Looking for a Quick Buck or Real Wealth? – Episode #329

Do you daydream about finding a quick road to riches? Or, like Warren Buffet, do you know, “There is nothing wrong with getting rich slowly.” On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan and Matt explain why patience is required to create wealth. Designing a well-thought-out plan—and sticking to it—will ensure you have a better chance of building real wealth.

 

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of The Dentist Money Show, brought to you by Dentist Advisors, a no commission, fiduciary, comprehensive financial advisor just for dentists all over the country. Check us out at dentistadvisors.com. Today on the show, Matt and I are talking about impatience. But I don’t even wanna waste all the time talking about it, I just wanna get to the show. So, check out today’s show on impatience in our investing, in our careers, in our paying off debt, and the ways that it shows up in our lives and some of the things we can do to fix it. Let’s hurry up and get to the show. If you wanna talk to us, dentistadvisors.com, click on the Book Free Consultation link. Thanks for being here, enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consultant and advisor, conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by Dentist Advisors, a registered trade investment advisor. This is Dentist Money. Now, here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
And welcome to The Dentist Money Show, where we help dentists make smart financial decisions and avoid the bad ones along the way. I am Ryan Isaac, and I’m here with Matt, the Hollywood Mountain Mulcock.

Matt Mulcock:
Wow, sounded like the dude that does all the intros to the fights. It’s like a family, it’s like a father/son, whatever. Dang, what’s their name? It just left me.

Ryan Isaac:
The thing…

Matt Mulcock:
Oh my gosh…

Ryan Isaac:
The fight thing…

Matt Mulcock:
The fight name, the fight announcer guy.

Ryan Isaac: I know who you’re talking about. I’m glad for that, I am glad that my voice is used for something productive. I used to get in trouble as a little kid, for talking too much in everything I ever did and being a class clown and making up jokes and using humor when it wasn’t appropriate and…

Matt Mulcock:
You were that guy too?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
That was me.

Ryan Isaac:
My whole life, dude. Are you being serious?

Matt Mulcock:
By the way… 100%, always on my report card, it was like… They gave you the grade and then gave the behavioral like… I don’t know how you guys did it, but it was like numbers one through five or whatever. And then they leave notes, I was always the class clown, I was always the person that was like, the teacher would write, “If Matt would just calm down, everyone else would follow. He tends to rile everyone else up.” That was me.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes, a 100%, “Distracts his neighbors.”

Matt Mulcock:
By the way, Michael Buffer is the name, and Bruce Buffer, I believe, was his dad. Anyway, so that’s who you sounded like.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, the…

Matt Mulcock:
I had to look it up, or it was gonna bug me.

Ryan Isaac:
The family tree of UFC fight announcers.

Matt Mulcock:
And he gets into it. If you’ve ever seen a UFC fight, a boxing fight, oh my gosh, they get into it.

Ryan Isaac:
Nobody takes it more seriously, except for us.

Matt Mulcock:
Except for us. It’s who we are.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks, everyone, for being here. Thanks for joining us on another episode. We’re excited to be here, we’re excited to record this other episode.

Matt Mulcock:
As always.

Ryan Isaac:
Today, we’re gonna talk about something, but we’re gonna start with a couple of stories here. We’re gonna talk about… I wanna talk about one of my favorite movies of all time, all time. And I haven’t yet showed these to my kids, I’m not sure it’s kid-appropriate yet. I’m pretty sure it’s not.

Matt Mulcock:
It is. For your oldest, your 16 year old?

Ryan Isaac:
It is? Okay. Yeah, Matt says it is. It’s the movie, Office Space. You remember watching that, right?

Matt Mulcock:
Heck, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, I’m just checking real quick…

Matt Mulcock:
I was guessing… Are you checking where it was set?

Ryan Isaac:
I wanna see where it was set…

Matt Mulcock:
I already did, I found out.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Austin?

Matt Mulcock:
It was set it Austin, but it says, “Office Space was meant to be set in Anywhere, USA.”

Ryan Isaac:
Anywhere. ‘Cause the opening scene, I was gonna say, ’cause I’m gonna talk about this. The opening scene looks like it’s like 405 Orange County traffic.

Matt Mulcock:
It probably is.

Ryan Isaac:
It does, it looks like Anywhere, USA. There’s a chain restaurant, there’s the busy freeway, there’s the mundane office. If you haven’t watched Office Space…

Matt Mulcock:
Do yourself a favor.

Ryan Isaac:
Just push stop and go watch the movie, Office Space, and your life will be better. But if you have, there’s the opening scene… Oh my gosh, what is the guy’s main… It’s Peter…

Matt Mulcock:
Michael Bolton?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, Micheal Bolton. But it’s Peter, he’s sitting in his car. He’s the main character, one of the main characters.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Peter’s sitting in his car and it’s bumper to bumper traffic, and he’s frustrated and he’s late to work, and he’s just like… He’s got that look on his face, he’s totally mad. We all know what this feels like. And he’s sitting there and it’s like, it keeps showing his foot. It’ll pull out the camera would go to his foot, and he’ll push on the gas and stomp on the brakes, and would kinda jerk forward a little bit. And then he’ll get mad and frustrated. Then he starts looking around and he notices that the lane to his left is moving, it’s open. So, he…

Matt Mulcock:
We’ve all done this, people.

Ryan Isaac:
Changes lanes, looks over and checks his blind spot, pushes the gas, and then as soon as he gets in the lane and pushes down on the gas, boom, it’s done, it stopped. He pushes on the brake pedal again and he’s like… Jerks forward, and then he’s mad. And then the lane he was just in, he looks over to his right…

Matt Mulcock:
Starts moving.

Ryan Isaac:
It starts moving again. And there’s this part in this opening scene where he looks over on the sidewalk, which is kind of weird ’cause they’re on a freeway, so I don’t get this part. But there’s an old man with a walker and he’s [laughter] passing all of these cars.

Matt Mulcock:
Just sauntering along. [laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
He’s passing all of the cars. And so, this goes on for a few minutes and he just goes back and forth, and a few of the characters in the movie are in the same traffic. But he goes back and forth, he’s switching lanes. Every time he switches.

Matt Mulcock:
The old lane switcher, we call him.

Ryan Isaac:
Every time it goes, he stops and then he looks and the old man with the walker is way down the road. He’s made so much progress.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s like, what is going on?

Ryan Isaac:
So first of all, watch the movie, if you’ve never watched it. What does this have to do with anything? What does that have to do with money? What we’re gonna talk about today is, one of… It’s probably one of my biggest characteristics that I battle with, I am totally this person, and it’s a very human characteristic. Not baldness. It’s impatience.

Matt Mulcock:
[chuckle] We’re gonna talk about male pattern baldness today.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s impatience, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about how impatience shows up in people’s lives and how they deal with money, and a little bit about why we think that happens. Some of our observations on some of the most common places where people take out their impatience in their finances, in their money, in investing. And some of the things I think would be helpful to… Just some feedback on maybe how we can combat some of that impatience, but I’m just a self-admitting impatient person. I am the person who will, when I need to make a purchase, I will take the purchase that gives me 80% of what I want, ’cause I can get it now, versus 100% of what I want and have to wait.

Matt Mulcock:
Yup, I’m the same way.

Ryan Isaac:
All day long. My wife is the total opposite. She will be like, “No, I want the green color, and it’s not here for four months and I’ll wait.” And I’m like, “Blue is fine, I’ll take blue,” you know?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
All day long. And sometimes I regret that, honestly.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I mean, we’re the people… Because again, my wife led the charge on this… Where I already alluded to this a while back, we bought a couch. She, first of all, searched for months, then ordered the couch that was going to take nine months to get here. Now, part of that was COVID, totally, but there was other couches we could have had sooner.

Ryan Isaac:
All day.

Matt Mulcock:
But this was the couch she wanted. In the interim, we bought a new house and had to switch where the couch was going. That’s how long it took.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
But I would never have done that. I would have gone to RC Willey…

Ryan Isaac:
You wouldn’t have. What’s in stock, yeah, what’s in stock.

Matt Mulcock:
And then like what’s on the floor…

Ryan Isaac:
Right now.

Matt Mulcock:
Can I buy that? That looks cool? Is it pretty comfy?

Ryan Isaac:
I do that all the time, all the time. And sometimes it helps you get what you want, sooner and you get to take action faster than someone else want to, but oftentimes, it can be a detriment. So when I think about impatience, that opening scene of Office Space is just one of the…

Matt Mulcock:
It’s so good. I wanna go watch that movie.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. We can all relate to that, and it’s just… It’s the classic human condition of feeling of sitting in your lane, metaphorically too, and looking at everyone else’s lane and being like, “Their lane is so much faster, I’m just gonna go over there,” and then you go over there and then that lane is faster and… I mean, look, anyone that’s ever attempted a health or fitness or weight loss goal of any kind, we know what this feels like. Usually in life, the most meaningful types of progress are pretty long, hard-fought battles, unless it’s Bitcoin. And…

Matt Mulcock:
Unless it’s crypto, of course.

Ryan Isaac:
In which case, I’m losing that battle right now with the rest of you, so I commiserate. But I think about that all the time and… Okay, so as I was thinking about that, we’re gonna dive into this. I was also thinking about a tweet that you and I love, from one of our most famous, or favorite and famous finance writers and tweeters and bloggers, a guy named Morgan Housel. And this was back in 2017. I still have it in my little note app on my phone.

Matt Mulcock:
: It’s so good.

Ryan Isaac:
He tweeted a picture… If you wanna just picture this with me, he tweeted a picture of the S&P 500’s total return since 1871. I’m looking at the bottom of this chart. So left to right, X-axis, we have years 1871… And this went through 2015, and then the Y-axis or bottom to top, just is the growth of the S&P 500. It’s basically a green, very small, squiggly line that just goes up from left to right, like a staircase. It just goes up.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s like a mountain.

Ryan Isaac:
It looks like a mountain peak that is just not gonna stop going up, from left to right. And so, it’s this chart, he tweets this picture of this chart, “S&P 500 total return,” and then he writes a book called, Shut Up and Wait. Each page is just this chart.

Matt Mulcock:
I love it so much.

Ryan Isaac:
And it’s funny, because he’s a writer who in his career, literally was writing very, very well-done blog posts daily. To this day, he still writes weekly, and has written probably one of the best finance… Behavioral finance books on the market. So, this is a writer.

Matt Mulcock:
My favorite money book, ever.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, for sure. So this is a writer, saying, “Here’s a book idea, it’s called Shut Up and Wait, and every page is one chart.”

Matt Mulcock:
Just 200 pages of this.

Ryan Isaac:
Of one chart. And the chart is like, “If you wait… ” assuming you’re doing it right, “If you wait, you’ll be okay.” So let’s jump into this impatience thing. I can relate to it, I think a lot of people can relate to it. And I wanted to dive in first to… I found this really cool article on… I love the website, the blog, Psychology Today. This blog post was written by a PhD. Shoutout to Jim Stone, you know Jim pretty well.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, good old Jim, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. He wrote an article called The Seven Laws of Impatience, and 10 Questions to Ask Yourself When You’re Ready to Bolt. Maybe you can put this in the show notes or something because this is… It’s really cool. I wanna highlight a few of these things, because I kinda wanted to point out. I ask myself this same thing, like, “Why am I so impatient? Why don’t I wait for the green surfboard? Why do I just go get the blue one, when I don’t really want the blue one, but it’s on the floor right now? I can just take it home in my car, but I really want the green. Why don’t I wait?” Why don’t any of us wait for our goals to come to fruition? Why don’t we…

Matt Mulcock:
I mean, I have an answer for that one. It’s cause colors don’t matter, when you’re surfing the waves, bruh.

Ryan Isaac:
When you don’t actually know how to surf that well, how cool your board looks, matters.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Actual surfers are like, “Shut up, dude.” So yeah, these are great questions, and so I wanna just go through a few of these really fast. I won’t go through all seven. But a few of these are like… They’re just really good reminders about why this happens to us. And I guess let’s just say really fast, what are some of the common areas of impatience of people, humans, dentists, clients? I’ll say that one of them is, for sure, practice growth, new dentists…

Matt Mulcock:
Building a career.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, building a career. There’s a whole other podcast in… Right where I wanna do on this whole is it really gonna work? Do people really have good careers? Or does this really work? I wanna do a whole thing on that, but when you’re young and you’re starting your career, and if you’re a dentist, you’re loaded up with debt and you’ve got all this stuff ahead of you and you see people pull it off, but it feels so far down the road, you can feel really impatient with like, “Okay, am I really just gonna show up to this building and just do bread and butter dentistry for how long?” And then, “Does it work? And is this… Shouldn’t I go change something really fast?”

Matt Mulcock:
Shouldn’t I go buy some real estate or something?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, like switch it up somehow. What are other ways people are impatient with their money or finances, that are common, Matt, that you see?

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, investing is huge for me.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, yes, easily.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. So it’s obvious answer for me.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, like bouncing around, right? Like, “Hey, I’ve owned the stock market for eight months.” Like…

Matt Mulcock:
What’s going on?

Ryan Isaac:
What’s going on?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I actually love the analogy of the lane switcher and… First of all, that’s so relatable, that’s why I love that. That movie’s old. I don’t even know. 90s or something…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, probably the 90s.

Matt Mulcock:
But it’s an old movie, but it still very much relates to today, where you hear that… Even if you’ve never seen the movie, you hear the situation, you’re laughing to yourself… I’m laughing at myself thinking, “Man, I’ve been there so many times.” But what I love about that analogy and when it comes to investing specifically is that… You alluded to this. The people in the other lanes, you’re looking over and you have the perception. That’s the key here. You have the perception that they’re moving at a faster pace than you. They’re getting to the destination quicker, and then you switch lanes and then all of a sudden it’s like, “Oh, but now they’re moving faster.” And it’s all just perception. You’re just tricking yourself thinking that other people have it figured out and you don’t, and that is borne out in investing maybe more than anywhere in money. It’s like, “Oh, my brother-in-law is doing this option strategy and he’s got it figured out and I’m just doing these index funds or this or that,” and you think someone else has it figured out, so that forces you or you force yourself to just switch lanes all the time, and then the old dude with the walker passes you.

Ryan Isaac:
It passes you. I was just… It’s so true. Investing is probably the thing we take it out on most, with our impatience and even as seasoned investors, this year, so we’re recording this in end of February 2022, and it’s been funny since… The market’s been great, up until January 1st or whenever the market opened at the beginning of this year, and then from this arbitrary point of time of the beginning of January till now, we’re in technically what’s called a correction, actually. And it’s funny because this happens every year, when there’s a market movement. We as humans, assign meaning to these arbitrary pieces of time. We start saying, “The market’s doing bad.” Well, I guess that’s true. It’s declined, relative to January 1st. Right?

Matt Mulcock:
Sure.

Ryan Isaac:
But why aren’t we comparing it to the beginning of… I don’t know, July of last year or two years ago.

Matt Mulcock:
How about January 1 of 2021?

Ryan Isaac:
A year ago.

Matt Mulcock:
How has it done since then? Yeah, a year ago.

Ryan Isaac:
Why not the last 10 years? Why do we do this arbitrary thing, and that’s kind of this impatience thing like, “Oh, maybe this isn’t working,” and we know why. There’s a lot on the line and there’s a lot that goes into this and it’s crucial, but impatience with investments is a big thing. I think impatience with paying down debt, I think that’s why you see people scramble to do maybe not the most rational things with chucking lots of money at debt really fast, because it feels so insurmountable. It’s like this huge amount of money that 20 years from now, is gonna be gone. I feel so impatient. There’s some extra money in checking this month, let’s just throw extra money at the debt, this whatever and…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, do something. I just wanna see progress.

Ryan Isaac:
Do something. Change lanes, I don’t care…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, gotta do something.

Ryan Isaac:
Just change lanes. By the way, episode 176, this was back with the old Reese Harper. We talked about this changing… [chuckle] I think we even talked about the same movie.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, did you?

Ryan Isaac:
Yes, and we brought up, there’s this study done on Discovery Channel. I think it was Myth Busters actually, where they tested the different lane-changing theories and they busted those myths. So just FYI.

Matt Mulcock:
So we’ve repeated this story, but it’s worth repeating.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I don’t even remember what we did a month ago.

Matt Mulcock:
Dude, I don’t remember what we did last night, and it was a webinar…

Ryan Isaac:
200 episodes ago. Yeah, you don’t know.

Matt Mulcock:
I blacked out.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Okay, back to the psychology thing. So one of the things I thought was cool is, this article says that impatience is triggered when we have a goal and realize it’s gonna cost us more than we thought, to reach it. So like…

Matt Mulcock:
I was just looking at that one, number two on the list, that to me is…

Ryan Isaac:
What comes to mind when you think about that? Yeah, there’s the goal, but oh the cost is higher than I thought it was going to be. Man.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I just think of the fact that I’ve talked about this a lot, I think about this all the time that humans love the idea of things, and we often see the result. I think of this whole idea of overnight success, or we hear these stories about these big business successes or let’s take dentistry. You see the result of this speaker on the stage, you see them in this moment of success being like… And they’re going on and on and on about their success, and you look at that and say, “Oh my gosh, I love that idea. I want what this guy has. He’s got a multi-specialty, 15-chair practice, he’s talking about his 45% profitability rate and how you can do it too.” So you love that idea, you love that result, but then you get into it, and what you’re not seeing on the stage, even if he’s saying he or she is saying it, you’re not feeling that. All you’re seeing is the shiny object like, “I want to get there.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I want that.

Matt Mulcock:
And then you start to think, you get into the process and you think like what that says is, you become impatient because the cost of getting to that stage of where that person is preaching to you, is a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of doubt, a lot of sleepless nights. That’s what you don’t realize is the cost of that success. We do see the result.

Ryan Isaac:
Matt, you’re a squatter?

Matt Mulcock:
I once was a squatter.

Ryan Isaac:
Once was a squatter. It sounds like a children’s rhyme.

Matt Mulcock:
Yes, it does. [chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
Honey.

Matt Mulcock:
Old Matt was once a squatter.

Ryan Isaac:
Old Matt, the old squatter. I have also tried to be on squat programs because you sounded really cool, to squat 100 pounds more than I normally do, and I [chuckle] remember multiple times with my gym buddies being like three weeks into a heavy Squat Program, just wanting to die and then quitting. Because it was like, “Yeah, this is going cost me a lot more than I thought and I don’t really wanna squat that bad.” [chuckle] Which leads to the next point, which is impatience motivates us. This is in that blog post, to reduce the costs of reaching our goal or to switch goals entirely.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I don’t need that.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re like, you know what I think I’m good.

Matt Mulcock:
Squat 600… I can squat 200, I’m doing that already.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m fine.

Matt Mulcock:
I’m done.

Ryan Isaac:
And it does… It motivates us as humans to find… We’re kind of like water. We’ll find the path of least resistance. And it’s dangerous… There’s another point in here that when that kind of impatience is mixed with… They use the word indignation… We’ll just use emotion. When that kind of impatience is mixed with emotion, that’s when an investor will go, “Yeah, this isn’t working.” They say that stock markets get good returns, but it’s been a year… It’s been two years. And… Although in the last 10 years, he wouldn’t have said that if he had a decent portfolio.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. No, no…

Ryan Isaac:
But you know…

Matt Mulcock:
No one one was saying that. But… But… Really quick, we talked about it before…

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
You might not be saying that about the financial markets that it’s bad, but sometimes you kind of are, because we’ve joked around how the stock market over the last… Especially the last two to three, maybe five years has become boring. Like 20% rate of return annually for the last five years has become boring. ‘Cause now, again, in the other lane down the road over there…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. What’s that crypto lane doing?

Matt Mulcock:
What’s that dude doing in his Shiba Inu coin or his other doggy coin? You’re seeing that, you’re hearing these crazy stories of 3000% return over a weekend.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
And all of a sudden you’re like, “I wanna get in that lane.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
And so, that’s exactly what’s happened. So even though it’s not… Like context matters, and people put themselves in this idea of like… Okay, 20% rate of return, if you did that… By the way, guess what? Warren Buffet’s rate of return annually, over his investing career, is about 20%. He’s now, if you haven’t heard, a multi-multi-multi-billionaire…

Ryan Isaac:
He’s made it.

Matt Mulcock:
But again, you see that and you’re comparing it to this other thing, and this other lane, and all of a sudden it’s not good enough for you.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, so it’s this whole like… It feels like the snowball rolling down the hill and just gathering more and more snow, and getting bigger and bigger, which all these is kind of triggered. We’re starting to realize it’s gonna cost us more than we thought. Then we start to realize that maybe we should try to reduce the cost or change our goals.

Ryan Isaac:
And then when we mix it with emotion, then we start making decisions that might not be in our best interest. For example, you finally have a big emergency cushion in the business checking. It took you three years to build that or a pandemic, when the government gave you some money. And you decided, because you were stressed that month about the student loan, to just send it to the student loan… Maybe you didn’t pay it off, but it just felt good. [chuckle] It didn’t change your payment, it didn’t change your rate, it didn’t pay it off, but it felt good.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, that might not have been the best decision. Or maybe you decided, because of some market volatility, that you’re gonna stop saving that month, or that quarter or whatever. Or you’re gonna pull some money out when you don’t even need it. So this impatience mixed with emotion… It’s a bad combo. And you were just talking about this, another thing they mentioned here is that, impatience mixed with more options… We’re more likely to feel impatience when there’s a lot of options.

Ryan Isaac:
So if there’s a one-lane road and there’s traffic, you’re like, “It was a one-line road… ” Or what am I gonna do? This is the lane. But if there’s five lanes, then you’re more likely to just bounce between those five lanes. If there’s the market, and then there’s real estate, and then there’s crypto, and there’s DSOs, and then there’s land development and there’s whatever… What’d you say?

Matt Mulcock:
Well, I was gonna say… I look at this is when I see this… You look at today’s age of investing, and social media and 24 hours news cycle, and… There’s never been more information out there for us to consume, whether it be investing or otherwise… About the Kardashians, or whatever you want to… There’s a lot of stuff out there…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Which on one hand, you could argue, great. We have never had more information about more things at our fingertips, in our pocket than ever before.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Matt Mulcock:
But what that does is create massive amounts of options, most of them being crappy, right? But what it does is create, basically an endless highway of lanes for you to be switching in and out of.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
And like you said, you mix that with emotion, which investing is highly emotional…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
And then all these options that are… We’ve never had more options or the perception of more options, and it leads to massive impatience and a lot of bad behavior.

Ryan Isaac:
Matt, it’s time.

Matt Mulcock:
Time for what, Ryan?

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

Ryan Isaac:
Matt, you recently wrote… Let’s give a little shout out to your blog here.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
People…

Matt Mulcock:
Here’s the thing, man.

Ryan Isaac:
Hold on. No hold on. Listen to this title, people… Matt Mulcock, the Hollywood Mountain, decided to start writing, which is a very awesome goal… Congrats on it. You’re four… Four…

Matt Mulcock:
Thank you…

Ryan Isaac:
Four blog posts in? Or five?

Matt Mulcock:
No, I’m like six weeks in now.

Ryan Isaac:
Six… Look at me… It’s called Money Matters, people.

Ryan Isaac:
Just let that sink in.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s pretty lame. But whatever… Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s really great… Money Matters. They can find it at dentistadvisors.com. Or is there like a…

Matt Mulcock:
Substack… Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Substack, Money Matters. You wrote something recently, called, Things Overlooked. And I thought it really… Really kind of translated into this… ‘Cause what we wanna do is point out what we observe and also experience, this impatience as humans and investors, and business owners and workers… And observe like why it’s happening and in what ways, and shed some light on it.

Ryan Isaac:
And then also, what can be done about it? What are some tips that have actually been helpful in people’s lives? I’m assuming you wrote this post from your own life perspective on things that have helped you, basically get back to basics, stick to your lane… If you’re in a good lane. Now, maybe there’s a wreck in your lane, and you should switch lanes, right? Or there’s a little old grandpa and he’s just cruising along and like, you should move… You know?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, of course.

Ryan Isaac:
Sometimes there’s reasons to move lanes. Or there’s cones in the way and you’re supposed to leave, ’cause there’s construction…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, there’s a big accident in front of you… You gotta move over. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Right. But getting back to basics, sticking with the things that will work if you have patience and you give them time. Staying in your lane, doing the things that’ll help you make progress… You wrote about that and you wrote some… Maybe some non-financial things that help with this. And I thought this was kind of cool. Let’s just jump into it a little bit. And I don’t know if you wanna give a little bit of a set up to what made you think about this, or introd some of the ways that we overlook some of the basics… And getting inpatient.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I mean, my intro was… My intro was… I was thinking of every martial arts movie I’ve ever seen in my life, and it’s always about the young student that’s looking for an answer. They think that the answer is that they want to learn how to kick someone in the face…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, round house. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
But like… Yeah… Like take down a bully or something. But then they get frustrated ’cause then the teacher comes to them and teaches them how to be like water… Like calm the mind. And they’re like, “What the heck? Like why are you teaching me these things that seem… ”

Ryan Isaac:
What a waste…

Matt Mulcock:
“No way related?” Yeah… How are we… Why? And I just thought, how that applies. And yes, I did write this from my own perspective and things that I keep trying to come back to in my life when things seem out of whack. And things that don’t seem obvious or really connected to money or really just all aspects of life, but that really help us better with our money and make better decisions with investing…

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

Matt Mulcock:
And things like that.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, and I think it ties so like… The feeling of being impatient and having emotion, I think what happens is sometimes we lack the context and then we lack healthy outlets to help us express this impatience or frustration, and maybe have these healthy outlets or people in our lives that will give us push back a little bit. And then these things that you wrote about are things that we can implement along the way, that… I can attest to some of these too… I’m not great at some of these, but let’s start going… Anyway, they’re really helpful. Let’s start going down the list. Number one, you said, get some sleep. Jojo Jensen quote in here, without enough…

Matt Mulcock:
It’s like one of my favorite quotes.

Ryan Isaac:
Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds.

Matt Mulcock:
Which is…

Ryan Isaac:
Oh my gosh.

Matt Mulcock:
So true. Yeah, this is the top of my list. I come back to this all the time. I’ve been prioritizing sleep over the last several months in my life because… I don’t know some of the most like prominent people that I follow or listen to, or… Always talk about this. And just from my own personal life, I realized my life is better and I make better decisions when I sleep. When I get consistent sleep. It’s not just one night.

Matt Mulcock:
And again, coming back to patience, it’s not you get one good night of sleep and then you go out and party five nights in a row and think like, “What’s going on?

Ryan Isaac:
And stay up again.

Matt Mulcock:
How is this happening or why I’m not making progress?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Or is this working?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, so it’s consistency. So then I started thinking, well, this has to be a thing, obviously… Meaning there’s gotta be bigger data points to why… Or to sleep and being correlated to money and all these things. So I did a little bit of research and found that a study in 2017 found that the US missed out on $411 billion in lost productivity due to lack of sleep.

Ryan Isaac:
Just tired employees.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, so I was like, “Okay, this is a thing.” And there’s a lot more out there, but yeah, that was top of my list ’cause I know that when I’m getting consistent sleep, my entire life is better.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s better. How many arguments do you get in at home with the family that could be resolved with you just shutting up and going to bed?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
People just get ornery. There was a study in Daniel Crosby’s book, and I don’t remember, was it Laws of Wealth… It was about hunger. So I’m gonna just throw in the eat… Sleep and eat.

Matt Mulcock:
The Israeli guy… The Israeli judges.

Ryan Isaac:
Judges… The court system, they found that judges in the Israeli court system were more harsh with their penalties from a data standpoint… They could track this stuff before lunch, than they were after lunch. So if you were getting sentenced in the court system, you are better off getting your sentence after the judge had lunch. They were less harsh punishments.

Matt Mulcock:
Which is crazy to think that the lives…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, but… Dude.

Matt Mulcock:
Of these people are in the balance. And it’s like, “Did you get there before he ate or after?”

Ryan Isaac:
We all know hangry people. We all know…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, my wife is one of them. “I love you, honey, but you are hangry.”

Ryan Isaac:
My wife is also a self-admitted, hangry monster, and it’s just… We gotta feed ourselves and get some sleep. I really like that as a starting point. The second thing you said is, make room for reflection. I wanna say something about this, but what did you write about in this section?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. So this for me, comes back to one of the biggest mistakes, and this goes right along with people becoming impatient. I think a lot of times, impatience is born out of not making room for reflection, and specifically around this idea of constantly defining what is… Well, so first of all, defining what success is for you and constantly re-evaluating that as time goes on.

Matt Mulcock:
So the way I was thinking about this is, if you just… On a regular basis made space for yourself daily, weekly, minimum monthly to reflect on… Okay, your goals, what is success to you? Are the actions you’re taking… As James Clear says, a vote for the person you wanna become type of thing?

Matt Mulcock:
So you have to make space for that. And again, coming from my own perspective… All of these things I wrote about are things I struggle with or things I have struggled with and continually come back to. So this was just, hey, when I’m making space for myself and for my wife, for her and I to talk about these things, I’m better off and I’m better able to be patient with our goals and our wealth building and everything like that.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah… Yeah, I’ll just say it again in the post Aristotle… Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. I was gonna say… I was just looking it up… Drake. Drake once said, “Know yourself, know your worth.” And…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, the modern day Aristotle.

Ryan Isaac:
The modern day Aristotle. What I wanted to say about this, that brought up when I was thinking about what you wrote, making time for reflection. And one of the ways that you can avoid the mistakes that come along with being impatient and emotional, especially when it comes to like your investing decisions or your career decisions, or just where your money goes every month… Throwing a bunch of your cash at a debt that you probably wish you didn’t or shouldn’t have done, is this know yourself, know your worth as Drake said…

Ryan Isaac:
Like having a financial context around the big picture of what’s going on. Like zooming out and going, “Okay, before I send 20 grand to the student loan company, do I have a picture of where my net worth is?” What are my assets? What are my debts? What is my cashflow? How many months of an emergency fund is in the business? How many months of an emergency fund is in my personal accounts? How many years of liquidity do I have? What am I spending? What is this transfer of cash to the student loan gonna do to my net worth, my cashflow? What are my missed opportunity costs? And who can I talk to about this? Should I call someone? I’m gonna call someone too. And just that making room for reflection it really… It just… It shines a light on what I think… One of the biggest problems that you can… Or one of the biggest solutions you can use to solve this problem.

Ryan Isaac:
And that’s kind of what our business does really. We’re just saying, “Hey look, we’re a group of humans that will be with you to give you reflection and context in all of your decision-making through analytics and discussions, and being a sounding board, and sometimes a pushback person, so that we don’t make impatient rash decisions.” ‘Cause we’re all prone to it. For sure.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting how many times we have like a review call with one of our clients. We talk to our clients multiple times a year, and it’s interesting how many times we finish those calls and at the end of those meetings… This happens to me all the time, and I know for you too, Ryan, where our client will just be like, “Man, it just feels so good to talk about this and just talk it out with you.” And again, it’s that forced mechanism of reflection with someone that you trust that you’re gonna be able to talk these decisions out, through.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, it’s funny, man, 2022, we’re in the era of… And everything is just an app. And there’s an app for everything. Everything’s free. Everything’s cheap, at least. Everything is accessible and it’s cool, in some ways, but it’s kind of funny that the more time goes on with more and more of these tools that we can just put in our pockets and supposedly use to our benefit, one of the most time-tested and still maybe most valuable things, is just human relationships. One of the things you said in here was… I think you… You put like, turn off the news. Is that what you said?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, that was one of them. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Turn off the news… I would expand that to just put to rest some of the tech for a little bit. Human relationships will probably be the most… They are… When you read the top regrets of dying people, human relationships are always… They regret not having them or that… That was their biggest point of gratitude, which is another thing in your blog post. But I just think about the value of a human relationship from an advisor standpoint. Tools are great, apps are great, dashboards are great.

Ryan Isaac:
We’re never not trying to make them better, invent new ones, use technology to our advantage, but at the end of the day, it’s this… How do you leverage a human relationship with someone who has your best interest in mind, who knows you, who you have mutual trust with, who has insight to your situation. That’s what a good financial advisor should do. In our business, we use tech, we use tools, we use dashboards… We built one. We built a tool. You can see it at dentistadvisors.com called The Elements.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s this pretty board of 12 different elements. It looks like the periodic table, and there are 12 sections of a dentist financial life that matter a lot to track and monitor and categorize and talk about throughout the year during career and retirement. After you’re done working. But the tool in itself it’s just that, it’s a tool. The human relationship, spending time with a human is where we can tend to take a big deep breath, become a little bit more rational, get an outsider’s perspective. And hopefully, if you have a good relationship with someone with your best interest in mind, not trying to sell you something, then you’ll get that benefit of maybe some calming down. Maybe be able to take a step back from being impatient with your career or with your debt load or what markets are doing. And maybe you just enjoy work for that day or clock out and go, do your hobby. See your friend. See your family… Something like that.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah… I alluded to this in the Facebook group. I’m gonna give them another shoutout. I had a meeting recently with a client on this very… It reminded me of when you were saying having a human that knows you and what you’re needing, and they can confirm or push back on your thoughts or ideas… But I had a review meeting with some of my favorite clients, and we talked about all of the stuff, we used all the tech, we did all this normal stuff that we should be doing… Talking cashflow, insurance and all the stuff. But at the end of the meeting, the biggest takeaway, we finished the meeting… As we were winding it down, my piece of advice to them was, “Go buy the dang boat.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, cool.

Matt Mulcock:
Go buy the boat, because they’ve been wanting to forever, they can afford it, it makes sense.

Ryan Isaac:
It makes sense.

Matt Mulcock:
Does it make sense on the spreadsheet? Is their money better off invested? Yeah, sure, on the spreadsheet. But… I’m like, your kids are getting older. You’ve talked about this for the last two years. You can afford it, go buy the freaking boat…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. And they did. Sweet.

Matt Mulcock:
And it was great. You could see the relief on their faces like, “Okay, yeah, like, let’s do this.” And I say… I literally said by the time we review mid-year, I want you to have a boat, like…

Ryan Isaac:
Sweet.

Matt Mulcock:
And so a computer is not gonna do that for you.

Ryan Isaac:
And invite me. It really is, I think at the end of the day, quality human relationships that can bring us back to some grounded space. I really think it is, man. And… Whatever that is. Maybe that’s a spouse, maybe that’s a business partner, maybe that’s a therapist, maybe it’s a financial advisor, a CPA… There’s gonna be someone who has expertise and knowledge over a certain area of your life that you’re dealing with probably more than you, and developing a quality relationship with that person will be more helpful than almost anything you can do at all.

Ryan Isaac:
You need to go read the article, folks. Go check it out. It’s on dentistadvisors.com. If you go under… It’s probably under the content page. But if you go under our team and then click on Matt’s face… A big smiley guy, you’ll see his articles there. And that’s really cool. Man, I’m seeing them all here now. So, anyway, I guess here’s the invitation coming through this. I’m sure a lot of people relate to one point or another. It might be impatience with just how your career is progressing or your debt load or your investments, or maybe it’s impatience with your team relationships.

Ryan Isaac:
The point is there’s a fix out there, and the other point might be that our quick action impatient mixed with emotion reactions to things might not be the best first course of action. So, slow it down. Use some of these tips Matt gave us, find some quality relationships to talk through your decision, and your thinking. And hopefully just have some big picture context when you’re making these decisions and they’ll be better decisions. And dentists are gonna have a 30-year career, maybe, and then live for another 30, 40, 50 after that, so there’s a lot of decisions to be made, a lot of chances to mess things up.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s a long journey.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, it’s just really…

Matt Mulcock:
Buckle up.

Ryan Isaac:
Buckle up, it’s gonna help to have some help in your corner. So thanks for joining us. Thanks for being here with us. If you have any questions, if you wanna chat with us directly, it’s easy, dentistadvisors.com. Click the book Free Consultation Link. Lots of your peers are contacting us every single day, so join them.

Matt Mulcock:
Join your peers, give us a call.

Ryan Isaac:
Everyone’s doing it. Give us a call. Matt, the Hollywood Mountain, thanks for being here.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, thanks Ryan.

Ryan Isaac:
Again, and thanks to all you for listening and we’ll catch you next time on another episode of The Dentist Money Show. Take care everybody. Bye-bye.

Behavioral Finance