain just to experience pain. It’s intentional pain. It’s intentional discomfort.

Will Gochnour: You’re creating it for yourself though. Like you, you’re putting yourself in a hard position that you need to overcome. Not like you need to go cause drama at family dinner.

Victoria Ferguson: You could. They listen to the Dentist Money Show and then all of a sudden there’s drama at family dinner. They told me to.

Matt Mulcock: No, I think a key word you used to use there is intentional, right? Being

Victoria Ferguson: Yes

Matt Mulcock: About the frustrations you’re. I wouldn’t even say like creating it’s maybe more that you’re seeking out. And I love what you guys are both saying as far as the inner bully, I love this idea of like. Just a simple mindset shift of like seeking out almost these frustrations or Victoria. What’s one thing that we’ve talked a lot about over your career at DA being like this imposter syndrome, right?

Matt Mulcock: We all feel it every single person out there listening. I know all three of us at one point or another have felt imposter syndrome and I know like for me in my own life at DA specifically I have had Endless amounts of opportunities to feel like an imposter almost every, almost every single day. and I had to shift my mindset on this idea of imposter syndrome of it being a positive thing.

Matt Mulcock: It’s kind of what you said, Will. It’s like the inner bully. now I embrace that feeling of feeling like an imposter. Cause now that’s the, Intentional frustration of, as they say here, you would never seek a solution to your frustration if you didn’t actually face frustration. That’s like, you, you have to have that.

Matt Mulcock: You have to feel like an imposter. So now what I tell myself every time I feel these things of like, man, I’m a fraud or I’m an imposter, it’s like, Oh no, no, no, I’m growing. Like now I’m on the outer reaches of my skillset. And on the other side of this is growth. On the other side of this is like me being better.

Matt Mulcock: So I think that’s, that’s a key there.

Victoria Ferguson: I’ve named my bully. Her name is Gladys. And when she’s there, I’m

Matt Mulcock: Like, what’s up Gladys. Yeah.

Victoria Ferguson: How’s it going?

Victoria Ferguson: Have to tell me now? And it’s like, all right, you overstayed your welcome. Please go now.

Matt Mulcock: I like this last part here of this section. it’s much better to choose your frustrations rather than get blindsided by them.

Victoria Ferguson: I like that a lot because if you don’t do it, I swear the universe does.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Well, and I don’t know who said this and I don’t even know if it’s like a direct quote or just more of like a general saying, but it’s like, you either have the pain of regret or the pain of discipline.

Victoria Ferguson: Ooh, I haven’t heard that

Matt Mulcock: Choose your pain. It’s like pain is unavoidable in life.

Matt Mulcock: You’re either going to have a pain of regret, or you’re going to have the pain of discipline. You cannot avoid it. Like you’ve got, so just choose which one is which, so, or which one you want to take on. any other thoughts on this section here? Will, any thoughts?

Will Gochnour: No, that was kind of a mic drop. That quote though. I,

Matt Mulcock: Oh, heck yeah. okay. The next part. So we’ve talked, just to kind of recap, we’ve talked purpose, we’ve talked process, and then, Bruce Lee’s take on goals. I think this is huge. We’ve, we’ve talked a ton about goals throughout our content, webinars and whatnot. And so want to start off here of like, I think actually it’s interesting because Victoria, you mentioned this in our discussion, that Bruce Lee’s take on goals is actually very similar to what we’ve talked about

Victoria Ferguson: Oh, so similar.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. So tell us what, what his take on goals are.

Victoria Ferguson: I mean, well, our take. us and Bruce Lee. I think we’ve just talked about how goals are a little bit overrated in the sense that the more Specific you are about it, like the more, like you need to give yourself some flexibility there because the more tied you are to an outcome and a result, the higher chance you’re going to be disappointed.

Victoria Ferguson: That doesn’t mean to not have goals. We’re more of a proponent of having direction and giving that everything you got, but. You know, as an example, if you’re saying, I want to be retired at 65 with 5 million, that’s like very, very specific. and very challenging to get right on the dot versus I want to be happy now.

Victoria Ferguson: And my goal is to retire and have this kind of lifestyle around this time.

Matt Mulcock: Totally agree. But Will, do you have, what are your thoughts on this? If any,

Will Gochnour: Yeah, I think it’s put perfectly in the book. He says like goals are important. They shape our forward motion and create framework for our training. It’s important to remember though, that goals are not the end all be all. And I love that. Like the goal is not the end. The goal is part of the journey.

Will Gochnour: Right. And I think it says here, like we’d get fixated on accomplishing our goals. We often miss the journey entirely only to find that when we reach our goal, there’s now yet another goal we want to go for. And so it’s like hard to acknowledge the progress that you’re making and I think you compare it to like a hamster wheel or something where you’re always just like, what is it that you’re

Victoria Ferguson: He said it’s, it’s like holding the next bite of food in your hand while you’re still chewing the first one. You’re so anxious for what’s next, you end up missing the meal altogether, which maybe I’m just a fast eater.,

Will Gochnour: I can see that you’re eating a ribeye and you’re like, Oh, this bite

Victoria Ferguson: This is so good.

Victoria Ferguson: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: The next one

Victoria Ferguson: Yeah. That’s me with a banana split. There’s nothing else that exists in the world

Matt Mulcock: Then that next

Victoria Ferguson: And that banana split. Nothing else.

Will Gochnour: I think that’s, yeah, I think that’s powerful because it’s, it is. It’s truly like, don’t get caught up just chasing your goals, get caught up in the process of achieving goals that are the point of achieving a goal is to better yourself as a human. So make sure you’re bettering yourself as a human and not just being a slave to your goals.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I love that. Not being, I think the key there being not being a slave to your goals. When we’ve talked about this, Victoria, you said at the very beginning of this part of goals are overrated. I fully believe that sometimes if you say that without context, though, people are like, what do you mean?

Victoria Ferguson: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: I think what we’re saying here is direction is more important than details.

Matt Mulcock: Like goal goals are great for giving us this level of direction points in the right direction. Will, what you just said there, I think taken too far we can become a slave, like they can almost become our master. And I think create this, like, I’ll be happy when syndrome, like, okay, onto the next one, onto the next one.

Matt Mulcock: And it kind of pulls us out of the present moment, which. I think is key for happiness. If you’re always living in the future, you’re always going to be living with anxiety. You’re always going to be living with like, what’s next, what’s next, kind of like that next bite of food. So it is a tricky balance.

Matt Mulcock: We’re not saying we have like this exact formula. I think this is always kind of like, just a general direction. and Victoria, what you alluded to is perfect. we always talk to clients about this of like, the more precise your plan has to be, the more you’re setting yourself up for failure and disappointment.

Matt Mulcock: I think one of the biggest advantages you can have. And we talk about like something like risk management. People think about insurance. They think about estate planning, but one of the under like underrated parts of risk management is being flexible, having a flexible budget, having a flexible timeframe.

Matt Mulcock: So being flexible with your goals, being water, if you will, with your goals, I think is huge there. So it was cool. It was, it was validating to hear, to read that Bruce Lee, Had similar takes on goals. Victoria, you look at your thoughts here,

Victoria Ferguson: I think, I listened to a podcast once and they were kind of talking about this very thing, goals, processes and whatnot. And one person was saying, you know, if you want to write a book, if your goal is to be an author, right.

Victoria Ferguson: Can you sit and write for hundreds of hours? Does that sound like good to you? Can you do that? And I think that just kind of, again, shifts the light to the journey itself. And like, let’s focus on the journey piece because the goal is so short lived because it’s, it’s a checkbox. You did it or you didn’t.

Victoria Ferguson: Right. but the journey is where there’s so much more meaning in that. And that’s why, you know, we pull in retirement to this a lot because Retirement’s like, did you retire by 65? Yes or no. but can we kind of take a little bit of a step back and shift the focus to the journey piece of it? Maybe that means you retire a little bit later because you were able to enjoy more of your money.

Victoria Ferguson: In, when your kids were young or, or whatever, so I, just really like the shift to the shift of focus to the journey piece and what you can reasonably do for a long time, because we have, we have a long road ahead of us.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, totally agree. Will, did you have any other thoughts on that?

Will Gochnour: No, I just thinking a little bit about like when we talk to clients about goals, because they’re, you know, inevitably as a financial advisor, you feel like you should, you’re shoulding right? Like you should talk about goals. I think when I think about the way I Talk to my clients about goals is usually I like to focus in on short term goals rather than long term goals, because I feel like we have a lot more control over short term goals than long term goals. And the short term goals are going to be what leads us to the long term goals eventually. So I don’t even know if you need to care about long term goals.

Will Gochnour: It’s more of like, how can we maybe set a long term goal than reverse engineer a bunch of short term goals to get there along the way. And. to me, the question that I usually ask in like the first call I’ll have with a new client, the discovery call is like, what do you want your life to look like in five years and have them try to explain it.

Will Gochnour: And then I think using that explanation, you can pick out a handful of goals and say like, okay, we want to do this, this and this over the next three to five years. Right. And they, they’ll usually know, like, usually somebody will have a pretty clear picture of what you want to try to accomplish short term.

Will Gochnour: Right. And then you can say. Okay, let’s figure out what the trade offs are. Like you want to do the, there’s always trade offs. We always talk about trade offs. Right. So it’s like, if you want to, I want to practice, here’s what needs to happen in the next two years. And we can start working towards that.

Will Gochnour: It doesn’t mean like it’s, you’re going to eat, sleep and breathe this goal, but it’s like, here’s how we put action to this goal. And that’s at the end of the day, all of that matters.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I love that. last thing I’d say on this, as you guys are going through this, I’m thinking, I think one of the issues too, with goals is simply that I think people don’t necessarily, usually don’t have a problem with establishing goals. It’s like the, what it’s like, what do I want? But I think the next step, the, maybe the second or third layer of thinking on that is it’s like, okay, how, and then also why I think that sometimes where I have a problem with goals sometimes is people don’t go farther than just like the, what.

Matt Mulcock: Like, I want this. It’s like, okay, cool, but how are we going to get there? Which is like the process part of it. And then even more importantly is what we started this conversation with is the purpose, the why, which again, you don’t have to justify that to anybody, but I think it’s really critical not only to have the goal, the outer layer part of that circle again, that what part, but to go deeper than that.

Will Gochnour: I’ll give a quick plug for

Matt Mulcock: Plug it specifically.

Will Gochnour: yeah, Dentist Advisors. I, you know, we, we believe in this. And if you are going to try to complete a goal, there was a study done on like the probability of completing a goal that we’ve cited before. And, It basically says that you can set a goal, you can decide where you’re going to do it.

Will Gochnour: You can have like a full, everything planned out, and you only have like a 50 percent chance of actually doing it. The minute you commit to somebody that you’re going to do it, it goes up. And the minute that you have an accountability appointment for achieving the, after you’ve done the goal, like somebody that you can actually, Talk to about it.

Will Gochnour: That’s holding you accountable. The goal goes, I think the completion percentage goes up to like 90%. So

Victoria Ferguson: 90, 92 or something like

Matt Mulcock: Yeah

Will Gochnour: Goals are most effective with accountability partners. And again, back to Bruce Lee, it’s not the end all be all, but the goal, the process of achieving a goal. Is what’s making you a better person.

Victoria Ferguson: Yes,

Matt Mulcock: Love it. We’re going to mic drop that and move on. That’s perfect. okay.

Will Gochnour: I’m tempted to actually drop my mic and see what,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah

Will Gochnour: It does.

Victoria Ferguson: No, these are expensive.

Will Gochnour: These are heavy too.

Matt Mulcock: They are heavy. It’s true. okay. I’m just trying to keep an eye on time. Make sure that we’re keeping this in a, in a timely fashion. There’s so much good stuff here. I think let’s jump to, if you guys are okay with it, investing the investing piece of this, Victoria, I think this was you.

Matt Mulcock: Do you want to talk about the section of the book related to Dorian finding Nemo to talk about this?

Victoria Ferguson: Any chance I can plug in finding Nemo, I will actually know it’s usually Shrek quotes. That’s my, that’s my go to, but I think it was good. Um,

Will Gochnour: I’ll shout out Nemo. Yeah, I like,

Will Gochnour: That’s a great, great story. Wholesome.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah,

Victoria Ferguson: Yeah. I really liked this, and I’ll read a piece from it. where did she go? It doesn’t matter how long it will take to get better, whether that’s mentally, emotionally, or physically, if you never start, you will never get there. If you let the fear of being upset stop you and you retreat into paralysis, then you most definitely will never get there.

Victoria Ferguson: And let’s say you spend the next 10 years just walking forward in your progress a tiny bit, one millimeter at a time. Well, at some point, you will be able to look back and see the miles of progress, but not if you don’t keep going. You stay in one spot. The view never changes. But if you keep moving forward, the new landscapes are revealed and along them with them new potential.

Matt Mulcock: There’s so much good stuff here. And I, I totally

Victoria Ferguson: we say mic drop?

Will Gochnour: you got to plug Nemo though, because the whole point

Victoria Ferguson: Oh, sorry.

Matt Mulcock: We mentioned, we mentioned Nemo. What the heck? Let’s bring it back to Nemo.

Victoria Ferguson: I totally missed the first part of that. she says, so Bruce Lee had a little like sticky note or something that said walk on in his office. So Shannon was saying, I see walk on. And it reminds me of Dory from finding Nemo saying in her sing song voice. All together now.

Matt Mulcock: Go ahead.

Will Gochnour: Swimming.

Matt Mulcock: Keep swimming, swimming, swimming, Yeah.

Victoria Ferguson: And then she goes in like her like whale voice,

Victoria Ferguson: Right? Or something.

Matt Mulcock: That’s a good connection though. I think that’s great.

Victoria Ferguson: Yeah. Maybe that’s what we should put in our client gifts. Just like a little Dory

Will Gochnour: Just keep

Matt Mulcock: Just keep

Victoria Ferguson: Keep swimming.

Victoria Ferguson: baby. Let’s

Will Gochnour: just keep investing

Matt Mulcock: I, I, that’s the thing when you were reading through that, and we talked about this in our, again, our, when we reviewed the book, such an easy connection to investing and this idea of like paralysis and how many times we see clients, right, or see dentists specifically, I see this retreat into paralysis, it’s like

Victoria Ferguson: Analysis paralysis.

Matt Mulcock: they’re like overanalyzing where should I put this money? How much money should I do is now a good time to invest? The answer is always yes. So I think there’s such a connection here to investing. And I think this, this concept that you’re saying of like, you keep walking and then all of a sudden, after years, you look back and you look at the horizon.

Matt Mulcock: You’re like, can’t believe the view. How many times have we. Talk to a client going back to an earlier section of saying, just trust the process, build a system, set up an automatic savings draft. And how many times will in Victoria, have you seen clients after a blown away, right? Looking back and being like, looking at the horizon of their investment portfolio and being like, Holy cow, I haven’t looked at this in two years.

Matt Mulcock: And. I can’t even believe it’s grown this much. Uh,

Will Gochnour: It’s not even the growth either. It’s like, well, yeah, grown in the sense of the market growing, but also just like the, the monthly

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, exactly.

Will Gochnour: A lot of that, what they’ve done. it’s just about like the consistent process of just keep swimming, just keep investing monthly deposits to the account. And it’s like, we have this software Morningstar that shows us the progress. And it’s really cool to show the graph of, it shows the cumulative contributions. And so it’ll show like, it looks like this staircase.

Will Gochnour: So every month. There’s this new contribution, right? And then it shows the value of the account. And it’s like this, we always explained it as a yo yo going up a staircase, but it really is, it’s like this line where the account balances and how much you put in. And I’ve talked to clients who’ve been clients for like four years and they’ve, you know, it’s, they came on board with the idea.

Will Gochnour: Zero dollars invested in there over a million dollars. And it’s just this, they’re just blown away. They’re like, how did we do this? Like, it doesn’t feel like we did that well the last three or four years, but

Victoria Ferguson: Just get used to it, you know, with the money being gone. Like, I mean, it’s kind of hard to get started, but then once you do, you normalize pretty quickly to it, to the savings draft, like it can feel a little tight at first, but then people just normalize what we do.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Well, and I, I would say even, if we, this is why we think this is so critical to stop every once in a while. We try to do it at least a couple of times a year at a minimum, once a year at the end of the year, we’re not just looking at investments and specifically performance, but looking at the totality of your situation, right.

Matt Mulcock: Looking at. How much debt have you paid off? Like that’s another one that I see all the time of like, just making regular debt payments. We track this for clients where we say at the end of the year on their quarterly report, we say, look how much you’ve paid off of debt as a percentage and a raw dollar amount, just from regular debt payments.

Matt Mulcock: Look at what your net worth has grown, has done from the savings drafts, from the asset growth and from debt reduction. I think taking a step back and as she says in this, like looking at the horizon and saying, oh my gosh, like, I think that serves as a motivating factor for people to build momentum and be like, okay, the middle part is really hard.

Matt Mulcock: Like that part of you’re like, why am I doing this? I think tracking progress can really help with that.

Matt Mulcock: Keep keeping motivated. So just keep swimming. What are the thoughts on this guys? If, if anything,

Will Gochnour: We got to do a Dory like shirt with just keep investing. It really is so perfect.

Matt Mulcock: Think we just, yeah, I

Victoria Ferguson: Should we do a podcast episode on investing and

Will Gochnour: It’s amazing. I want to send that clip to all my clients and just be like, just shut up and keep investing. That’s all you gotta do.

Victoria Ferguson: You should do it like acapella in your voice, just

Will Gochnour: I will do

Victoria Ferguson: Memos to your clients. Hey everyone, thinking of you. No context, just send.

Matt Mulcock: Yep. I love it. okay. We’re going to, I think, end with this section, if you guys are okay with it. I think this is a deviation from what we’ve been talking about this whole time, but I think really critical and I think a great one to end on, which is the world needs more friends. I don’t think there’s ever been a time in life that this is more critical to talk about.

Matt Mulcock: I’ll just throw it to you guys first. Either one of you. of what your takeaways from this, this part of it.

Will Gochnour: So the last chapter of the book is called like a friend or friend And so the entire like her she closes the book talking about this and one of Bruce’s like main philosophies was just like include everybody and this whole there’s this whole story about how like in China it was very not everybody was welcome to practice Taekwondo or the,

Victoria Ferguson: Oh, right, you needed to be

Will Gochnour: You had to be like a hundred percent Chinese, or

Victoria Ferguson: They found out that

Will Gochnour: From the right neighborhoods, right?

Will Gochnour: They found out, but Bruce was super huge on like, if somebody wants to do it, let them do it. Like it doesn’t, we’re not going to exclude anybody because of their race or upbringing or anything. And so that was his whole life mantra is like, Everybody, let’s just be friends with everybody. And so his quote is if every man would help his neighbor, no man would be without help.

Will Gochnour: I feel that if I can just take a second to make someone happy, why not do it? And yes, I think Matt, like today the world needs more friends. I, I love this part where it says. How we treat everyone is how we treat everyone. I don’t know if that’s like a good sentence, but she wrote that in the book and I really liked it.

Will Gochnour: It says, meaning you may be a good and kind person in the nucleus of your life, but maybe you just can’t stand that one neighbor and you’re cold to her whenever you see her. Or maybe you are dismissive of homeless people or you talk behind your coworkers backs or get annoyed with elderly people who move too slowly in front of you.

Will Gochnour: Or maybe you just don’t like people who have cats. Shout out, Ryan, Isaac, the

Matt Mulcock: The ultimate cat daddy.

Victoria Ferguson: The ultimate cat dad.

Will Gochnour: The point is if we’re willing to treat some people with disdain, then we’re willing to treat the people we care about with disdain as well. And we will, at some point or another, we’ll continue to make it all right to classify people into the good people and the bad people rather than just people.

Will Gochnour: And I’ll just read this cause she does a way better job. Saying this than I will. And she says, perhaps you can consider that the best way to affect change is by loving the people around you, the people that come into contact with you on a daily basis in your everyday life, give people the benefit of the doubt, treat them with compassion, accept them for who they are and live and let live while being a light and the model for what it is to be strongly and unapologetically kind.

Will Gochnour: So

Matt Mulcock: I love that.

Will Gochnour: it’s like powerful. I don’t know. And she, you know, she’s basically saying like, we all have the ability to use the word friend more often. And it’s going to lead us to the, I love the ending unapologetically kind, just being kind to people, you know, treating people with compassion, giving them the benefit of the doubt and being friends to all.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I love this. little, peek behind the curtain of, me and how, how I view people, I actually very much think. Or I don’t know if I’d say judge, but I think the way you treat, let’s say a gas station clerk or someone at the grocery store. This is something that my dad actually shout out to my dad, T.

Matt Mulcock: Tom. He actually listened to his first episode of this show a couple weeks ago. He told me, so he’s maybe listening. Uh, yeah, but he taught me this from a very young age, a lesson that I will be eternally grateful for, which is kind of what she’s saying. Like the way you treat those people is more important than anything.

Matt Mulcock: It shows you like how you approach life. Like if you’re able to treat those people. Use their name. And like, I think there’s a huge judge of character of how you treat everyday people in your life that you come across that have nothing to offer you. Like they’re just checking you out of the gas station or whatever.

Matt Mulcock: I think that’s a huge piece. So, Victoria, what are your thoughts on this?

Victoria Ferguson: Well, I think it just shows, like, like she’s saying, like, what you’re, what you’re capable of, like, if you’re willing to treat some People a certain way, but not other folks that way. It just shows, well, you’re a person that would do that. so I thought that was interesting. There was a part where they were talking about, an interview with Bruce Lee on, kind of his experience being like a Chinese immigrant in the U. S. And, you know, how the term like orientals was a thing and whatnot, and, and his commentary on that. And he was saying like, no, I just treat everybody with kindness.

Victoria Ferguson: And if Americans were to come to China, they’d experience the same thing. And it’s not like exclusively. Just an American thing. And so I thought this was like a really great quote, or just way of thinking to treat everybody the way that you treat people, not certain groups, a certain way. and I think he was somebody that like called people friend a lot, right?

Victoria Ferguson: Like he would just refer to people as, Hey friend, like, how’s it going? And so I liked that a lot, just kind of leaving your warmth in the world and treating people with compassion.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, well, and look in our work, it’s really easy to get lost in the numbers, right? It’s really easy to get lost in the spreadsheet and the goals and the, net worth, the balance sheet. But. It is, this has been proven time and time again, that we talked about this again at the summit. And we talk about this on content, which is the quality of your life is directly related to the quality of your relationships.

Matt Mulcock: You can be the richest person in the world, but you can also be extremely lonely and unhappy if you don’t have quality relationships. and let’s be honest, health. I think those are the two most important things beyond anything else. And those two things are totally interrelated, which is why I wanted to kind of end with this general section of, Like don’t get so lost in the spreadsheet and the numbers that you lose sight of literally the most important part of life and what makes it worth living, which is the quality of our relationships and the power of friendship and family and love.

Matt Mulcock: So did we get too philosophical there here at the end? I don’t know. Did we, maybe

Victoria Ferguson: Not enough.

Matt Mulcock: Will’s like, maybe.

Will Gochnour: Well, you know, the people need to hear it. I think it’s, I don’t know, I think everyone needs a little reminder. It’s good to just be kind.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah.

Will Gochnour: If you are kind already,

Matt Mulcock: Well, and it’s funny, we actually started doing this, right. Pretty recently, with clients and on a meetings, not every time, but I know like in our initial call, I know I started doing this. I think you guys have to just asking the question at the end of all of it. what are you grateful for?

Matt Mulcock: And I think it’s so amazing. It’s so amazing to see the people’s like faces when you ask that of sometimes maybe a little confusion, but also like actually kind of a, pleasant surprise of kind of like, thanks for asking that. It’s really, it’s really cool.

Victoria Ferguson: Typically you only get asked that on Thanksgiving and it’s kind of like a begrudgingly thing like all right We’ll have to go around the table and like say something before we’re allowed to like eat this delicious meal So I love asking new clients that question because it’s Met with a little confusion and then they light up and then they just kind of keep going and then you can see what they value, who they value, it’s amazing.

Victoria Ferguson: So, no, I think this stuff is really important in your overall health, financial health, mental health, emotional health, all of that.

Matt Mulcock: Love it. All right, let’s give final takeaways. Final thoughts, Will.

Will Gochnour: Be water, my friend, that’s it. That’s maybe

Matt Mulcock: Done.

Will Gochnour: It just hit me that these column people friends. So that’s why, I mean, I don’t know how that just hit me, but that’s the whole his friend.

Will Gochnour: So be water, be fluid, flexible, unfixed, and be friends with people.

Matt Mulcock: Love it, Victoria.

Victoria Ferguson: Go read it. It’s just, it’s really nice. it’s kind of a page turner just because there is so many, there are so many mic drops and I think everybody could relate to at least some message in the book, maybe not all. She makes a lot of martial arts references. And by the end of it, I was like, should I sign up?

Victoria Ferguson: Like, am I missing out? Like, and she talks about, you know, like his technique and like punching and stuff. And I was like, I don’t know how to throw a punch. Should I? I don’t know. Anyways, I’m being facetious. Go read the book. Everyone can relate to some piece in it. it’s a really heartwarming book and they just have a bunch of good reminders in it.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I don’t have much else to add. I think you guys said it. the only thing I’d say is just how interesting, how many parallels if you start to read any book like this with any type of like philosophical kind of wisdom to it, just how much is. Really the same thing just repackaged and that’s why I think it’s worth I agree with you Victoria like reading stuff like this Being a lot of it’s gonna be just reminders of like and almost seem obvious I think the wit like wisdom is generally something that seems really obvious But then I sit there and I always am thinking like, okay, it’s obvious but like am I doing this?

Matt Mulcock: Am I implementing this in my life? So It’s one thing to read it. And this is why I think the self help industry is like a multi billion dollar industry, because it’s like the psychological blanket of like, Oh, I feel like I’m making progress by reading this. But I think the next step of this is not only read the book, but take some sort of like intentional action as they talk about in the book, one step closer to actually implementing these lessons in your life. So, all right. Guys, this is awesome. Thank you for all the effort you put into the outline. thank you to our team for the thoughts they shared. I know it’s just us three, but the team shared a lot of great thoughts that we carried over and shared in this podcast. Thank you, Shannon Lee for what a great book.

Matt Mulcock: And hopefully the listener, hopefully you guys got something out of this. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to talk to us, if you want to share your story with us and see how we can help you, go to Dennis advisors. com click on the yellow. Book consultation button. we would love to talk to you.

Matt Mulcock: We talked to hundreds of dentists every year. even if it’s just a chat with us about how to be water, maybe we’ll impart some wisdom. I don’t know, but a friend come be our friend.

Matt Mulcock: So yeah, exactly. Thanks again for listening. will Victoria, thanks for being here till next time. Bye bye.

Keywords: Bruce Lee, purpose, process, goals, flexibility, adaptability, personal growth, goals, process, flexibility, friendship, kindness, relationships

Behavioral Finance, Finance 101, Getting Organized