Goal Setting for Dentists: How to Build Habits That Stick

On this episode of The Dentist Money Show, Matt, Jake, and Christine break down how dentists can set goals that stick by creating realistic, achievable plans built around daily habits. They explain why most New Year’s resolutions fail, how setting too many goals can backfire, and why focusing on the process matters more than chasing outcomes. Tune in to learn how to build intentional goal systems, stay motivated all year long, and create lasting momentum in both your personal and professional life.

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Podcast Transcript

Matt Mulcock: Welcome back to another episode of the Dentist Money Show where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m a guy named Matt. I’m here with Hot Take Jake and the wonderful, beautiful Christine Uhen Hello, both of you. How are you?

Jake: What’s up?

Christine Uhen: Hello.

Jake: great. Feel good. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Feels good, feels good. We’re gonna pretend like it’s the new year, even though we’re not recording this in the new year, we’ll be honest. Happy new year as you listen.

Jake: Happy New Year everybody. Isn’t there

Christine Uhen: Yeah, exactly. Happy 2026.

Jake: a bit about this like everyone says Happy New Year but you can only say that for what like the first week or second week into January?

Matt Mulcock: What is this?

Christine Uhen: What? I was just going to say, what is the rule?

Matt Mulcock: That’s a great way to start. What is the statute of limitations? I’ve asked this many times. What’s the rule? I think through January. I think so. You wouldn’t. If it’s January.

Jake: all of January.

Christine Uhen: Ooh, I wouldn’t go that far. I wouldn’t go that far. I’m bored by the 15th. I’ve already got the next year down and I’m writing it correctly. I’ll give it two weeks.

Matt Mulcock: Well, that’s okay. This is why we’re, that’s why you’re on the show, Chris. Okay. So you’re saying two weeks, Jake, what about you?

Jake: I probably agree. Yeah, I think about two weeks.

Matt Mulcock: Okay. I push it a little bit farther. Like, well, let me say this. I might not even say happy new year the last week of January, but if somebody said it to me, I wouldn’t think it’s weird. Like I think it’s weird when you get past January, like you’re into February. It’s like, no, we’re, we’ve moved on. We’re, now we’re officially into the year. ⁓ I think all of January is fine.

Christine Uhen: Mmm. Yeah, see you get to January 16th, I’m like, where have you been? You say happy new year to me on the 16th, I’m like, were you asleep in the last few weeks? What’s going on? Moving on.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Okay. All right. So the, the, W okay. That’s fair. That’s fair. The debate begins. like this. I I’m with you too. Okay. Minimum or you guys are saying two weeks. I’m saying two to four. I’ll give it a little bit of wiggle room there, but beyond January, does get weird. So I agree.

Christine Uhen: The debate begins. So I do want to say we need to meet again, say early February and see what we learned. Let’s revisit this. What happened?

Matt Mulcock: Okay. Yeah. Yes. I like it. ⁓ okay. Well today, as I’m sure you already figured out, we’re talking happy new year, which always comes with resolutions and goals. And there’s a very specific reason I asked you to, come on with me, ⁓ because I think you both bring unique insight and perspective and opinions on, ⁓ and just from a different angle around goals. Jake, you and I have talked a lot, just like personally, just in conversations around goals. And then Chris, same with you. You just bring such a unique perspective on like business goals and what Dentist should be thinking about when it comes to their practice, ⁓ and setting goals for 2026 and all that. So that’s what we want to talk about. And we, Ryan and I did an episode kind of in the theme of like refreshing episodes. As we’ve talked about the latter, the latter half of 2025.

Ryan and I did a goals podcast. I think we titled it goals are overrated. So we’ll take that for what it’s worth. We’re going to talk about from that angle. but we did a, we did a goals podcast about four years ago and we thought we would kind of, again, revive that, refresh it, bring it back and kind of use it as our baseline, ⁓ outline to go through this conversation. But before we jump into anything, I want to give you guys kind of first word on this, like just things that come to mind to set this up your intentions for this discussion around goals and the way Dentist should be thinking about this. Anything you guys want to say.

Jake: For it Chris.

Christine Uhen: I’ll start. ⁓ again, New Year’s resolutions, I think, are a misnomer. I don’t believe in lifestyle, big sweeping goals at the beginning of the year because the calendar turned over. And as we’re hearing this in January, again, happy New Year. But the idea of having a direction, I think, is important. I think a goal, but I also think a goal without a strategy or a plan is just a dream. So if I’m going to have a goal or something that I’m working toward, that’s important because it gives us purpose. But I also need to think about why did I choose that goal? So the understanding that goals are good when they’re well thought out and there’s a good reason behind them. So I can do that personally. I can do that in the business. Personally, if I am looking to lose weight, I can’t just say I want to lose weight. I want to have a specific goal, measurements along the way. Is it achievable? Do I have a time to this? So the SMART goal process, I think all of that has value, right? But personally and then professionally too, I should be, I can have business goals, but why am I choosing that thing, that number, that result? What’s motivating that? And is that healthy, SMART, measurable, all of that.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, you’re going with the smart acronym. Yep.

Christine Uhen: So I think there’s great reasons to have personal and professional goals. I’m in.

Matt Mulcock: That’s great. Jake.

Jake: I agree. mean, Matt, you’re probably going to get into some data and stats, right, that we probably have here. Do you guys think that there’s a limit on how many goals someone can set? Like as we’re starting this new year and most people say like, okay, here’s my resolutions for the year, my goals, you we can use those interchangeably. Is there data around that? Is it like one or two? Okay, Matt, I’m curious on this.

Matt Mulcock: Absolutely. Yes. Yes, there is. Well, not so.

Christine Uhen: Well, and I couldn’t agree more. Too many, you’re not gonna be focused, right? You aren’t gonna, I mean, what do you wanna get to and why? And what if they’re conflicting? What if you find out that my weight loss and my desire to go to six different restaurants with my spouse in the next year, those might be conflicting.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, that’s good point. Yeah, that’s a good point. So I don’t have data necessarily on what is the ideal number of goals. think I’ve read in the past and I think this just kind of maybe is partly my own bias and feels somewhat intuitive that beyond three to five, I think you’re pro just in general. think you’re probably, you know, it’s going to be overkill, but I will say Jake, we’ll talk about this, but one of the main reasons we’ll, we’ll talk about data around. success rates of resolutions. One of the main reasons that people fail when it comes to resolutions is they set too many that is in the data. So.

Jake: Yeah. So as we’re going through this, think a framework for me in talking about goals or resolutions as always, I think the exercise of writing down maybe three to five goals of like what I want to accomplish this year, here’s what I want to improve my life, whether that’s in the business or financially or health related, we’ll get into the different nuances of setting goals for different aspects of our life. But I think it could be a good exercise to just identify what’s most important to you. It’s like, I’m going to list out three to five things here that I would like to improve about my life. Maybe I can’t get to all of these and that’s overwhelming, but what of these like three to five things, what’s one or two that I feel is going to make the biggest impact in the short term? And I just think we always talk about on this podcast, living with some intention, having some direction and just the idea of thinking about how I want to improve and sitting down, whether you’re sitting down or going out to lunch or do it, however you decide to do this. I think that just starting to think about how you want to improve your life is a great way to be more intentional and to… So like just that conversation alone, I think is encouraging as we start this new year here.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I think it’s a really good point, Jake. And this brings up, I had a conversation with a couple of good friends of mine recently, and this got brought up around this exact topic goals and setting habits and trying to be healthy or whatever it is. And my friend, I have not confirmed this. So take this for what it is. But my friend said that he had been reading about this and that one, one of the things that he read was that the, ⁓ the success rate of goals or habits actually increases. and this is maybe a bit counterintuitive because we’re, always thinking about things to add to our life with resolutions. Usually I think where it’s like, I’m going to do this. I’m going to add this. I’m going to read more books. I’m going to, whatever it is. ⁓ I’m to go to the gym more. ⁓ he said the studies that he’s been reading recently talked about your level of success goes up when you actually focus habits and goals on things you’re going to cut. So it’s like things I’m going to cut out of my life as opposed to things I’m going to add to my life. And I thought that was actually interesting. We can talk, maybe talk about that as we go through this, but I’m with you, Jake, think at its core, I used to do this a lot where it’s like, I’m going to do these 10 things. It’s showing to be a totally different person just because the calendar now says January one as opposed to 12, 31.

But I think, yeah, less is more in this situation. ⁓ but Chris, and then there’s a reason I, again, I wanted you on here because I think you’re a huge believer in goals. And I think there’s some, some, some benefits to talking about that perspective. So this is a great setup guys. And so, so Jake, to your point around data, I want to, I want to hit this, just share some data with people. This, this data has been going on for quite a while. Like this has been pretty consistent. So let’s just talk about resolute.

Christine Uhen: What? This isn’t a new topic?

Matt Mulcock: This is not a new topic, ⁓ but this data is pretty consistent as far as what it shows. You can pretty much see this across the board. you go Google this and find study after study, after study, the success rates of resolutions. So it ranges, but it’s pretty, pretty tight window. So on average, the range of success is nine to 12 % success rate. So nine to 12 % of people who set new year’s resolutions actually achieve them. Is that higher or lower than you guys sort of thought or about what you, you had to pick them at 10%.

Christine Uhen: I would have picked 10. I would have picked 10 % one out of

Jake: Isn’t it funny? Yeah, it’s my cynical brain. think that’s high. Yeah, nice. I’m just like, that feels even high to me. Yeah, pretty good.

Christine Uhen: 10, one out of 10. More than I thought.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. You’re like, wow, that’s actually pretty dang good. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: No, I would have guessed him.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. I, that, that, I mean, I’ve been, we’ve been talking about this for years now, so I kind of, I’m not surprised by it. Right. And I, I agree. I would have probably, if somebody asked me, I’m like, yeah, that makes sense. ⁓ I want to ask you guys, I, I was actually been thinking about this. Do you, do you think a lot of this is because, ⁓ The satisfaction for most people comes from just the actual setting of the goal, not actually execute. Meaning it almost just feels good to be like, I’m going to set these goals. And it almost feels like you’ve achieved something just by doing it. And then two months later, you’re not even thinking about it again. I think that actually contributes to a lot of this. And also just maybe the cliche-ness of, go ahead, Chris.

Christine Uhen: I think this. Yeah, being a part of, right, this is what we do at the beginning of the year, so I’m feeling good about that, but I think this brings up Jake’s point or reinforces Jake’s point, the exercise of putting down some ideas about goals has value. It is beneficial. I do feel good that I’ve taken the time and thought through it. So I do feel there is satisfaction in the creation of that, so I concur. Now, sadly, when only one out of 10 comes to fruition, that’s the further dialogue of why is that happening.

Jake: Yeah, I agree with both of you. I actually I think yes, a lot of people were like, I’m going to set goals and write and write those down. And that makes me feel good whether I accomplish those actually or not. But I do think there is just value in writing down the goals. Like, it’s like what is the old saying, just like just acknowledging or trying to live with there’s probably some subconscious like is if you actually sat down and wrote out or typed out goals, whether you like have a plan for accomplishing those goals or not, I think it probably subconsciously changes your behavior somewhat throughout the year. Just like I know that in the back of my mind whenever I’m going throughout my day, these are the things that I wanted to accomplish. So I actually do think there’s some value in it, really.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah,

Christine Uhen: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: that is interesting. ⁓ and actually the data supports this Jake, when you say that because 50, this is a, from a 2007 study, right? So older study, but it did again, it confirmed the, confirmed the success rate around 10%. But interestingly enough, it said, ⁓ 52 % of the participants, only 52 % said they were even confident at the success when they set the goal, which is interesting. And it kind of confirms, I think what you’re saying is that.

Christine Uhen: Ha ha.

Matt Mulcock: There’s still value in it, even if you’re not fully confident you’re going to achieve it. I almost wonder, it’s funny as you say this, I’m like, there’s kind of the famous saying, ⁓ a problem, a problem defined as a problem half solved. It’s like a goal defined. it, could it be a goal defined as a goal half achieved? It’s like, as long as you’re defining the goal, that’s half the battle. And, but then I think what we want to talk about today is.

Jake: That’s it, yes. Yes.

Christine Uhen: over here.

Jake: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: I think the big focus of today is, okay, how do we actually increase the success rate? If you’re going to set goals, what’s a way you can actually increase that success both in the business and on the personal side.

Jake: Yeah. At the very least setting goals I think narrows your focus. Right. At the very least it’s like OK these are the things that I think I want to focus on have some clarity around which I think can be helpful.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, totally. Yeah. Go ahead, Chris.

Christine Uhen: Well, self-awareness is the start of things too, knowing that this is what I write the intent. I’m actually starting to create some intent to this next year, to my life, whatever that might be. And that’s important. There’s value. There’s a lot of books about self-awareness. So that is accomplishment in and of itself.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, totally. ⁓ let’s talk about really quick. We already, we already hit one of them on one of the re and I think, cause I think it’s informative. I think it’s informative to understand the reasons for failure from these studies and can inform people of like how to do this better. So let’s, let’s hit really quick. We already talked about one of them being too many resolutions. that’s one, ⁓ another one, ⁓ that people talked about, ⁓ the study show is that people setting unrealistic goals. So. ⁓

Christine Uhen: Great start.

Matt Mulcock: Said, I think it speaks to that whole idea of like, if you’re sending a goal that you’re saying there’s a 50, 50 shot or less that I’m going to even achieve this thing, that’s probably too, too unrealistic. ⁓ I know for, I’ll just share this from Dentist advisor standpoint, our leadership team meets regularly and talks. set goals every quarter. call them rocks. ⁓ but same thing. And our goal as a leadership team, as a company is 80 % success. Meaning if we’re setting a goal, we know if we set whatever a minute goals for the quarter, for the year, we’re going to miss about 20 % of the time. But if we’re hitting 80%, we’re moving that we’re making progress. We’re sitting, we’re hitting the goals we want to, or getting the results we want to get. So, but unrealistic goals is a big one. Do you guys have any thoughts on this one? Have you ever set an unrealistic goal?

Christine Uhen: Thoughts on that one. Well, and again, how do I know what’s realistic or unrealistic? So this is become this goes back to and I’ll just stay from the business side. Well, I’ll stay even from the personal side that you know, if I have a goal of losing weight, so there’s a personal goal. Is it unrealistic to say I want to lose 100 pounds in a year? And that’s pretty specific though, right? I want to lose 100 pounds. But making that more specific and putting it on a timeframe allows me to say, oh, I can’t do that by March, right? Even if realistically, I can’t do that by March. Cause if I want to accomplishment, I want to make it realistic. And is it, so I’m going to stop with that one, but from a business side, when I’m looking at what is my goal for next year? So let’s just say I want to grow 10%. Well, what is my history of growth? Right? What, What’s my track record? If I don’t know a history of what I’ve been able to accomplish and how much, what if I grew 20 % last year and I didn’t even know it? And now this year I want to grow 10. Well, is that good or bad? It’s not good or bad. It’s, is it going to solve the problem that I’m really trying to accomplish? Growth for growth sake isn’t what we’re looking for in a business. It’s like, what’s the business situation and are we trying to solve a problem? Are we trying to accomplish something? Are we trying to… fund my life, my personal lifestyle more so out of my practice. So it’s like, again, it’s that why behind it. A goal for goals sake doesn’t make sense, personal or professional. So why am I doing this? What am I trying to accomplish? And then on the personal side, same thing. Is there, you know, I will just share, I’ve got a big trip coming up in September and I wanna, you know, maybe lose 10 pounds by then. So I’ve got a very realistic, understandable, valuable, accomplishable and time-bound goal. I know why because I’m going on a trip you know for my birthday. So I’ve got my motivation. I’ve got my why. Now the whole process of how I get there we can get into another time but I do believe realistic accomplishable goals are important but also what’s driving that. That’s what’s going to keep them going over time right.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I think it’s huge.

Jake: Matt, think you asked about what would your question to us about? Do we set goals or have we ever?

Matt Mulcock: Have you ever set an unrealistic goal?

Jake: Yeah, so I’ll play my role here. I can start with playing my role, I think, on this podcast. I generally am anti-goal in general. OK, that’s a big sweeping thing there. We can get into the nuances of that. I don’t set goals really personally. If we’re peeking behind the curtain into my life here, I’m not a big goal setter. A lot of times I do think that people will set goals just to set goals, right? Talking about unrealistic goals and do you set those? I think you’re like, oh, it’s the beginning of the year in order to feel good about myself like we were talking about, need to set these five goals, right? That I’m going to accomplish. And oftentimes they’ll just set those goals and move on and won’t think about them ever again. Or maybe they’ll try half-heartedly for one for the first half of the week. I think sometimes when my issue with general goal setting is just that they’re general. Like I think people will set goals because they think they need to and they’re setting goals that other people told them they should set, right? Like everyone’s like, I need to save more money this year. I need to get in better shape and I want to make more money. And I just want to do all those things. I just want my general quality of life to increase. It’s kind of what they’re hoping for or praying for in these goals here. And I just don’t know how helpful that is. I feel like most people are already working towards most of those things anyway. Like most people are striving to be more healthy usually, striving to make more money, striving to have their personal finances in order. Like this is a general motivation that most people have. And so I’m just like setting Having a goal saying I’m going to get in shape this year, I just don’t know how beneficial that really is. Does that make sense?

Christine Uhen: I concur

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I’m with you. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: With that completely. But that’s also because it’s not specific. First of all, why do you want to get healthier? Is it because I want to live longer? Because I want to fit into this outfit for my 20 year class reunion? Very, very superficial on that one. But why do I want to get healthier? Right? Because I’m supposed to. Because America says I should. Because my, or do I want to play with my kids? Right? So it’s like, why? do want to do this? Number one, that motivation I think is critical with these general broad sweeping goals don’t count. That’s a dream, right? In my definition of a goal. So and again, I’m going back to that specific and time bound, realistic, achievable and measurable. All of that matters when it comes to setting goals or they are, I would agree, worthless to have them other than the 50 % value of writing them down. So I’m aware of them. I’ll give you 100 % on that. Writing things down has value and thinking about it has value. But then accomplishing them is a whole other piece to go. Why have a goal if you don’t have a plan? Then you have a dream. Yeah, someday. When do know you’re done? You know, when, how do you know you’re healthy? Where’s the measurements of that? How’s that being defined?

Jake: Yeah, very good.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: So again, my role on this podcast, you have brought a strategist into this conversation where my entire career is about making plans. So that’s my take on

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I’ll go ahead, Jake.

Jake: Which might this is great because I think we can get into talking about goals in different areas of your life too. I think it’s important here. So I’ll talk to the personal finance that are working with dentists about okay personal finances. We need to set some in quote unquote goals. I want to talk about this even that word here a little bit too. It’s like hey we need to have some framework around where we’re going. I do think goals are beneficial in that sense right where it’s like we have to have some direction about where you want to go. But the thing when it comes to personal finance side of it is oftentimes personal finance goals can span decades. If we’re planning for financial independence or retirement or we’re trying to predict maybe when do you want to cut down on the practice or expand your practice or all of these other things that tie into it. And as we know, things change so often. This is why goals sometimes I say are futile on the personal finance side of things. It’s just so much is going to change not even five years from now or 10 years from now or 20 years from now, like the world is going to be a completely different place than it is now. Interest rates are going to change. We’re going to have recessions and booms and busts and the stock market is going to do this or that or crypto is going to rise and go away or whatever. We’ll have four different presidents. And so there’s so much guesswork involved. It’s really hard to get concrete about we’re going to create a perfect little spreadsheet that’s going to determine exactly how your financial life is going to go from today to 20 years from now. And that seems a bit unrealistic. The only thing we know for sure when we create your financial plan is it’s probably going to be out of date in a couple of months, honestly, right? So we value the process of planning, kind of the process of doing this rather than like a long-term view of like, okay, what’s the best things we can be doing today? Can we focus on just where is your current income and current savings and spending? Let’s make the best use of your funds right now. And then typically, if we just keep doing that month after month, you’re going to end up in a pretty good place so we can maybe get more detailed as we go along there. And so that’s where even I come from, from a professional just on the personal finance side of things is yes, we need some sort of directions. Like even if we want to use the word goal, I would almost like call it guesses. Sometimes with clients and people I work with, like, can we just make a guess about what we think you’re going to want in the future or where we’re headed? And let’s get a good guess about the future. And then today we’ll get really concrete and really detailed about how to utilize your budget. And then we’ll just kind of keep evolving and keep tweaking over time. But we’re not beholden to like one ironclad path that we need to follow. Sorry, I spewed a lot of you guys there.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. No, I think that’s great. I think that’s great. I think you’re both speaking to, I don’t think there’s anything that you actually, you guys are saying that’s actually in opposition. ⁓ I think we’re all saying the same thing, which is the way you set goals and why you’re setting goals matter. But what I hear you saying, Jake, and I tend to agree with you. My, my thoughts on goals have evolved a lot over my life, depending on the phase in life I’m in or what I’m focused on, whether it be health and fitness or career or whatever. My, my views on this have evolved a ton, but I tend to what I’m hearing from you, Jake, and I agree is like goals. You’re calling them futile. way I think of is like goals have a shelf life. Like at some point, like if, if you’re only driven by goals, I think one of the, and let’s be honest, we’re talking to type a people who are probably big goal setters for, and, and, and one of the reasons why they are where they are being dentists is because.

Jake: No, they’re not going to like me. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: They’ve had, and I actually think this is one of the issues we see is dentists from early on in school and they decided they were going to be dentists. They have goals in school. I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to, I got to get to this level. I got to get into dental school. I got to, if I’m to go ortho or whatever, then you get out. It’s like, okay, what’s my next goal? I’ve actually talked to a lot of dentists that have this kind of existential like, ⁓ well now I’m kind of like, what do I do now? At some point in their career, it’s like, You can’t, I think it’s hard to always have goals be the main thing that’s driving you. I think is what you’re saying, Jake. There’s some shelf life to it.

Jake: Yes. And if we’re just diving a little more on the personal finance side of things too, personal finance is an interesting subject because I think a lot of us think like my personal finance goals is to stockpile the most money as possible, right? Kind of by the end of my life. That’s kind of just natural kind of like business finances and things like how can I just make as much money as possible when that’s really not the aim of personal finance? The aim of personal finance is to try and identify What do you want out of life? Do you have an ideal lifestyle? Do you have things you value in your life? And can we try and make the money that you’re making support those things to help support your lifestyle as much as possible? And so this also gets into like when our goal setting on the personal finance side, it’s not like again, we can get into talking about retirement and that big hairy goal and things like that. But oftentimes I’m like, well, we just want to figure out what do you want out of life and how can we support that? But the issue there I find oftentimes is people don’t know what they want out of life, which is interesting.

Matt Mulcock: People don’t know. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: They want different things as a couple too. That can be challenging.

Jake: Yes, or they just want what their friends think they want. Like you asked him, like I’ll ask people all the time. Like, OK, let’s set money aside. Let’s just say like you’re at financial independence. You you won the lottery, whatever money is not an issue for you. How does your life change or what are you looking for? And oftentimes what I get are really broad answers like, I don’t know, I think I would like to go on more vacations or I want to spend more time with my family. You kind of get the stock answers that you think they should be saying. And what that identifies to me is most people don’t have.

Matt Mulcock: Could be.

Christine Uhen: Mm-hmm.

Jake: Like a specific I want this type of thing. And so they’ll default to like I just need to get my collections in the practice, the X amount or I want to get this much of my brokerage account and just more tangible goals to set towards. I just don’t think anyway, I it’s just interesting where I don’t know if we really know what we want on the personal finance side of things. So therefore, goals are a bit again, back to my futile thing. Like I it’s I don’t know. It’s a conundrum for me, I guess, in my mind.

Matt Mulcock: I don’t, I want to get Chris in here. have thoughts, but I want to get Chris in.

Christine Uhen: Well, and I hear the conundrum and I’m appreciating, I’m writing some notes on as you’re both talking, goals have a shelf life. I will use that forever now, Matt. Thank you for that. That’s time bound. But that’s the point about time bound and that, well, I’m gonna give you credit for three times then it’s mine. Okay, so goals have a shelf life. But I also think, you know, the futile and they’re not guesses, they’re ideas. This is my idea now. This is my thought now. This is my.

Jake: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great.

Matt Mulcock: Perfect. Good. Okay. I probably stole it from someone. The directions,

Christine Uhen: Current state of being now. And again, I couldn’t agree more that planning is a process, but that process should have. So let’s go back to using personal finances. Again, retirement readiness, that whole idea is definitely a big thing. But what can I do now in this timeframe of this year? Right, so I want to save 5 % more over this next year. Why? What’s gonna keep me putting money aside, what’s it for? Is it a problem I’m solving, something I’m gaining tour, something that I can give up to achieve that because I might be better off doing that, right? We heard that earlier. So this small little goal, again, a specific solo goal of 5 % increase in savings could be a process of different habits that I’m gonna do, that I do daily, that I do weekly, that I do with my family. But again, why? Because I’m doing it, because that’s going toward the Disney trip. That’s a big topic here at DA is do we go on the Disney cruise, right? So am I saving for that? Am I saving for a thing? That is motivating for me personally on my personal financial side. I have an account, my husband and I, that we put money into for a trip every two years. But we don’t go out to dinner as much, right? Because we’re funding that. We do different things.

Matt Mulcock: Hahaha.

Christine Uhen: To fund that. That is something that’s important to us to give up other things. So that one goal that is specific, it is time bound because there’s an end to it, which I think is important. For the next 12 months, this is gonna be our focus. Then the process of doing it. So these different things that can happen along the way that I can see, I can feel, I can feel good about. That is also when you have the longer goals. If you don’t have little measurements and milestones along the way, it becomes, why did I do that? What goal did I have? And so I lose that focus of doing these little things that I said were important because that goal is important enough.

Matt Mulcock: No, I think it’s great, Chris. And I think, again, we’re highlighting what I’m hearing as we go through this is none of us are saying goals are worthless. Like we’re not saying goals are worthless. I think what we’re saying is the way, I’m hearing from you too, and I totally agree is, and tell me if I’m wrong, is that where we fall short a lot of times as a people, as humans, when it comes to achieving like growth or success or, you know, successful goals. I think part of it is, ⁓ Chris, what you’re highlighting is we don’t have a really foundational concrete why. ⁓ and I think Jake, you’re saying the same thing. It really just comes down to like, there’s foundational work that needs to be done before we, before, like goals are like the top of the pyramid kind of where it’s like, there’s things that we need to be doing prior.

Christine Uhen: Yes.

Matt Mulcock: And then goals are great. think in short-term like bursts or stints of like, want to get X done, like whether it be losing weight or, I’ll call myself out as, something I’ve denied in myself for long time, but I’m admitting like I’m a gym bro. love lifting weights. And back in the day when I was really focused on it before my back surgery, ⁓ I had very concrete goals of like, I want to hit this weight. ⁓ and I think those can happen in stints, but It’s those aren’t sustainable when it comes to what you guys are highlighting around like long-term fulfillment in life business or otherwise.

Jake: Yeah, I think maybe from my point of view, we just make a mistake when we try to, I guess, predict with our goals, almost even predict the outcomes. And we can talk about setting goals around outcomes or setting goals around processes, which I think is a different type of thing where it’s like oftentimes a personal finance. It’s like I have, I’m going to predict like if I do this, this and this, this is going to be the outcome 15 years from now. And I would try and step away from that thinking of we actually don’t know what the outcome is going to be. How about if we just focus

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake: Concretely and like in the short term like what we want to do and let’s say like a process here And let’s out let the outcome almost take care of itself type of thing there Let’s see what that’s going to be like if we’re relating it to the gym. I would prefer goals I think around like I don’t want to the goal should not be maybe correct me here Like I want to get in shape or I want to lose X amount of pounds I would almost prefer a goal that says I’m gonna go to the gym for 30 minutes a day that’s my goal and whatever you have been whatever the weight loss is or the

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yep. Inputs versus output. Yeah. Input.

Jake: Results of that I’ll live with it. But my goal is 30 minutes a day is what I would like to do. Does that make sense? Yeah

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead,

Christine Uhen: And it goes back to the why.

Matt Mulcock: Chris.

Christine Uhen: Am I trying to be healthy? That gets your butt doing something every day, right? Or do I want to lose weight? Then there’s the exercise and the diet and all those things that go along with that. again, it goes back to the why. What is motivating you to do this? What lifestyle change are you trying to get to? So. Well, there’s another thing about I want to run a marathon versus be a runner, right? So there’s that whole idea of this thing that I want to get to, or do I really want to be the person that if I really, really wanted to, I could run the marathon, but I want to be a runner. So that’s the other thing, right? Do I want to be, do I want to accomplish a goal or do I want to be something different? I want to change the process?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I think that’s Yep. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Do I want to change how I’m living my life to be the person I want to be? And that might be my goal.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, you’re alluding to James clear. Let’s be honest. He’s just become he, if you have not, if you’ve not read it’s not my habits to me, it’s if you, if you never read, if this goes into the self-help category, which it probably does, if you’re not a self-help reader, that’s fine. ⁓ if there’s any self-help book that you want to read to me, it’s atomic habits. I think it’s the, the best of its category. ⁓ and probably the only one you’d ever have to read. I read it every year.

Jake: I was gonna say atomic habits, yes, is this.

Matt Mulcock: I just think it’s a good refresher every year and it’s what you’re, it’s what we’re alluding to now. It’s he talks so much about this, like the outcome chasing that you’re referring to Jake versus what you’re speaking to Chris of, ⁓ the P becoming the person I want to be. And then he’s got an incredible line in there, something that the effect of every habit is a vote for the person you want to be. So he talks a lot about systems and habits and

Christine Uhen: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Kind of what you’re saying, Chris, like the Y is who do I want to become? And as opposed to saying, and creating this outcome chasing mentality of like, I’m going to run a marathon, which by the way, who would ever want to run a marathon? Sorry. I just like, I don’t, I don’t understand that one. A lot of runners. know. Okay. Well, good friend of mine neighbor and

Christine Uhen: Shh, there are a lot of runners. There are a lot of runners in our audience. Yeah. ⁓

Jake: with you. Everyone listening in, all of our runner dentists are gonna hate this. know.

Christine Uhen: Bless your heart, I wanna be you.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Good friend of mine neighbor and, ⁓ just a good friend, Eric, know who you are. The ultimate runner. You’ve never met anyone like, like winning ultra ultra marathon type level. And, ⁓ I tell them all the time. I’m like, man, I how you do what you do or why, but everyone’s got their thing. ⁓ but ⁓ speaking of, I’m just going to shout out Eric really quick. He’s coming up on his 53rd birthday. I just talked to him the other day. You know what he does on his birthday? You want to do this? He runs a mic.

Jake: Yeah. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Alright. Runs a marathon?

Matt Mulcock: He runs a mile for every eight, every year of age he is. So this, yes. And guess what he does? Cause I live right next to him. He doesn’t go like run from point a to point B. He just runs a lap around the neighborhood. That’s exactly one mile. So he’s coming up on this. He’ll already have done this. He did it a couple of years ago and I watched him on a Saturday and he was, he did it like 53 miles and in a loop.

Jake: He’s gonna run 53 miles. ⁓

Christine Uhen: 53 times.

Jake: So he’s going to run all day. 53 miles is all day.

Matt Mulcock: You’ve never met someone at this level of mental toughness. It’s just insane. ⁓ there’s, there’s levels to this, ⁓ shout out Eric, you’re the man, you know who you are. ⁓ but so, so, but to this point it’s, it’s outcome chasing versus setting a, ⁓ setting habits around the person you want to be. I think the latter is so much more sustainable and fulfilling. Jacob comes back to what you were saying. One of the problems is, ⁓

Jake: Good for him.

Christine Uhen: Shout out to Eric. Let’s get some video of that.

Matt Mulcock: Being too rigid in the outcome of like, well, there’s so many things you can’t control. And so yeah, being rigid about the outcome is gonna set you up for failure almost every time, even if you achieve whatever thing you think you’re gonna achieve.

Jake: Yes, that’s what I wanted to get to, yeah. Yeah, or it could lead to this may not be everybody, but it’s like, okay, I’m going to set this goal for this year. I have specific things around it. like, if you don’t like you maybe in that scenario only feel satisfied if you’re in pursuit of that goal, right? It kind of boxes you in a little bit where it’s like, this is the one thing that I wanted to focus on. said it. I’m only thinking about this thing. I’m kind of like, well, what are you missing outside of that? Are you giving yourself an opportunity to pivot that goal or change halfway along the way or you know, find satisfaction in the journey, which I know is cheesy, but we always talk about of like, this is why like systems or processes or daily habits feel better. Like, Hey, what do I want to improve generally about my life? What do I feel like a little bit lacking? How can I try small things every day to do that to make me feel better about myself, to enjoy life a little bit more. And I’ll let the outcome be the outcome type of thing.

Christine Uhen: And interestingly enough,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, go ahead, Chris.

Christine Uhen: if you talk, so let’s stay with the, you know, the weight loss idea, but this whole idea of, if I set a goal and it’s, you know, I want to lose 50 pounds in a year. Well, what if I lose 45? Did I fail? No, I did not fail. Okay. Y’all went, yeah. And I’m like, no, ah, yeah. Okay. So this was a,

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I’d say absolutely. You did not fail. Yeah. We said, as a res no, no, no, we said, yeah, as a response to your great question, but I’m realizing

Jake: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: that no, the answer is no, you are not a failure. No, the answer is you are not a failure. Yeah. Not a failure.

Christine Uhen: came out wrong and don’t do that to a girl. So, so, so this all comes down. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So the, so, but this process, let’s go back to that process and the fact that what I did to get that point, right? Even to have that much accomplished, I did certain things along the way. And why are we not measuring those little things? So I’m going to twist this around to the business side now and say, If I have a goal of growing 10 % in collections, I need to reverse engineer this to, well, what does that mean? Does that mean I work more hours? Does that mean I change my productivity, my procedure mix? Do I change case presentation and acceptance? They’re different, what we call lead indicators. So if I’m successful at the beginning, these behaviors that change, then if I change my diagnostic and my case acceptance, ⁓ ratio and I’m looking at how I’m presenting it, I will get better case acceptance, which will turn into greater productivity. So I’m actually not focusing on the production growth, but I focus on these lead indicators, the behavior changes that I, as the business owner and my team do together to impact the results in the way I want them to. And I have, I can honestly say when we stay focused on the lead indicators, we have greater success than what was originally planned for that goal. That 10 % goal turns into more because again, the other part about goals is when do I feel accomplished? Do I feel accomplished when I’ve accomplished the big goal? Like if I’m motivated by that big goal and I’m willing to wait the year to say I made it or not, that’s one way of assessing success.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Another is can I say every month I’ve done certain things every month. My case acceptance has gone up by 5 % every month. most team feel better about smaller goals more often that they accomplish along the way and they get motivated and energized and then they’re more than exceeding that big goal at the end. So it’s also about what’s going to motivate on the business side your team little goals and I feel good about them as I go. Maybe I didn’t make it this month, but I’m going to do better next month, that kind of thing versus the big goal at the end and the reward is at the end. So that’s also important when you’re talking about creating growth goals in a business, in a dental practice in particular.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake: I think that’s super smart Chris on the wealth building side where it’s most people have this big hairy goal of retirement, right? Or financial dependencies like I need to grow to get to this big number and everything I’m doing is working up towards this thing. The problem with that thinking though of just locking myself into I won’t feel good until I get to this number is what’s going to happen is your whole life is going to happen right before you get to this number. And what we need to be focusing on instead of like, yes, we need to know what that number is and how like, you know, generally we want to get there, but we also need to be living life and getting satisfaction along the way too. Right? Like this is not just like, we’re going to put life on hold for 20 years until we get to retirement and then we’ll feel good. It has to be, this is what we’re working towards, but along the way we have permission to enjoy life and experience things and all of that jazz. Right? So that’s also the dichotomy of goals there. We need the direction, but we also need permission to be happy now.

Christine Uhen: or an idea. ⁓

Jake: before we’ve even accomplished that biggest goal.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, I think what you’re both be, I couldn’t agree more. think what you’re both speaking to is like where we’ve already established the why matters, the work being done of the why that’s specific to you and not just copying everybody that that takes a ton of work, but then where your focus goes and like the role that a goal plays in your life matters. So again, Jake, you said it earlier that I think goals serve a purpose of setting direction of like putting you in an area or focus of like Okay. Where am I headed in, you know, just a general kind of sense. ⁓ and for some people, maybe they’re more specific than that, but at the very least they’re going to set a direction. But then Chris, I love what you said is like, okay, we got that. But Nick, now where does our focus go? That matters more than anything. And it’s what you’re saying, Jake, it’s the inputs. It’s the, it’s the daily habits. It’s the system. That’s where the focus goes. Cause yeah, again, personal wealth is the, is obviously the personal well side is Most people aren’t going to hit these big goals for decades. So if that’s what you need to be happy, you’re going to live a pretty unsatisfied life. And that’s going to, that’s not a way to live in our opinion. And that is just comes down to what your attention is put on. Like where are you putting your attention and your focus?

Jake: Yes, which is what we talk about a lot. Yes, and intention, which is like, instead of like, even what we can do is I know there’s this, you know, big retirement goal, instead of working solely towards like having enough money for retirement, maybe we can focus on the short term ideal lifestyle, right? What does ideal lifestyle look like? And there’s usually a path to get there a lot easier sooner than this is my actual retirement number that I need to get to. And so that’s also on the personal finance side, something to focus on.

Christine Uhen: And your intention. ⁓

Matt Mulcock: Your intention, yeah. Yeah. So to kind of clarify or to like summarize that point you made Jake there’s of course quotes So one from James Clear fantastic. I think this sums up what you just said About systems for school, but he says when you fall in love with the process rather than the product You don’t have to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running That’s what you’re saying. It’s like if you focus on the habits and the system You can be satisfied

Jake: Yes.

Matt Mulcock: along the way, it also gives you permission to be like, this isn’t going to be perfect. You know, it’s not every day is going to be great or perfect every week, every month, every year. It’s am I moving towards, is my system running? I love that kind of phrasing of this. And if it is running, whether it be on the personal well side, the business health, personal growth, if your system is running towards progress. ⁓ and he has a whole thing of like never miss twice, like

Jake: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: It give yourself some flexibility in that system. But as long as it’s running, you can be satisfied. It’s like, I’m moving, I’m moving forward. And I love that line of thinking.

Jake: Yeah, it also gives you permission to keep

Christine Uhen: And don’t you feel that their stress level comes down when they know they’re on the right path? I I think I’ve again, I’ve seen that from the business side that when they see that they’re, you the early signs, the lead indicators, I’m doing fine, my team’s engaged, then the results will be there. The confidence is there. And then their stress level goes down. And I don’t know, I just feel everything is better when the owner doctors are, when their stress level is down.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: Better with their team, they’re better with their patients, they’re better with their families, and the results just turn out to be better too from the financial side. So I think that when processes are in place and they’re confident in the processes, and to be honest with you, that’s where 80 % of the value is in the business, in the internal processes of team, patients, and systems. All of that matters in the long-term value wealth creation of the business.

Matt Mulcock: Organization. Yep.

Jake: Yeah. Now to contradict myself, I know there’s people listening to this or like, I think there is power and being like, I want to lose 10 pounds in like two months and I’m just going to do whatever it takes to get there. Like sometimes he’s like really short, really specific goals can help put us there. last year I had, I think it was February or March. I’m like, I’m not going to have sugar. This whole month was like my thing. Like I just wanted this really concrete. I have too much sugar in my life. I just want to see what it does to me. And I didn’t have sugar for a month and spoiler alert, it was awesome. I got a lot healthier, slept better, all this stuff. didn’t my life after that month, I just had I went back to having as much sugar as possible. Right. Kind of before that, it didn’t change anything for me long term, which is kind of my angst towards sometimes when he said goals like we’ll set something will accomplish, man, wax revert back to who we are or daily habits, which is why it’s really important to focus on is like, again, what do I want my life to look like? I don’t want my life to have not have sugar in it. That’s kind of what I landed on. ⁓

Matt Mulcock: Whiplash effect.

Jake: But I do want to like realize I think you can kickstart a lot of things by like, I’m going to quit doing this for three months or I’m going to do this thing for three months and really just cold turkey go after it. And that can try and help change your behavior a little bit. So I do understand like the value of putting a really strong concrete goal in the short term can be awesome for behavior.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. And, and let’s be honest, people listening to this, ⁓ we have to, maybe we should have started with this as this is personality as well. Like I know people personally in my life who are very close to, I’m very close to who are very goal oriented and very, very successful. And you could, are they, are they satisfied? Well, are they satisfied in their life? Questionable, but like, you know, I, and I do think that is a risk truly.

Jake: Yes. Because they are type A. Yeah, that’s the funny thing. Yes.

Matt Mulcock: Of even people who are goal, like super type a goal oriented. I I’ve seen this so many times is there again, there’s a shelf life to that being the main driver of success. I’ve had many, many conversations in the proverbial kind of quiet corners on zoom of these type a very successful people who’ve achieved more than they could have ever imagined. And they can, there’s kind of a paradox here because they look back and they say, well, I’m here because of my goal oriented mindset, but now I’m unsatisfied with the results because of my goal oriented mindset, because now it’s the only thing that ever drove me. It’s who I am exactly. And I’ve, I’m thinking of specific conversations of people who, again, in my life, clients or friends or otherwise that are wildly financially successful. are beyond financially independent and they’re still calling me frustrated because

Jake: Yes. That’s who I am and I’m just gonna keep setting goals and keep setting goals.

Matt Mulcock: They didn’t get the returns they wanted on a specific stock. Cause that’s the only thing that they know how to like, that’s the only framework they’ve ever been able or the only muscle they’ve ever worked on, if you will, is like this goal oriented next to the next and the next to the next. At some point that’s just, or that mindset I think breaks down and you’ve got to re you’ve got to have a new operating system. I think I can’t be the only, yeah.

Jake: Yeah, to me.

Christine Uhen: Well then, go ahead, Jake.

Jake: I just say to me just really quickly, does feel like life in general, spanning across all these categories is more than just like boxes to be checked, right? Like goals to be done. Like life is more than just an accumulation of I accomplished these 30 goals over the last 30 years. It feels like it should be more ⁓ lived in than that more, again, like I said, process oriented day to day than just accomplishing goals. Anyway, go ahead, Chris.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, go ahead Chris.

Christine Uhen: More about the being than the doing, right? Who am I being versus what have I done? And then again, just some of the more recent conversations I’ve had with doctors, as they’re looking to sell their business and retire, it’s like, well, now what? What am I gonna do with my life? And so purpose needs to be, again, more than just work because that at some point will end.

Jake: There you go.

Christine Uhen: And in a good way, right? And we hope it does end before you end, right? That is why we save money to have a life after work, right? And so again, but if you’re not living now, and that’s the horror stories we’ve seen, the 20 years of sacrificing time with my family, vacations away, whatever, the living now to save for later, and now I’m not able to, I don’t know what to do, because I’ve never done anything else but work. That’s the sad story. So again, I think this is where Dentist Advisors takes a very different approach than many financial planning company have. It’s not just saving for the future, it’s about living now. Having a plan and a process in place that’s constantly being updated. I’m going to go back to that timeframe. I don’t think anything more than 90 days is really accomplishable if we don’t break things down to a 90-day sprint, if you will. And we’ve seen this in different organizational structures from

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: EOS to walking with destinies EPI all those different programs that talk about 90 days What can you do in 90 days and then you get a new one? Or finish this one. So it’s that shelf life really, you know has stuck with me here timing

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. There’s a lot of studies on that too, Chris, you know, the EOS system. that’s what we use at Dentist advisors is, is there studies that support the 90 day kind of attention span being, being something, in your system. And one thing I’ll mention too, Chris, that you said is we do think, we do think of things differently at Dentist advisors, but our goal is to find the intersection between the kind of table stakes spreadsheet things that need to be done around. Like you do need, like the numbers do matter, right?

The numbers do matter and we’re not saying just kind of shoot from the hip. Who cares? It’s all going to work out. We do need to have the foundational numbers and saving systems and investing strategies and all this. But I think we’re a lot of other, feel what makes us unique in a lot of ways is getting, bringing the other side, like highlighting a lot the other side and finding the intersection of the spreadsheet and the real life. And cause you don’t live in a spreadsheet and I don’t care what the Monte Carlo tells you.

If you’re not doing the work on the real life side, then the numbers don’t matter. So it’s finding that intersection there for sure. Um, I want to come back to something that you said, you said, Jake, was thinking another, another good book, certainly to read, would say in 2026, um, that speaks to what you were saying earlier. Um, is, uh, Simon Sinek it’s called infinite, infinite games, I believe, or infinite game. And I think one of the fundamental issues here, a lot of times kind of big picture, what we’re talking about is all the goals that people set, the categories of goals people set. We all know it’s money. It’s so it’s finances, it’s health and it’s career. Like those are the three. And if you, what Simon Sinek talks about is these are all infinite games, meaning like you don’t win. You don’t win health. You don’t, there’s no like winning health. You don’t win personal finance. You don’t win career. You don’t like.

Jake: You don’t win personal finance either. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: You don’t win parenting like as a parent to young kids, both you and I, Jake, like I’m never winning parenting. It’s and, but those are the things that we’re trying to always improve on. And I just don’t think goals are always like, I think that’s been one of the fundamental problems is like goals create this outcome, win or lose type mindset. And all the categories we set goals in are unwinnable infinite type games. I think that’s one of the problems here too.

Christine Uhen: And indefinable. How do you define winning of any of that? Well, and my definition of winning is going to be different than than y’all’s too. So that’s so personal. Right? ⁓ wow. Good point.

Jake: Yeah, so I would just like, yes.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. You can’t. Yeah. Exactly.

Jake: Yeah. It’s just like the same with the health goals. I think the health thing is easy to identify where it’s like, I want to lose 50 pounds this year. It’s like, okay, well, let’s see you accomplish that goal. Then what’s next? It’s like you won, like really what the goal should be is like, I actually just enjoy going to the gym every day and it makes me feel good and makes me give me better mental health and physical health. And so instead of having this goal, what I actually need to do is like change my life. I need to change my habits and change what I want. And the ironic thing about that is you’re going to be awesome.

Matt Mulcock: Yes.

Jake: healthily down the road. The people who enjoy what they’re doing every day are going to have the most success. Same with on the personal finance side, we’re saving for retirement or financial independence. The people who just have a good, a sustainable structure around saving and they’re saving a good amount of their money, a right percentage for their income, they’re going to end up in an awesome spot down there. You don’t even need to worry about the financial income network because if you’re putting away 20 % of your income and you have a healthy spending rate and that’s sustainable to you and you can keep repeating that year after year, you’re going to outperform all you might win quote unquote, right? You’re gonna get to that point. And so yeah, I think that’s a focus on just like lifestyle. What do we enjoy doing rather than like, this is my one goal that I’m gonna work towards and then I gotta find another one out.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Let me, I’ll go ahead, Chris.

Christine Uhen: Well, certain things give up. There’s no balance of that, right? If I’ve got to focus on one thing, something else is going to be less focused on. And that’s a conscious decision of I am going to focus on this. Something else is going to get less focused. So those, again, you got to weigh that with your behaviors. And I think changing little things in your behavior doesn’t mean you sacrifice everything on the rest of my life, right?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Christine Uhen: good on you for giving up sugar for a month. know myself. You tell me I can’t have something. I want it more. No, you can’t have pizza. Watch me. You know, I’ll find another. I’ll find other food. I just got to eat less. It’s all about a trade off. That’s right. That’s exactly right.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah.

Jake: I know, it was great.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Jake: This is the hard thing is life’s all trade-offs. It was great. I was way healthier that one month, but then it’s like, I really just like candy and I like ice cream. And it’s like, I’m actually not willing to give up that health that I had that month to not have ice cream. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: And exactly. But now

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah.

Christine Uhen: You know that maybe modifying, maybe I won’t have the whole pint, I’ll have a half a pint and I’ll have it every other day, right? But that was an experience that was worth having. ⁓

Matt Mulcock: It, it

Jake: I know, I know.

Matt Mulcock: But once you start, you… Yeah. So this is such a good conversation guys. ⁓ I want to summarize a couple of things we’ve said, and I have a weird, another quote, from James Claire that I think, ⁓ sums this up. So let me actually read this and then we can kind of summarize. Yeah. I don’t think we’re, I don’t think we’re at James Claire’s level. but, ⁓ he’s he, yeah, he’s, he’s amazing and he’s got, he’s, I’ve said this before, if you don’t follow his.

Christine Uhen: I hope he’s a listener. That’s what we’re him. ⁓

Jake: Can you imagine?

Matt Mulcock: Newsletter. It’s so incredible. If you don’t follow Jake’s newsletter, by the way, truly follow Jake’s. No, it is very good. ⁓ Jake, what is it reminded the people?

Jake: less incredible, but yes. It’s called it’s a Substack newsletter. It’s called money talks if you want to search on there. You can also just search my name on Substack and you can find it. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Money talks. Yeah. Yeah.

Christine Uhen: money talk.

Matt Mulcock: So check that one out. Check out James clear. He’s just called three, two, one. He brings it’s so good. ⁓ but let me summarize this quote and then we can all kind of close out with our own words. ⁓ so from James clear, the purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goalless thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It’s about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress. ⁓ To me, that kind of summarizes what we’ve talked about is I like what he says, the true long-term thinking is gold is thinking, but that doesn’t mean that goals cannot be used in the short term to as part of that overall system.

Christine Uhen: Mic drop.

Jake: Mm-hmm.

Matt Mulcock: Of refinement and continuous improvement. think goals certainly play a role. think what we’ve all established and are agreeing to is a lot of times either the pressure we put on ourselves and the use of goals, like the improper use of goals, I think is one of the biggest things that we’ve talked about tonight, tonight, today, guys, my mind has gone. ⁓ the, the, the improper kind of focus.

Christine Uhen: All good.

Matt Mulcock: around what goal, what a goal actually serves in the overall system and process, I think is a huge part. I just love that quote. think it summarizes it very well, but I’ll give you guys final words and thoughts.

Jake: Let me go really quickly because then Chris, she’s going have a better thought to finish this out. I agree. think you also summed it up really nicely for me. That’s where I’m coming from. I’m not going to come on here be like, goals are a bad thing. They’re not a bad thing. It’s good to set depending on the context and things. I would just say on the personal finance side, I think it’s good to free yourself up from thinking, I know exactly what’s going to happen over the next 20 or 30 years. I’m going to try and predict interest rates and economies and stock market.

Christine Uhen: No pressure.

Jake: and savings rates and my personality changing and how many kids I’m going to have and all those things. I think it’s freeing to be like, I don’t need to predict any of those things. What I need to do to accomplish my goals is the best I can today. Like look at my current situation. How can I best utilize my money and what I’m doing now? And I do think the future will take care of itself if we can just keep saying the best thing we can do now. So that’d be my personal finance spill on goals is what’s the best thing we can do now? We don’t have to worry about exactly what’s going to happen 20 years from now.

Matt Mulcock: Have a system, Yep. Go ahead, Chris.

Christine Uhen: I’ll say from the business side. First of all, Jake and I did a great webinar from September. So there’s a whole hour’s worth of information of setting goals for a business on our library, on our website. So there’s some good details in there. But conceptually, keep them smaller. keep them realistic, I’ll go back to the SMART goals, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound, and engage your team in those goals. But I think the 90-day sprints is important, staying on the behavior change, those lead indicators of if I make changes in behavior on a daily basis, it will make a bigger impact long-term than if I put one big goal in there and hope I get there. Hope is not a strategy.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. So good guys. Honestly, you guys are brought such insight. knew this conversation would be valuable and helpful. ⁓ and did not disappoint. I learned a ton. So this is selfishly for me. I love these conversations. ⁓ I want to, ⁓ invite everyone. ⁓ when we talk about these things, if you’re hearing this and you’re thinking, man, I want more of this, I would love to be with like-minded people to have conversations like this. Uh, you might be interested in the Dentist money summit. have a third annual Dentist money summit. We’re changing the location this year, this year, and we’re leaning much more into, uh, kind of the get out of your normal routine, get away from the grind of work, get into a beautiful place, which is going to be midway Utah, uh, bring your family and enjoy the outdoors of, Utah. We did it in park city the last couple of years, but

Honestly, I’ll be honest from, from what, ⁓ what we’re trying to accomplish with like get out and golf, get out into the mountains. The activities are actually going to be even better in midway. So we’d love to have you out for the dentist’s money. Some of the theme this year is going to be practice on your terms. And so fits very well with a lot of stuff. We’ve talked about the work to be done of figuring out what that even means for you. So we’d love to have you at the dentist’s money summit this year in June, you can check it out at dentistmoneysummit.com to register or just get more information. We’d love to have you for now. ⁓ Jake, Christine, thanks for being here and sharing your wisdom. Everyone. Thanks for listening. If you’re still here, of course you’re one of the cool ones. Thanks again. Happy new year. I think we can still say that happy new year till next time. Bye bye.

Christine Uhen: Thanks everybody.

Keywords: goals, new year, resolutions, personal finance, dentist, success, habits, SMART goals, intention, continuous improvement.

Getting Organized, Tracking Progress, Year-End Planning