The Difference Between Holistic Planning and Asset Management – Episode 222

Ever wondered how your money might be handled by a large asset management firm?

It’s a Dentist Money™ Show first as Ryan interviews Matt Mulcock, one of our own advisors. Ryan asks Matt what it was like to work at a large money-management firm. 

It’s a one-of-a-kind episode as Matt compares the differences between Dentist Advisors’ holistic financial planning approach with firms that mix product sales with financial advice. You’ll get to know more about Matt—and you’ll hear why he jumped at the chance to work for Dentist Advisors.

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hey, Dentist Money show listeners, we have a treat for you today on the show, a treat for your ear holes, as they would say. We have Matt Mulcock, CFP, star financial advisor at Dentist Advisors, good friend of mine, and all around fantastic, wonderful human being.

Ryan Isaac:
Today on the show, Matt and I talk about his previous experience in the financial industry, what kind of differences he saw as he made the move from his old career to Dentist Advisors, and how he spends his days to help dentists make smart financial decisions. Matt’s one of the nicest people. He’s funny. He’s interesting. His story is super cool. We really appreciate him for spending time today on the show. Thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in. Enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consultant an advisor or conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by Dentist Advisors, registered 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. I’m your host today, Ryan Isaac, joined in studio with one of the best humans I’ve ever known and we’ve ever hired. Matt Mulcock, CFP, financial advisor, man extraordinaire.

Ryan Isaac:
What’s up, Matt? Welcome to the show.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s way too much. You’re setting the expectations way too high.

Ryan Isaac:
We set the bar high.

Matt Mulcock:
Favorite humans? That’s amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
We’re setting the bar high. So I’m just going to start out by saying, if I could do this whole podcast thing over again, go back in time three years ago, I would choose my own nickname. No one gave me that luxury. I actually had a nickname picked out, man. I actually like had a good one that I-

Matt Mulcock:
Can you really choose your own nickname? I don’t think you can. That’s not how they work.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re not supposed to. You’re not supposed to self gloss. You can’t self gloss.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
You can’t do it. But having the nickname forced upon me against my will, I want to extend mercy to someone else. If you were going to start out with this, if you got to choose your own nickname forever to be known by on a podcast or any media and the public, what would you be known by? what would you be called?

Matt Mulcock:
Again, if I had a choice, I would choose no nickname, to be honest with you.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s the humble answer.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I’m not worthy of a nickname, and I just feel like, again, you can’t really pick your own. There’s a couple of nicknames that you guys have started referring to me.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Let’s start with those. What have we tried to impose on you?

Matt Mulcock:
I’m not worthy of any of these.

Ryan Isaac:
You are.

Matt Mulcock:
But the two main ones, the one you gave me was Hollywood.

Ryan Isaac:
Yep.

Matt Mulcock:
I don’t even know the genesis of that.

Ryan Isaac:
Where did that start, by the way? Do we remember where that began?

Matt Mulcock:
I honestly don’t remember. It was a picture that was floating around our Voxer channel of some actor or someone that you said I look like and so you started calling me Hollywood.

Ryan Isaac:
You look like Ryan Gosling. Wasn’t it Ryan Gosling?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I cannot confirm nor deny, but again, I’m not worthy of that. And then the other one, even less worthy of, is Cody started calling me The Mountain.

Ryan Isaac:
The Mountain.

Matt Mulcock:
From Game of Thrones.

Ryan Isaac:
So let’s explore The Mountain a little bit. Let’s don our mountain climbing boots. So here’s a little intro. It’s kind of an interesting day on the Dentist Money Show. We, for a long time, have wanted to showcase some of the other awesome people doing great work in our company. And, Matt, you’re funny-

Matt Mulcock:
People hiding in back corners.

Ryan Isaac:
In the back crevices of the DA studios.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So Matt, you’re a financial advisor. You’ve been with us … When did you join us? What month and year?

Matt Mulcock:
Two years ago? Yeah, coming up on two years.

Ryan Isaac:
Really? What month was it?

Matt Mulcock:
April.

Ryan Isaac:
April.

Matt Mulcock:
April, yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. So April. We’re going to talk today. I think here’s what will be cool for the audience is to get some perspective on just the work that goes on day to day in Dentist Advisors and the people doing the work and the interactions. You have quite a few clients, like you said. It feels longer than two years, man.

Matt Mulcock:
It does.

Ryan Isaac:
Only two years?

Matt Mulcock:
It really does, but in a good way.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Not in like, “Oh, my gosh, this is dragging on.”

Matt Mulcock:
Not like, “Oh, holy cow.” Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Just feels like you’ve been here since the beginning. So we’ll get to know you a little bit, about your background, your day to day, how you spend your time, things you’ve learned, contrasts you’ve seen. You joined us from another firm. You’ve had experience in the industry, which can be kind of different. But first, let’s go back to this Mountain thing. So we’re going to know-

Matt Mulcock:
I knew you were going to go here. I knew it.

Ryan Isaac:
We’re getting to know Matt. We got to get to know you. And we call you The Mountain because you can lift an impressive amount of weight. What is your top-?

Matt Mulcock:
In another life.

Ryan Isaac:
In another … ? Fine. In another life, I had cool hair.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
It still was cool. It doesn’t make it less cool because it happened a long time ago.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Maybe it wasn’t cool. I don’t know. What was your biggest back squat? You were back squatting something big.

Matt Mulcock:
Around 600 that was the best.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, I thought it was five. You were back squatting 600 pounds?

Matt Mulcock:
In that ballpark, yes. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
My goodness.

Matt Mulcock:
In another life I wanted to be, in my youth, like a lot of young egotistical men, I wanted to be a power lifter and so that’s what I focused on for a long time in my younger days.

Ryan Isaac:
Doesn’t that qualify you as one, though? Did you ever compete?

Matt Mulcock:
No. Before my first competition, amateur competition, very, very amateur, I tore my shoulder. And, with my wife’s promptings and pushing me to stop and that, I was kind of like, “All right, I’m never going to make this a career, so let’s just go ahead and stop.”

Ryan Isaac:
It’s pretty dang cool, though, man. I think there’s lot of parallels. We’ve definitely used them on the show between what it takes for a human being to back squat 600 pounds, which is just an enormous amount of weight. I can’t even fathom. I struggle to dead lift half of that on a regular basis these says.

Matt Mulcock:
I would, too, now, for sure. There’s no way.

Ryan Isaac:
What were you dead lifting? What were you benching?

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, man. I don’t feel great about going into these things, but … I’m just kidding.

Ryan Isaac:
We expose each other on [crosstalk 00:06:25].

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, no, that’s great. Get vulnerable. Bench was around 400. Before I tore my shoulder, my goal was to hit 400. I think I hit 390 and then tore my shoulder, and then my deadlift was probably in the, I don’t know, 585 range. I was actually pretty rare. I had a stronger back squat than I did dead lift.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s kind of weird.

Matt Mulcock:
Very rare.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, we didn’t mean to bro out on everyone here just talking about gym and lifting, but I think that’s a cool piece of trivia for Matt’s background. You get to know Matt, the gentle giant. Maybe that’s another nickname.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I’d rather take that maybe, but I feel like even that sends the wrong message because I’m a pretty normal … I don’t know if normal sized human-

Ryan Isaac:
Normal sized human.

Matt Mulcock:
-But I’m pretty average, normal, maybe on the bigger side.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
But, Ryan, I remember vividly, like it was yesterday, the very first conversation you and I had when I was going through the process of joining Dentist Advisors sitting in your office, and we started bro-ing out like this, talking about CrossFit-

Ryan Isaac:
That’s where it goes every time.

Matt Mulcock:
-And lifting and all that, and we connected, and we’ve been bros ever since.

Ryan Isaac:
We connected over our past. We peaked early in life and we’ve been-

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, I peaked very early.

Ryan Isaac:
We connected over our early peaks in life.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s cool.

Matt Mulcock:
And the peak wasn’t even … It was a mild Hilltop.

Ryan Isaac:
You climb the summit of a small town hill.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
As you’ve listened to our podcast, maybe there’s a question about your finances you’ve wanted to ask. It’s easy to get an answer. All you do is just pick up that phone, give us a call at (833) DDS-PLAN to set up a consultation, or if you don’t want to call us, you can just go to the website at dentistadvisors.com, click the Book Free Consultation button and set it up. It’s free. Do it today. You’re a married man. You’re a dad to a new baby girl. How old is-

Matt Mulcock:
Yes. I will talk about her all day.

Ryan Isaac:
How’s the little bear? You will. How old is she?

Matt Mulcock:
My daughter, Millie. Yeah, she’s going on eight months now.

Ryan Isaac:
Little Millie.

Matt Mulcock:
So much fun.

Ryan Isaac:
Pride and joy.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, yeah, for sure.

Ryan Isaac:
It feels a million times better to hold that little eight pound baby than a 600 pound bar on your back any day.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, yeah, all day, any day.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s amazing.

Matt Mulcock:
For various reasons. A, it’s just easier.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
And she’s way more fun.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s a different kind of weight on your shoulders, man.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
The weight of a child on your shoulders is-

Matt Mulcock:
psychological, emotional weight, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Different weight.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s triple the 600 pound pound back squat there, emotionally.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah. That’s cool, man.

Matt Mulcock:
But so much fun. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, let’s jump into a little bit about, today I think it would just be interesting for people to hear kind of your journey in the financial industry. I’ll let you do the honors of kind of just describing. Tell us a little bit about what’d you do in college, in school? How did you end up in the industry?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And we’ll just start with how did you begin in the industry and when did that happen? What was it like?

Matt Mulcock:
Kind of just decided. I’d always been interested in investing and stuff on my own. I’d done a lot on my own and I decided I wanted to kind of take that next step. So I went to Fidelity as literally entry level customer service, literally the lowest of the low on the totem pole.

Ryan Isaac:
So describe that. I think a lot of people, it’s hard to imagine what the financial services industry is like. I think, if you just watch movies and TV, every time I hear investment advisor or financial advisor, I always think about some-

Matt Mulcock:
Gordon Gekko?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Someone in a nice suit yelling on the phones in a trading floor, and it always seems like such a high powered, luxurious, just a very different than what is reality.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So reality, what’s it like?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Some call center, college students?

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Cubicles?

Matt Mulcock:
Yep, definitely not like that.

Ryan Isaac:
Headsets?

Matt Mulcock:
Didn’t wear nice suits. Couldn’t afford them. So when I first got to Fidelity, because I was pre-licensed … I wasn’t licensed meaning to actually work in the industry to be able to actually trade stocks, bonds, mutual funds-

Ryan Isaac:
[To advise 00:10:30].

Matt Mulcock:
-And actually transact that business for a broker/dealer like Fidelity. You have to have certain licenses. You have to have a Series 7, specifically a Series 63. So before I did that, I was literally just customer service. I’d basically answer the phone in a big call center and then be like, “Oh, let me transfer you to someone that can actually help you.” That was really what I did.

Ryan Isaac:
Interesting.

Matt Mulcock:
Until I was able to get licensed, which took a few months. Once I was licensed, I was promoted to a trader. So again, like you were saying, people think of traders as like, again, you’re in this big bullpen as they’d call it back in the ’80s, and you’re in these suits and everyone’s yelling and screaming.

Ryan Isaac:
You got like four phones in your hands.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, yeah. You’re like slamming phones down, picking up other ones. There’s lights going off on all these phones.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s really much more calm than that. So I was a trader there for awhile.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, and trader almost makes it sound like you were making decisions for people and then telling them what to do. But is it-?

Matt Mulcock:
No, I was order taker basically.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s the opposite, right?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re just now licensed to place the trade that they order you to place.

Matt Mulcock:
Exactly. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Matt Mulcock:
And it was cool. The thing about Fidelity, I’m sure we’ll get into, but the thing about Fidelity or places like that, is it was a really good training ground, right? You’re exposed to so much.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
They’ve got so many different people that they’re working with across the country. I think they have 25,000 clients or customers through Fidelity.

Ryan Isaac:
Crazy.

Matt Mulcock:
So you get exposed to a lot. I learned a lot. It was, again, a great training ground. I went from trader to kind of moving up from there, and then you transition to more of the investment advising, actually giving guidance and advice from there.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. People call and they say, “What should I do with this?”

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. It was really reflective of what the traditional industry still is about, which is investments. That’s really what the focus was about at that point.

Ryan Isaac:
Kind of starts and ends with that.

Matt Mulcock:
Exactly. It wasn’t until, my wife at that point, after I’d been at Fidelity for a few years, my wife got into graduate school out in Southern California.

Ryan Isaac:
Shout out to Masha, by the way.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Shout out to Masha. She’s a plastic surgery PA. she carries our team in every way. The two women in my life, my daughter and my wife, they carry us. I just ride on their coattails.

Matt Mulcock:
So she got into graduate school out in Southern California, and at that point, my career kind of transitioned from job to career. So I was really fortunate at that point to to be able to transfer to one of the local branches as opposed to one of the main, what they called contact centers, basically a call center. I transitioned from there to a local branch out in Mission Viejo, California. And that’s where I transitioned into the wearing the suit every day, meeting face to face. And, again, it really took my career to the next level, where going from what you’re describing, more the investment stuff, to focused on more planning.

Ryan Isaac:
Then you got personal relationships.

Matt Mulcock:
Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
[crosstalk 00:13:33].

Matt Mulcock:
Managing a book.

Ryan Isaac:
Finite amount of people. So backing up a little bit, when you’re at the trader level, you just take inbound calls.

Matt Mulcock:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re not assigned to a certain people. Okay. So there’s way-

Matt Mulcock:
No, no, not at all.

Ryan Isaac:
-You don’t get to know people, anything like that.

Matt Mulcock:
Not at all. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Then when you moved to glorious Southern California.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, it’s my heaven. It’s my heaven.

Ryan Isaac:
Where one day you might both find me and Matt living.

Matt Mulcock:
The webinar guys, you might find out there, the webinar boys out in Southern California.

Ryan Isaac:
Webinar dogs.

Matt Mulcock:
Webinar dogs. Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Was the expectation that you would just reactively communicate with people when they reached out to you, or was there any kind of system for you to proactively reach out at all?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I was definitely able to proactively reach out. Again, I had my kind of book of assigned clients that, again, they call it a book, my book of clients that I had access to that I was their assigned financial consultant. And so it was kind of a combination of the reactive nature, they’re calling in, they need help, they come to me, and then I was reaching out to them for periodic reviews or whatever it may be. One thing I didn’t realize until I actually got to Dentist Advisors is, now looking back, knowing, and I’m sure we’ll get more into this, but the planning side of things with Fidelity specifically, I would do just enough planning to sell something. That’s when I started to really learn and realize there’s-

Ryan Isaac:
Give an example of that. What do you mean by that? What’s just enough planning and what reselling?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, so the main thing we were selling would be managed money, so certain managed money products of having Fidelity manager clients money and then some insurance products, so annuities and things like that.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Matt Mulcock:
Or like the main things that we would be selling. And I don’t say that in a negative way. I don’t say that like Fidelity has bad intentions in any way. It’s just a different setup. It’s a different setup.

Ryan Isaac:
Different set of incentives. It’s a different …

Matt Mulcock:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
And see, you’re illustrating something we talk about all the time, which is our industry is full of well intentioned, competent, experienced people who want to help others.

Matt Mulcock:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
But it’s also full of really crappy business models and poorly aligned incentives.

Matt Mulcock:
Whatever they start to measure is what you’re attracting, what you’re focused on, and what you’re paid on. So that was my biggest focus, was, again, looking back, I helped a lot of people. I felt really good about what I was doing, but it’s kind of like there’s optimal and less optimal. And looking back now, I felt like it was the less optimal way to approach it.

Ryan Isaac:
So, okay. Now, now you’ve got the benefit of hindsight, but looking back to explain some of the differences … Well, actually, as you started checking out our company then and learning about maybe our systems and processes, philosophy, culture, the Elements that we built, I don’t know what it was for you, but what were some of your first impressions when you started hearing about the way we did things and how did it strike you as different? Because it clearly did or else you wouldn’t have made the move.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, definitely. Yeah. I had all intentions at that point of sticking with Fidelity after my transition back and that was kind of my focus really. This came out of kind of nowhere in a way. So the first thing I’ll say is the team. When I met Reese and Justin, shout out to Justin, Ryan and Jacob, kind of the OGs of Dentist Advisors.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Skeleton crew.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. So I met the team. I was literally at that point I was pretty much sold just knowing just the genuine nature of how everyone approached the business, how everyone was so focused on doing things the right way, doing actual planning, not selling products. That came through in my first meeting with Reese and Justin, when I met with them for breakfast. We met for like two and a half hours and just heard more about the business and the vision and dreams that they had and where they were headed.

Matt Mulcock:
At that point, I was pretty much sold. And then, going further into it, I was able to sit with Jacob and he was kind of running me through Elements and, again, how we do planning. And I was blown away. I was blown away at the organization of it. I was blown away at at, again, the focus on what actually moved the needle for people, which is the planning itself, which is the accountability, not this whole mentality of let’s meet once a year and then when we get back together I’ll sell you this product and act like it’s the best thing that’s going to fix all your problems. It was the actual process and behavior that we were focused on.

Matt Mulcock:
Like you were saying earlier, there’s a lot of parallels to the health and fitness world, and when I saw Elements, I was like, “Man, we’re really laying out this plan for people,” as opposed to saying, “Hey, take this supplement. This is going to change everything for you.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. You’re like, “Here’s a year long plan to shed 10 pounds, but add 10 pounds of muscle and get stronger and healthier.”

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And it’s like, ugh, I’d rather take the pill.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I’d rather sell the pill.

Matt Mulcock:
Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Sometimes.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you remember, it’s kind of hard now, you’ve been teaching this stuff and helping clients in the system for so long now, but do you remember some of the things that that stood out about the … When you say real planning done the real way compared to you had the benefit of a contrast from another career path in the same industry. Do you remember what stood out? What was different about what planning is? It’s such a vague term.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think when you think about our system of, for example, really simple, is the onboarding process we go through with the client up front where we are trying to get a clear and accurate view of their financial situation. Something is simple, it’s simple, but not easy. Simple as knowing their balance sheet, knowing their spending, knowing what’s going on in their business, what are their business goals, what are their actual life goals?

Matt Mulcock:
That, to me, is the foundation of an actual plan and relationship. Where, with my prior experience, it was more very much surface related things. It was, again, do just enough, know just enough to be able to get them to buy this one thing. When I say it like that, it sounds really, really bad. But that’s really, if I’m really-

Ryan Isaac:
That’s the industry.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s the industry.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s capital.

Matt Mulcock:
Now, again, just when I say planning done the right way, you’re actually wanting to know the details, the ins and outs, on an ongoing basis and keep coming back to those things, on a regular cadence that actually is going to be meaningful for them and actually help them focus on the right behaviors. That, to me, was, again, what Elements did for advisors and did for the clients.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s cool, man. You’ve definitely had more experience in this than I have coming from a different part of the industry, but it is kind of rare in our business, in our industry, to meet someone, let’s say, someone who’s got millions of dollars that could be managed by someone. They’re looking for an investment advisor, looking for a financial planner. And in any other business or scenario, that’s the first thing you jump on as fast as you possibly can while they’re still interested in having you manage their money.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
If you can do it without asking too many questions or knowing too much, if they’re willing, you get the money and you … Because that’s revenue, right?

Matt Mulcock:
Of course. Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
And it is kind of rare in our business that we won’t make a single decision or recommendation or change or implement anything until we’ve spent like a month with a person, like you just said, getting to know every nook and cranny of their financial picture.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Where’s their income coming from? How much profitability are they running in their practice? What do they spend every month? What do they spend it on? What’s their tax rate? What’s their debt situation? What are their interest rates? Where do they want to vacation? What do they want to do with their career? Are they trying to cut back? Are they trying to grow more locations? Do they want a partner? They need to buy a building? They want to upgrade to the dream house soon?

Ryan Isaac:
We won’t do anything at all until we know those things really clearly, which is kind of rare.

Matt Mulcock:
Very rare.

Ryan Isaac:
It takes more time. It takes more patience. It takes a bigger team spending more hours on people every month, every year.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh yeah. It’s a lot more work. Again, it’s easy. That’s why the industry does it. Just like you were saying earlier, it’s human nature. If you’ve got a couple million bucks and I can manage it and make just as much money as if I was going to do an in-depth plan-

Ryan Isaac:
Just hurry and get the money.

Matt Mulcock:
I’d love to.

Ryan Isaac:
And do that with 700 people rather than a hundred.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s the business model.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s the business model.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s how they were created a hundred years ago.

Matt Mulcock:
Yep. Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m curious about that. What have you noticed in the difference? I guess for context first, for listeners, in our firm, we’re still [playing with 00:22:33] the numbers a little bit, but our advisors, our full time advisors, will have at capacity between maybe 120-ish to up to 150 clients.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
As technology and processes, systems get better, you can spend more time on meaningful things and maybe handle a few more relationships, but it probably doesn’t get too much bigger than that. But that’s very different than 750, 150 to 750.

Matt Mulcock:
Very. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
What have you experienced over the last couple of years working with such a smaller group of people versus such a big group of people?

Matt Mulcock:
For me, it’s just the level of relationship you can have with people and the knowledge you can have around the situation is greatly diminished in relationships of the size of client that you have or the amount of clients that you have.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I think you’ll relate to this, We talk about this a lot in our advisor groups, but it’s kind of interesting, and for anyone listening, if you want to know a little reference for what we’re talking about, the system we run every month, it’s just our system of planning that we basically invented. It’s called the Elements and you can see it at dentistadvisors.com.

Ryan Isaac:
But one of the interesting to me, and we talk about this, is let’s say the month is … Well, it was recent, tax rate.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
We just ran tax rate in December. The point of tax rate was to gather everyone’s total gross income from official tax returns and then report as a percentage of gross income how much went out the door to different various taxes. We’re just trying to show one of the four places money can go every year: taxes, debt, spending, and savings.

Ryan Isaac:
And some of the months when we report them, for example, tax rate I think is a good month, it’s not always actionable, immediately actionable.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. A lot of times it’s not.

Ryan Isaac:
We spent, it’s probably a handful of hours per person every month making sure the data’s gathered, updated, put into reports, and then sent out. And I might open a report and see, okay, you spent 22% of your gross income on taxes last year. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to call right away and there’s some dramatic change or action to take.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
But what I find every month that’s so interesting, and since you worked in a different system and I ever never have, I wonder how this strikes you, but every time I do this, even if there’s not an actionable thing to go change, even if I’m not going to pick up the phone and call a client, be like, “Hey, we’ve got to change something here,” even if it’s just data for the sake of tracking data because one day we’ll need it to make a decision or have context in a decision, I find as a financial advisor, just the act of opening a report and sitting there for 30 minutes just kind of scanning someone’s updated income and how much went to taxes, and then start the cascade effect of questions in my head like, well, what retirement plan do they have? And do they have an HSA right now? And are the kids on payroll? Is a spouse on payroll? And now you’re like, Oh, maybe there’s some action to take here.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And I guess I’m just saying I’m constantly amazed at when you slow down and have fewer people and you can just spend time thinking about people, even if you’re not sitting in meetings and making big changes. It’s not like that sexy and dramatic, but it’s just looking at a PDF on a computer 20 hours a month.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And thinking about people’s situations. I’m always surprised at how it just feels like I’m doing a lot for people that’s not going to be offered in the industry.

Matt Mulcock:
You compare that to my previous experience, clients coming in, you see the name on the calendar that day. Guess when I actually pulled up their stuff to look at any of their information? About 15 minutes before they came in, simply because time, capacity.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s all you’ve got.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s all I had. I didn’t have a mechanism or a system in place to be able to actually be reviewing things on a regular basis. It was literally if that client hadn’t been in for two years, I hadn’t looked at their situation for two years. But, yeah, the only data that I had was outside of, again, their accounts was stuff that was self reported that we had recorded in our system, but that was it. There was no balance sheet. There was no accounts connected beyond that or anything like that.

Ryan Isaac:
Interesting. That’d be tough, man.

Matt Mulcock:
It was really, really tough.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re like, “We haven’t talked for two years, so catch me up. You tell me.”

Matt Mulcock:
That was most of the meeting. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It’s tough because you ask, in our business, working with dentists, you ask a busy dentist and business owner, “Tell me what did you make last year? What was your profitability? What are your debts? What are you spending?” People just don’t know that off the top of their head unless …

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Look, in our business, our back end, without even talking to clients, our back end system and our people spend upwards of 20 hours per year just gathering and organizing data the best we can and reporting on it.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Without even talking to people. That’s not even meeting time or talking or emails or anything like that. So, yeah, that’d be really tough. I think right now I would say on average, when people ask me, “How often do you talk to clients” I would say, “There’s monthly communication with reporting. I probably am on the phone three to, I don’t know, sometimes 10 times a year with someone on phone calls.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And then hundreds of emails and texts.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Kind of an insane amount of communication. But it’s funny. If I haven’t talked to someone in three or four months and we get on the phone, what you said is just so interesting. For the last three or four months, even if we haven’t talked, I’ve been looking at data, looking at trends, and not just their accounts. I’ve been looking at what they’re spending or looking how their net worth has changed or their real estate valuations or their debt’s going down.

Ryan Isaac:
And I’ve got these things fresh in my mind because I’ve spent probably 10 hours without, without even separate from talking to someone, probably spent 10 hours just looking at their data and asking myself questions about it. Taking mental notes. That’s a really different system, man. That’s really cool content. I don’t think people understand how they would be treated in a traditional firm in our industry.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. To kind of close this out, we could do this forever because we do this forever.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, yeah, for sure.

Ryan Isaac:
We talk all day every day anyway.

Matt Mulcock:
Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
We could do this forever.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Two things I wanted to ask that I think would be interesting for people to hear. Describe a typical week for you of work.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. So being a smaller-

Ryan Isaac:
A day, whatever.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, being a smaller firm, it’s all relative, but I’d still consider us definitely on the smaller side, especially if you’re comparing it to something like-

Ryan Isaac:
Some gigantic firms.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly. Because of that, we wear many different hats. And so a typical day for me, or a typical week for me, a lot of client work, first of all, it’s kind of the foundation of my week, is either following up on an Elements summary, responding to emails, proactively doing planning strategy, focusing on something that’s happening, some fire to put out, as Reese likes to put it, whatever that may be.

Matt Mulcock:
So the foundation of it is really client work. And then one of the tasks or one of the kind of the roles I have here is training some of the younger associates and the younger advisors. So a lot of focus is on that, you know, meetings with them, a lot of case work. So I don’t know if people really realize out there, client or not client, that we do everything as a team. So we do a lot of case studies. We do a lot of coming together and getting people’s opinions on different ways to approach a situation. So we do a lot of that, and I use that as an opportunity to train a lot of the younger associate and advisors that we have here.

Matt Mulcock:
And then really another focus that we have or something on a typical week would be how do we improve what we’re doing. We do a lot of meetings around how are we … This element, we did this last year. Maybe we should be doing this this year. We’re getting ready to release it. How can we improve this? How can we improve our onboarding process? How can we improve our investment strategy product, all these different things. So it’s kind of all encompassing, but that’s a typical week.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s cool, man. Would you say on a daily basis a client is asking for something that feels urgent to them, like a decision they have to make? Is that a daily thing for you or every other day? Every three days?

Matt Mulcock:
I don’t know if it would be daily. I would say definitely weekly I’m responding to something, multiple different clients on maybe nothing really urgent, but definitely reactive type things.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Cool. And then when you say-

Matt Mulcock:
Sorry, I was going to say the other thing that I failed to mention on a typical week, when we say on the podcast, “Hey, set up a free consultation,” and you click that green button on our website-

Ryan Isaac:
Matt’s on the other end of that.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, you’re getting to me.

Ryan Isaac:
You lucky people.

Matt Mulcock:
You’re getting either to me or one of our other advisors or associate advisors. But I do a lot of those every week as well.

Ryan Isaac:
You know, it’s funny when you’re talking about our team right now internally, I don’t know how many full time people we are, I think we’re 23, 24, 25.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, something like that.

Ryan Isaac:
Something like that, full time.

Matt Mulcock:
In that range, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s getting to medium sized business, but we’re small compared to like giant multi trillion dollar asset managers in the industry.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
But still, something you were saying kind of strikes me, I think dentists can relate to, which is, if you have a practice where there’s multiple producers, multiple associates or partner dentists, and you’ve got a team of assistants, hygienists and admin staff, if there aren’t people who go above and beyond their normal job duties, if there’s not a hygienist, for example, who does more than just hygiene, if there’s not a hygienist who on some kind of periodic basis, makes sure all the hygienists are doing the same thing or thinking the same thing or treatment planning the same way or diagnosing things the same way …

Ryan Isaac:
Same with the dentists or front office working on myriad of tasks, insurance and collections and [re-care 00:32:54]. If there’s not somebody on the team, and probably multiple people on the team in different capacities, who were doing more than just their own duties and stepping up to make sure people are on the same page and answer questions and listen to people vent and help culture improve and make sure training is across the board, then you do end up with a business where everyone’s in their own little island doing their own thing, giving different advice, different philosophy, different implementation. And that’s what our industry is famous for, too.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, absolutely.

Ryan Isaac:
You can hire a two advisors from the same firm and you’ll get drastically different outcomes. I’m not saying personalities aren’t different, but you’ll get different advice, different philosophies, different implementation, different systems, different …

Matt Mulcock:
Like you said, we’ve grown a lot. Even since I’ve been here, our growth has been crazy. And every single person that we hire brings a different skillset, a different-

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Like we were just saying, different experiences from different firms or whatever. So we want to try to take those experiences and be able to kind of bring them together and see how can we learn and improve on these types of things while keeping our message consistent, while keeping our our philosophy and our planning process consistent across the board.

Matt Mulcock:
Whether you get Ryan where you get me or you get Will, we want it to be, again, like you said, personalities will be different for sure, but we want it to be, you ask Ryan a question, you’re going to get the same answer if you ask me the same question.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, exactly, man. Okay, one more thing. I would be interested to know, if we haven’t covered it already, maybe we have, but is there anything you would want listeners or dentists to know about the way that we do things compared to a lot of the industry? Maybe something we haven’t covered? What would you want dentists to know about the way Dentist Advisors thinks about your money?

Matt Mulcock:
The best way I can put it is just the fact that we are really truly focused on a comprehensive approach. And that is used a lot in the industry as a tagline, holistic planning. That’s getting bigger and bigger and so it’s hard to decipher. It’s like fiduciary, right? It’s really hard to decipher.

Ryan Isaac:
What does that mean?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, what does that even really mean? But I think what I tell people all the time, whether it be at events or on consultation calls or whatever, just knowing that we truly are focused on doing it the right way, the optimal way, which is focused on the process, not the outcome. The outcome we feel kind of takes care of itself. Focusing truly on the process. And you said it earlier, it’s not sexy. Sometimes it’s really, honestly, in lot of ways, it would be easier to sell a product. It’d be easier to sell a pill.

Ryan Isaac:
It’d be flashier.

Matt Mulcock:
It’d be flashier, and people do it all the time.

Ryan Isaac:
Faster.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. And sometimes it’s actually harder doing it this way because you get on these calls and it’s not something that really gets people going, like, “Oh, man, you’re going to help me get organized. Cool.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. We’re going to spend the next 12 months just slowly organizing and tracking things and reporting here and there.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. It’s like you guys did an episode, 212, I believe, on the investment returns. People always want to jump to investment returns. That’s the sexy, flashy stuff. It’s the things that people want to have as your differentiator. But I think what I want people to know is it’s the stuff that’s not sexy. It’s not fun to do every single day that actually moves the needle for you and building your wealth over time. And that’s the things that we focus on.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s cool, man. I think, over the years, we’re not only meticulous for clients, and you this as good as anyone, but we’re really meticulous about our own data.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
People in our business, like Jeff in marketing or Justin or Jacob running the Elements-

Matt Mulcock:
Let’s give everyone a shout out today. I think we should just go through the roster.

Ryan Isaac:
[Let’s just do shoutouts 00:36:43], man. Let’s just list everyone who works here.

Matt Mulcock:
Just go through the roster, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Not to mention, not the least of any of these, but big Reese Harper, Big as we-

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Big Hoss.

Ryan Isaac:
-Affectionately refer to him. We’re meticulous with clients because we started a business from the foundation that we were meticulous with ourselves. I’ve never met anyone in my life as meticulous as Reese Harper.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I would agree.

Ryan Isaac:
Or that asks as many questions and reads between the lines as well as he does.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Solid, man. Well, thanks for sharing all this stuff. Thanks for taking time.

Ryan Isaac:
Look, every month Matt and I host a monthly webinar where we take about 90 minutes to dive into the details of each element that we’re recording.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. If you want more of this, except less about me. That’s what I like about the webinars.

Ryan Isaac:
No way.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s less about me. It’s more about the content.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Check out the webinars. The next one we have coming up in the month of February, we’re recording this in February, 2020, but we’ll be talking about liquidity, but we do this every month. And just go to dentistadvisors.com. You can see it on the events page for the upcoming ones, or if you search in the education library under webinars, you can see the … We record them all.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, they’re recorded, so you can check them out.

Ryan Isaac:
You can take 90 minutes of this and just watch them on triples speed.

Matt Mulcock:
Triple speed.

Ryan Isaac:
Get through it really fast.

Matt Mulcock:
Talking like little chipmunks.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Anyway, thanks, Matt, for joining us this morning.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Thank you.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks, everyone, for listening. If you’re listening to this and you would like to start having a chat with someone who actually cares about your situation and we’ll spend the time with you and where you’re headed in life, someone like Matt, then go to dentistadvisors.com, click on the Book Free Consultation button, and schedule a consultation with us.

Ryan Isaac:
But thanks for listening. We appreciate everyone for joining us and we’ll catch you next time.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan Isaac:
Carry on.

Ryan Isaac:
Again, thanks for listening. If you ever want to have a chat with one of our advisors, you might even hit the adviser jackpot and get Matt on the phone. Go to dentist advisors.com, click the Book Free Consultation button, and book a call with one of our advisors today.

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