Million Dollar Advice to Celebrate One Million Downloads – Episode #333

It was six years and 332 episodes ago that Reese and Ryan recorded the first Dentist Money™ Show. Little did they know then that so many dentists would tune in to get advice on how to make smart financial decisions. As we celebrate one million listens, join Ryan, Matt, Reese, and our very special guests who offer some “million dollar advice” of their own.

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Oh boy. Welcome to another episode of the Dentist Money Show brought to you by Dentist Advisors. No commission, comprehensive fiduciary, dentist only financial advisor for dentists all over the country. Check us out, at dentistadvisors.com. Today, the episode is so special. It’s very special to all of us here at Dentist Advisors, we are celebrating our one millionth download. Back in 2016, probably before that, Big Hoss, Reese Harper, had this idea to start the Dentist Money Show, to get education out to people who we weren’t able to work with or not talking to, and it is what it is today, and we are so incredibly grateful.

Ryan Isaac:
Before we kick off the episode, I just wanna thank a few people that have been involved since the very beginning. Jeff, Big Jeff producer, Jeff Alexander was one of our first producers on the show. I don’t have any idea if you are listening to this, but I’m gonna send him this episode. Jeff was one of the first guys editing, helping us produce the show, setting up guests, doing all the tech and the recording.

Ryan Isaac:
Wanna shout out to Justin. Justin is still around with us, leading… Leading the helm. At the helm, is that the phrase? He’s at the helm. Justin used to sit in the corner with an iPad that he had scripted for Reese and I to talk off of, so we would read our scripts from the iPad. He also had a clock and Justin is very organized and detailed and diligent, and he would point to the clock constantly to make sure that we were running on time and staying on time, which is no easy task between Reese and I.

Ryan Isaac:
Kenzie, Kenzie, still involved with the show, shout out to Kenzie, we love you Kenz, so much. Kenz does a lot of the production and the editing and the cutting, and making the Dentist Money Show what it is today. Big T, Big Taddy. Tad is also a producer of the show. Tad has been with us for a very long time doing a lot of writing and… Man, Jason was around for a while. Jason was extremely talented, overly qualified to be on the Dentist Money Show, but was doing a lot of filming and recording for us.

Ryan Isaac:
Jason is like a Sundance Film Festival producer, actual guy who sold a movie to a big outfit kind of person, so big time Jason. I’m probably missing somebody. I’m very grateful to all these people who have been involved. I’m very grateful to all of you who have listened from Reese and I and Matt and I and the whole team, thanks for tuning in. We know that there’s a ton of options out there to listen to podcasts, we’re very, very grateful and thankful that you tune into ours.

Ryan Isaac:
And we really do hope that the things that we prepare and come up with, we hope that they’re helpful in your life in making big decisions and small ones in your practice and your financial life, and we hope it helps. And we hope it’s… We hope it’s at the very least, slightly entertaining, that’s what we aim for. So thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us all these Wednesday afternoons or whenever you listen, however you listen, all over the world, we really, really appreciate it. We love doing this and we’re very excited for a million more. So thanks for being a part of it, and thanks for being here. Enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consultant 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 investment advisor. This is Dentist Money. Now, here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome to the Dentist Money Show where we help Dentists make smart financial decisions a million times in a row for six years going. I am Ryan, and I’m here on the best episode we’ve ever done, because I’m here, of course, with the Hollywood mountain, Matt Mulcock.

Matt Mulcock:
You’re right.

Ryan Isaac:
You were commented on this morning when you walked into breakfast by the team as looking extra mountainy. They actually said “Matt is a mountain.” But very special today. We have Reese Harper in studio, Reese Harper.

Reese Harper:
Welcome to the studio with me. I’m excited.

Matt Mulcock:
And we’re in studio.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, this is super rare because there’s three of us sitting like fools next to each other shoulder to shoulder, but Reese is here. Welcome back to the show, Reese.

Reese Harper:
It’s because we’re doing a… We brought in a Hollywood film crew.

Ryan Isaac:
We actually have… We have a producer, Big T, Tad McStuffins and… I don’t know why I just said McStuffins. It comes from Doc McStuffins, the Disney show my kids used to watch. And Jason has like probably a $50,000 camera staring at us, and I bet it’s actually $100,000.

Reese Harper:
And his film just got picked up by a major outlet and is being distributed globally.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, for real?

Matt Mulcock:
What we are highlighting here is I am way, way out of my depth.

Ryan Isaac:
We are not the talent in the room.

Matt Mulcock:
I need to get out of here. This is not right.

Ryan Isaac:
We’re not the talent in the room.

Reese Harper:
I was handed a shirt when I got here, ’cause my clothing that I was wearing wasn’t even quality enough, and they handed me a T-shirt as an upgrade from…

Matt Mulcock:
From what you were wearing?

Reese Harper:
What I was wearing when I got here.

Ryan Isaac:
You are wearing our brand. Thanks for joining us everyone. This is super cool because this is celebrating our one millionth download of the Dentist Money Show. The Dentist Money Show started in Reese’s brain a long time ago, when he used to talk about… He used to ask, how can we actually educate people more on our message. At the time, we were mostly a fairly local business. Our company started in Salt Lake City about 15 years ago.

Matt Mulcock:
You were just driving around and…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, we were literally like doing meetings, driving into people’s offices, and Reese would start talking about, how can we just… How do we get a message out, how do we teach people more on a bigger scale, and you were talking about how do we… Like to do a podcast. I was like, what’s a podcast?

Reese Harper:
I think you mocked me.

Ryan Isaac:
The only context I had was people did radio shows in our industry.

Reese Harper:
Yeah, there was a big deal, that was…

Ryan Isaac:
Radio shows were a… They probably still are in some…

Reese Harper:
If you wanna sell whole life insurance, I think that radio show… Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Do a radio…

Reese Harper:
I think a radio show… Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Get on radio? But I don’t think this could be stressed enough that… ‘Cause right now it seems inevitable… Like why wouldn’t you do a podcast? Everyone and their dog is doing…

Ryan Isaac:
Not then, it didn’t seem as…

Matt Mulcock:
But not then. It’s kind of amazing that you guys thought about doing that and actually stuck with it. It’s incredible.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, the year was 2016, we were a fairly local business only ’cause that’s just how our industry operates. And within the year of starting, but it was more like within six months, we started having appointments on our calendar weekly from people all over the country, and it was completely… Maybe you felt that was gonna happen. I’m sure you did.

Reese Harper:
I’m always guessing at things and just hoping.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m sure you thought it would…

Matt Mulcock:
And then afterwards, he’s like, “Of course I knew. Of course.”

Ryan Isaac:
I knew that… I saw that coming. But I was shocked and it completely changed the entire future and trajectory of our business, and I think a lot of the industries. But it’s five years now, I don’t know what episode we’re on. Three something, 385?

Matt Mulcock:
333.

Ryan Isaac:
333.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s gotta be lucky.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, is that really 333? Shut up.

Reese Harper:
Getting started earlier, I think does help.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, it’s huge.

Reese Harper:
It’s a big deal. ‘Cause, and it’s with blogging too, I didn’t start a blog in the…

Ryan Isaac:
2004.

Reese Harper:
1999 when dial-up started.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Reese Harper:
But if you did you were the ones, ’cause no one can read all the blogs and no one can listen to all the podcasts. So.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, it’s like Gary Takacs starting in the industry, the pod father, as they refer to him.

Reese Harper:
Oh yeah, the pod father. Shout out to Gary.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, Mark Costes just hit six million downloads. I think he’s been going for seven years.

Matt Mulcock:
Shout out, that is amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
That guy…

Matt Mulcock:
He’s a beast.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t know how much caffeine Mark drinks. He might drink, like oxen blood at 3:00 AM before he does his cold water breathing meditation.

Matt Mulcock:
He’s an animal.

Ryan Isaac:
He’s an animal. But yeah, it’s crazy. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for the…

Reese Harper:
Does this episode feel indulgent to you?

Reese Harper:
I think we need to get to the content.

Ryan Isaac:
We’re gonna get to the people. So here’s what we did for this… We reached out on social media and we actually had a few people send in video clips and we asked people, what’s your million dollar financial advice? What’s the best financial advice you’ve…

Matt Mulcock:
And we have not heard any of these.

Ryan Isaac:
No, I briefly read a few of them just to make sure there was not just all jokes and there was actually things to…

Reese Harper:
Note to listeners. All of these messages came from Matt.

Ryan Isaac:
They were our team. Yeah.

Reese Harper:
They were our internal team.

Ryan Isaac:
It was our team who wrote all these notes. So yeah, this came from our Facebook group, the Dentist Advisors Discussion group on Facebook and then some private messages, some videos. So today we’re just gonna read some of these pieces of million dollar advice that people gave and we’re gonna comment on it, react to it and then we’re gonna play the video. You’ll hear the audio from it. We’re gonna play the video messages we got from people.

Reese Harper:
Nice.

Ryan Isaac:
And we’re gonna react to it live. We haven’t heard these.

Matt Mulcock:
What’s gonna be really fun is if… ‘Cause again we…

Ryan Isaac:
You haven’t heard them.

Matt Mulcock:
Maybe they’ve written ones you’ve read a little.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I’ve scanned them.

Matt Mulcock:
I haven’t read any of them. And I’ve seen none of the videos.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
So it’s gonna be really funny if there’s gonna be something that is just so…

Ryan Isaac:
It will throw you off.

Matt Mulcock:
Ridiculous and outlandish. I’m like, I don’t agree with that.

Ryan Isaac:
We can’t publish that.

Reese Harper:
And I can verify. I didn’t know I was gonna be here this morning until like an hour ago.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. We gave you a shirt when you walked in.

Matt Mulcock:
He was shirtless when he came in the office.

Ryan Isaac:
It was awesome. We’re gonna start… We’re gonna start with some Facebook comments. I’ll use some first names ’cause these are great. Greg. So the question was, what’s your best financial advice you’ve ever received? Million dollar financial advice. Greg says he gave me a list. I like Greg because he gave me five bullet points.

Matt Mulcock:
Greg is awesome.

Ryan Isaac:
So number one, don’t buy stuff you don’t need.

Matt Mulcock:
Boom.

Ryan Isaac:
But that doesn’t include surfboards or mountain bikes or…

Reese Harper:
Don’t buy stuff you don’t need.

Ryan Isaac:
Or coffee machines.

Matt Mulcock:
Define need.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Define need. Number two, pay yourself first.

Matt Mulcock:
Love it.

Ryan Isaac:
I thought that was really interesting. Number three is automate savings. Number four is no timing or picking, so he is referring to investing, and this is a person by the way just for context, who had a very long career in the field of dentistry, multiple practices and successful exit and continuing to be an investor.

Matt Mulcock:
He’s done decent.

Ryan Isaac:
This is a person of many decades of all kinds of investing. So no timing or picking, that was good. Time in the market matters most and…

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, I love that one.

Ryan Isaac:
And the last one was organization brings clarity and peace of mind.

Matt Mulcock:
These are dang good.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, these are good. I like the last thing he said, because we find this a lot where… This is a human who is highly successful on their own anyway, was before we met and will continue to be. But some of those little pieces of just having a whole picture in front of you and having someone to chat with about things, it makes a huge difference. So I’m glad that made his top list. I’m gonna actually throw in there Greg told Reese and I once we went on a… How long’s the Wasatch…

Reese Harper:
Oh Greg. We went on the Wasatch Crest together?

Ryan Isaac: How long is that?

Matt Mulcock:
Twenty three miles.

Ryan Isaac:
Really?

Reese Harper:
That depends on if you go out through East Mill-creek. If you go down Porcupine or if you’re gonna head up the Wasatch side.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t know.

Matt Mulcock:
Let’s go with the standard ride.

Ryan Isaac:
I think it was 20 miles.

Matt Mulcock:
I think it’s a 23.

Reese Harper:
It’s 23.

Ryan Isaac:
But on that ride, I’ll never forget he said that his best investment of his whole life was in his health. And I was like, oh yeah, yeah. I totally agree with that. I think we could shutdown the show on that one.

Matt Mulcock:
Just call it.

Ryan Isaac:
Health.

Reese Harper:
Turn the mic down.

Ryan Isaac:
Shut out the mic. Let’s read a few more here. Jason says “your primary residence is not an investment.” Now lately anyone who has a house…

Matt Mulcock:
He’s scoffing.

Ryan Isaac:
Is feeling like… It seems like an investment, ’cause that thing is just skyrocketing every month I check Zillow. Reese, what do you think about that? Primary residence is not an investment, but lately it feels like one, feels like a good one actually.

Reese Harper:
Yeah. You’ll just never get the money out of it though. So, it’s just gonna transfer to another primary resident.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s, yes.

Reese Harper:
You’re not gonna… Unless you’re really committed to relocating cities.

Ryan Isaac:
Downgrading, yeah.

Reese Harper:
To an inferior spot to what you’re used to for the last 20 years of your life.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Reese Harper:
And a lot of people can choose to do that. I have thought about doing that many times.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Reese Harper:
Taking my home equity and moving to Timbuktu.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Reese Harper:
It’s a hard shift. It’s a big shift.

Matt Mulcock:
Kanab, Utah.

Reese Harper:
Yeah dude. Kanab’s awesome.

Ryan Isaac:
Kanab’s probably blowing up now too.

Matt Mulcock:
Kanab’s actually pretty sweet.

Reese Harper:
Kanab’s blowing up.

Ryan Isaac:
Real prices there are probably not even low anymore.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Reese Harper:
They have a German pastry shop there that’s just amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
Kanab, Utah has a German Pastry shop?

Reese Harper:
I know, it’s incredible. It’s the most random thing. All right, I’m going to Powell and then on the left hand side of the road, halfway through Kanab, it’s a native German pastry shop with… You can even read the names of things on there, daily draft…

Matt Mulcock:
And it’s delightful.

Ryan Isaac:
Makes total sense to me.

Reese Harper:
It’s only open for four hours a day, folks.

Ryan Isaac:
Makes total sense to me. We’re gonna play a clip right now. We haven’t heard this clip. This comes from Grace Yum, MDIB.

Reese Harper:
Oh Grace.

Matt Mulcock:
Hello grace.

Reese Harper:
Hi Grace.

Ryan Isaac:
Long time friend of the show partner of Dentist Advisors, we do joint things with them all the time. We have some stuff coming up this summer with their leadership conference and MDIB Grace Yum. Everyone loves Grace.

Matt Mulcock:
I was gonna say, if you’ve ever met Grace, you know, the second you meet her…

Ryan Isaac:
Well, you’ll hear this clip. You’ll hear her voice.

Matt Mulcock:
You’re gonna hear a bunch. Like every time… When I first met her, the first thing you think is like, this woman is a force. She’s just… She’s incredible.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Funny story about that, our marketing director coordinator this morning was out getting balloons, of course, for our office.

Matt Mulcock:
Of course. For our party.

Ryan Isaac:
She was in line, and lady behind her… She had her Dentist Money Show shirt on, and on the back, it says, Dentist Advisors. And this lady says, “What are the balloons for? What’s that thing for dentists?” And so she was telling her about the podcast. Turns out the lady behind her was a dentist.

Matt Mulcock:
No.

Ryan Isaac:
And she’s like, “Oh, I didn’t… I’ve never heard of the podcast. I’m gonna start listening.” So she’s a local dentist and… But… Oh, but, she was talking about Grace Yum, and she’s a huge fan of Grace, this dentist that she met this morning. Huge fan of Grace.

Matt Mulcock:
I believe it.

Ryan Isaac:
Everyone knows Grace. Let’s hear what Grace has to say.

Grace Yum:
Congratulations, Dentist Money Show, on your one millionth download. My million dollar, I guess, quote would be for all of you listeners to think about how to make a business run without you. So if you’re a dentist entrepreneur and you own a practice or more than one, my advice or my quote is “Create a business that can run without you. You can work on your business, but not necessarily in it.” Congrats again, and thank you so much for including me.

Ryan Isaac:
Reese, you started Dentist Advisors like 15, 16 years ago.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, Reese might have something to say about this.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you have any thoughts at all on building a business that runs without you? Have you ever thought about this concept?

Matt Mulcock:
At all?

Reese Harper:
I’ll try to keep it brief. This is an episode folks.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes. Yeah, it has been.

Reese Harper:
But I admire Grace a lot, and I think she’s been a good example of lots of great advice to dentists over the years. I would say that’s an excellent piece of advice for some of you. And none of you really know if you’re the right person for that advice or not. And you kinda gotta try and you gotta see, because half… 90% of the population, that won’t be their reality. They’re going to be working for someone.

Ryan Isaac:
And want to.

Reese Harper:
And want to. And the dental market is… I guess I’m on the back side of having always been on the side of trying to make the business work without me. And at this point in my career, I’ve got plenty of, we’ll say, financial stability, but also, lost a lot of years. I got a lot of grey hair, Ryan’s in better shape than me.

Matt Mulcock:
Well, Ryan’s in better shape than all of us. Be real. That’s not saying much. [chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks, Reese. Thanks, Grace. I’m gonna read one here from Travis. This one hits home as an old guy to me. He says that, “Time is the asset.” That’s what he started with. That was his opening sentence. The older you get, the more you’re like, “I just need my time.” And it’s like, “I just want my time and I want my time back.” He said, “When I started thinking of my purchases is I have to work 10 hours in order to buy that,” he said, “That kinda put things into a different perspective. And it’s easier to delay gratification,” he says, “When your… When you project the compounding growth of saving when you’re young.” So, time. Time’s the asset.

Matt Mulcock:
He just gave a shout out to the book, Your Money or Your Life. They talk about that, viewing your purchases as…

Ryan Isaac:
A cost of your time.

Matt Mulcock:
Your life energy and think about the hours you…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I feel that so much.

Matt Mulcock:
Value of your time. And if I go to buy this, how many hours is it gonna cost me to work off this purchase?

Ryan Isaac:
Even when I probably shouldn’t, I’m definitely a person who spends money to… For convenience or time, even when I probably shouldn’t.

Matt Mulcock:
Spending money on outsourcing is the best way to spend your money, in my opinion.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m so into that, even though I probably should maintain some tasks and be a better budgeter.

Reese Harper:
I don’t know. You don’t need to put yourself down. You’re smart. You’re doing well.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, great. But there’s a limit to how much stuff you can pay other people to do in your life. But like right now, for example, I’m selling a car. The car market’s insane, cars are expensive. There’s money to be made in used cars, which is bonkers and upside down and backwards. But I’m so tempted, because the… I’m gonna sell it privately because the market’s so crazy. I’m so tempted to just take it to a dealer and not make hardly any of the money that I could.

Matt Mulcock:
But not deal with any of it.

Ryan Isaac:
Cause I can just drive it, sign some papers and then just leave. And then instead of…

Reese Harper:
When was the last time you’ve been to a dealer and remembered how long that took?

Ryan Isaac:
Last weekend when I picked up my other car that I’m replacing it with.

Reese Harper:
It wasn’t that painful though.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. This experience is okay. But yes, usually dealer…

Matt Mulcock:
It’s awful.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. But when I’m… I’m gonna have to post it and then deal with… All the scams are gonna come in and then coordinate, just like… I would rather have less money and more time.

Reese Harper:
You don’t want the friction.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t want friction, man. I don’t.

Reese Harper:
It is nice to have the… Some agency around that. And I think…

Ryan Isaac:
Have some control over it.

Reese Harper:
Some control. I think sometimes people feel guilty, though, if they’re young and they’re buried and they’re busy, or if they’re old and they’re slammed and they’re like, “I made the wrong decisions.” I think it’s important to remember that everyone’s got eight hours to 10 hours in a day, and they’re gonna live it some way. And some people get to enjoy it through productive labor and seeing their family for two, three hours a day, some people have the luxury of maybe traveling more and… But I think you can find joy in whatever you’re engaged in, even if you don’t feel… ‘Cause you don’t want that guilt and shame and kinda frustration to show up of like, “I wasn’t enough, I didn’t make the right call and… ”

Ryan Isaac:
Well, then you might end up resenting the meaningful work that you actually otherwise might enjoy.

Matt Mulcock:
Well, I think we’re speaking to something even broader that we’ve talked about a lot, which is one of the biggest mistakes I think people make is failing to ask the question why, like, “Why am I doing this?”

Ryan Isaac:
“Why am I doing this?”

Matt Mulcock:
And failing to define what that is for them. I think too many people, including myself, we’ve all fallen into this trap of doing things based on external pressures that they put on themselves. They think what…

Reese Harper:
I have to do.

Matt Mulcock:
What is supposed to be success… This is what success looks like ’cause my neighbor is doing this, or this person is doing this or Instagram.

Ryan Isaac:
When you might love your 9:00 to 5:00. You might like your four days of clinical week and…

Matt Mulcock:
You might love 9:00 to 5:00 that you can leave and never have to think about work again, where Reese is never not thinking about work.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s 9:00 AM to 5:00 AM the next day.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, exactly. But again, that’s…

Reese Harper:
Well, what’s interesting is I think that might be the perception, but I actually don’t… I don’t find myself…

Matt Mulcock:
Reese is like, I actually don’t work that hard. Don’t…

Reese Harper:
I don’t know. It’s different, like I think.

Ryan Isaac:
But you have control. I think that’s the main principle is you, you have control.

Reese Harper:
Yes, yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you ride at 2:00 AM sometimes? Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. ‘Cause, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you mountain bike at 10:00 AM sometimes? Yeah. It’s the control over it. Right now I’ve got Richard Lowe on tap.

Matt Mulcock:
Our guy Richard.

Reese Harper:
Dr. Lowe.

Ryan Isaac:
Dr. Richard Lowe on tap and let’s hear what Richard has to say.

Dr. Richard Lowe:
So, my million dollar advice is around practice ownership. Shared practices is all about the journey to the right practice model for you and how to grow and succeed in that model and knowing where you’re going, knowing what kind of practice you want and buying or starting the practice that gets you there in the most timely manner possible is what’s gonna lead to the greatest success over the course of a career. And for me, Dentist Advisors and the podcast I’ve been listening since the very beginning, they shaped my thinking around liquidity which is how much money do you have on hand to be able to buy or start up a practice or to operate your practice on an ongoing basis. And that has changed the advice I’ve given to other young dentists. Don’t pay down those student loans, build up cash savings first, then buy the practice that you want and grow that practice. And once it’s established and growing and doing great, you can pay off your loans, you can do whatever you want at that point, but don’t aggressively pay things down and not leave yourself with enough liquidity cash on hand to be able to operate a business.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. He said something in the beginning about question the why behind that a lot of stuff Grace was saying, but basically that’s a shout out to the, we should have more love for emergency funds.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh yeah. Making decisions from a place of flexibility and optionality versus like making a decision from a place of desperation.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Like that is huge. Richard just gets it.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Richard just gets it. What’s the episode, the laws of liquidity that we always… 280.

Matt Mulcock:
0:21:48.5 MM: 280, ’cause we always say it.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It’s the priority of like how much cash should I keep? Where should I keep it? When should, you know, cash move from one bucket to the next. Episode 280 talks a lot about that. And that’s what Richard’s talking about is it’s not sexy, but let’s show some love for emergency funds. I want to go to Victoria Peterson. This is just a note she wrote to us, us.

Matt Mulcock:
My God, just heavyweights, I love this.

Ryan Isaac: And these are all the big players of dentistry.

Matt Mulcock:
Yes, she is amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
This is the equivalent of us name dropping.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. It is.

Ryan Isaac:
We’re kind of namedropping. It’s all right though. Victoria Peterson, she writes… This is kind of cool. She says “Always keep a $100 in your wallet. It does three things.” I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this before.

Matt Mulcock:
No.

Ryan Isaac:
This is kind of cool. “It allows you to stop worrying about money ’cause you have a safety net for a quick emergency. It changes your language to choice. Everyone’s going to lunch, and instead of saying “I can’t afford it or I’m broke,” you can say “I choose not to spend my money on that lunch today.” And number three is generosity. You never know when a friend or stranger could use a hundred bucks more than you. Acts of kindness and generosity attract wealth to you.”

Matt Mulcock:
That’s amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
So Victoria Peterson. PDA, shout out to PDA, says keep a hundred bucks in your wallet. Now when you have teenagers, that usually goes to them.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. [laughter] I was actually just thinking too on the second point where she’s like “I choose not to go to lunch” I just imagine people going to lunch and you’re like “I choose… I don’t like you. So I choose not to go to lunch with you.”

Ryan Isaac:
You’re not worth a hundred bucks of lunch.

Matt Mulcock:
You’re not worth this.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re not worth. Sal on this comment thread here. This is again the Dentist Advisors Discussion group on Facebook. This is cool, it’s really short and quick, he says “Be humble, money will come and go.”

Matt Mulcock:
Oh my gosh, these are so good.

Ryan Isaac:
Dude, sit with that for a minute. You know, like the phases of life, whether it’s health or money or you know, a little bit of luck, lucky streak, you’re riding high for a while. Like, eh, those come and go.

Matt Mulcock:
Kind of an iteration of “this too shall pass” type of thing, which cuts both ways.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, cuts both ways. And to not be too attached to maybe your current influx of cash flow or income or wealth or investment returns or something, you know, be too attached to them because there is a reverse side to all those things. I thought that was cool.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s really good.

Ryan Isaac:
Be humble. Money will come and go. So there, there you go. Any thoughts on that Reese?

Reese Harper:
Also a reason to have a high LT score.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. [laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, because money will come and go. LT score being what, Reese?

Reese Harper:
Well, the liquid term score we talked about from Richard earlier. It’s the… To the degree that you can get that score higher, it’s harder for people to take that one away from you. And so it’s nice to keep a little bit there. It helps you keep your sanity.

Ryan Isaac:
There you go. Then you can, you can keep your humility when the income’s high and when the income’s low, ’cause the liquidity’s there. Let’s go to a video from Kiera Dent, Dental A-Team. Let’s see what Kiera has to say.

Kiera Dent:
Congratulations Dentist Money Show on your one millionth download, such a huge accomplishment. And I am so honored to be a part of this. My name’s Kiera Dent and I am the CEO and founder of the Dental A-Team. Know your numbers of your business. That’s the best thing I could ever tell you because when you know your numbers, you can really actually guide your practice, make smarter decisions and be able to truly know, can you afford this? Can you not? By knowing those numbers, it actually gives you confidence to be able to move forward in a direction that you know, that you can actually afford. So know your numbers, invest in yourself. I thought often… I love cars, I’m a big sports car person. And I thought often about how people would treat, say a Ferrari or a Lambo.

Kiera Dent:
Well, they’re going to definitely polish it and wax it and keep it really clean, and they’re gonna take great care of it because it’s a great investment. But I often think, do we treat ourselves as the number one person in our practice? You as the owner, you as the dentist, guess what, you are the one who actually drives that practice forward the most. You’re your greatest asset, you really are. And yet, do you treat yourself like a Ferrari or a Lambo or do you just kind of give yourself the scraps? Are you taking care of yourself mentally, physically, emotionally? Because when you think of yourself as your greatest asset, guess what, you are going to then prolong the longevity of yourself, which means you’re gonna be able to serve more, give back more and be able to really hone in on what you can do to help other people. Cheers to you guys, cheers to the Dentist Money Show. I’m so honored and so grateful to be a part of this. Cheers to you guys.

Ryan Isaac:
Cheers. Cheers all around.

Matt Mulcock:
So many good nuggets in there.

Ryan Isaac:
This is really good. I like the treat yourself.

Matt Mulcock:
Treat yourself like a Lambo.

Ryan Isaac:
From Parks and Rec. Treat yourself. Here’s the thing I wanna say from what Kiera said though. Thanks Kiera For submitting that, really appreciate it. Is… And I want Reese’s take on this, but I’ll say this first, I think probably the most important document to a dentist out of any piece of information document is the P&L. But I also think it’s the least understood document in a dentist’s life and the document that they spend the least amount of time on. That’s my… I don’t know if you’d feel the same way.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, totally.

Ryan Isaac:
Reese having been and still are an advisor to dentist, but also like multiple companies and running a P&L and having to scour it with people constantly; what are your thoughts on like, getting to know… That’s what she’s saying, know your numbers. And to me that just means, like, know your P&L and what it’s telling you and the story it’s telling. What say ye on knowing your P&L?

Reese Harper:
I’m actually doing a little quick… I’ve got a real estate agency in Texas that I’m doing a financial training for here next week. And the first lesson of personal finance, and that’s probably what I’m gonna pivot to share. Although I do agree, the P&L is the least understood business document. I think the personal financial statements, one of the least understood, like real least understood things.

Ryan Isaac:
And when you say personal financial statement, what’re you talking about.

Reese Harper:
Exactly. [laughter] Made my point. No, I think a dentist knows what a P&L is. I’m not sure if I said “Hey, what is wealth?” If I asked you the question, what is wealth?

Ryan Isaac:
How’s it measured? Where is it?

Reese Harper:
I don’t know that everyone… I think there’s a big correlation. People think like income is wealth, power to buy things is wealth. But wealth is what is left over, what you have. And we call that in finance world, net worth or what you’re worth.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s your balance sheet.

Reese Harper:
And I was surprised…

Ryan Isaac:
It’s a good point, at the very least people know what a P&L is, but your personal financial statement…

Reese Harper:
I don’t think they know that one.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. That’s a really good point actually.

Reese Harper:
So anyway, this training I’m doing, like the first lesson, I was so surprised as I did some research. These are really high income people. And I mean, they’re kind of Keller Williams, top real estate agents in Texas, and there’s a few hundred people and out of their 5,000 that we’re doing a beta test with. And knowing the difference just between income and wealth, and then knowing that wealth was net worth and then knowing how to calculate net worth…

Matt Mulcock:
Like what that even is.

Reese Harper:
It’s an hour long lesson, and everyone nods their head, but I’m having them build their own live and kind of type it in and figure it out. And it’s an important number too. So in addition to the P&L, here’s a shoutout to the old personal financial statement.

Ryan Isaac:
I think that’s a good point, dude.

Reese Harper:
And even if your net worth is negative like my sister and her husband right now who just got outta, shout out to the anesthesiologist that are upside down.

Ryan Isaac:
Just buried.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
He won’t be.

Reese Harper:
With no asset, by the way, to offset that student loan, like a practice…

Ryan Isaac:
He won’t be at 50.

Reese Harper:
He won’t be, he will be fine. He’s gonna kill it. But you’re going from negative $500,000 in net worth to negative 450. It feels good to make progress.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s still progress. It’s still the right direction.

Reese Harper:
It just feels good to make progress and to acknowledge your progress. And just to be like giving yourself a congrats, even if you’re just flatline for a while, or even if you’re going down, but you’re going down knowing that things are gonna be okay, and that’s normal.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes. I’m glad you bring that up because you’re right. People do know what a P&L is, even if they don’t spend time on it. In our own business I would say just from the average advisor interaction, we’re probably having a P&L discussion at least annually with a client. We’re talking about it, depends on the client and how deep we wanna get into it. But what we do more than that as what Reese is saying. Every quarter, we send a net worth report card to show how your net worth is changing and why it’s changing and which categories it’s changing, which direction it’s heading, how fast it’s heading there. And so I guess by our own actions, we’re saying that a personal financial statement and paying attention to it, reviewing it frequently is probably the most important thing to spend time on.

Matt Mulcock:
Well, I think generally just getting organized in all these areas, this is why when a client comes on board…

Ryan Isaac:
That’s where it begins.

Matt Mulcock:
The first month all we’re doing is spending time getting them organized and then continually throughout the year, it is a constant process that seems like, I think you used the word, it’s not sexy at all. But being organized, and I love what Kiera said, knowing your numbers, is not only the foundation of moving your business forward, it’s the foundation of moving your personal finances forward. It’s like trying to lose weight and not knowing how much you weigh and not tracking your… You gotta step on the scale on a regular basis.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s where it begins.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s where it begins.

Reese Harper:
I’m learning a lot here. This is cool.

Ryan Isaac:
We talk about this weekly Reese.

Reese Harper:
What’d you guys learn since I’ve been gone?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I just went back and listened to all your episodes.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, we just listened to the first 200 of Reese Harper.

Reese Harper:
Kiera highlighted that and about halfway through, she just said, she’s making the metaphor analogy of taking care of yourself.

Ryan Isaac:
Your Lambo self.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah your Lambo…

Reese Harper:
And I think actually she’s speaking probably right to the heart of that, those personal numbers. That’s the most intimate kind of thing you can look at that reflects your own economic value that’s come out of all this hard work. And I feel like it’s an important thing to understand and keep track of and just get in the habit of doing that. And Greg Guymon said that in his comment earlier just being organized, being able to look at everything and knowing what it… And dude, it’s so funny. I actually I’ve experienced this from so many different angles in the last couple of months because some of my personal clients I’ve been shifting over and to different pieces of tech to try things out, and if they go for like three months without seeing their numbers in front of them that they can trust, they are freaking out. Because I’ve got like 10 years of tracking their numbers perfectly.

Ryan Isaac:
In your head you’re like, we have the numbers.

Reese Harper:
I’m like dude, it’s good.

Ryan Isaac:
I see it all the time. Yeah.

Reese Harper:
And I’ve been building this new tech and I’d be, and they’re really nice to be like “Dude, I wanna try that.”

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Matt Mulcock:
Brilliant doctors.

Reese Harper:
Let me see this cool tech and then something’s busted like a bug or something, and they’re like “I can’t see, what’s going on, I didn’t see my practice disappeared.” And then all of a sudden it’s like back to normal. I’m like they’ll request meetings and just be like “Look, can we get together? I just gotta know where I’m at.”

Matt Mulcock:
They just wanna know.

Reese Harper:
It’s so valuable.

Ryan Isaac:
Where am I?

Reese Harper:
Just to know like…

Matt Mulcock:
Where am I? Yeah.

Reese Harper:
Well, and you know what they’re really asking is they wanna know if you…

Ryan Isaac:
Do you know where I’m at?

Reese Harper:
Matt, do you think I’m okay?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, and that is it.

Reese Harper:
And I’ve been so surprised that this relationship between a dentist and their financial advisor is, it’s really a lot more personal than just the numbers. It’s the numbers and it’s someone’s interpretation of those numbers. If Matt doesn’t have the numbers, he can’t with confidence actually say you’re fine, or you’re at risk or preventative care, or…

Ryan Isaac:
Well, the type of person who’s hiring an advisor is the type of person that not only wants someone to know it, but do you have an opinion on it?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Reese Harper:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you have an opinion on my number?

Reese Harper:
Well, and their… The type of person that doesn’t actually generally love the whole financial stuff anyway.

Ryan Isaac:
Themselves.

Reese Harper:
And so it’s kinda like, you have to have the numbers, but it also helps to have a person to sort of tell you, “I’m looking at these numbers. What do you think?” If I go to a doctor, my blood pressure is 140. Am I very high? Am I normal? I’ve read some stuff online and I’ve seen some ratios, but…

Ryan Isaac:
You’ve been into Facebook…

Matt Mulcock:
I’ve been in and out of WebMD, you don’t need a doctor.

Reese Harper:Am I at risk for a stroke or are we good?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Do you know and do you have an opinion?

Reese Harper:
I just wanna… I don’t care what the internet tells me. I wanna know…

Matt Mulcock:
What can you tell me.

Reese Harper:
There’s a living, breathing, flesh and blood creature, do they know?

Ryan Isaac:
Do they know when they need care? We have Joshua Scott from our friend’s at Studio 8E8, little known fact… It’s probably not little known fact, if you follow him on social media, Joshua Scott’s one of those shoe guys.

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, he’s the shoe can?

Ryan Isaac:
Like shoe guy.

Matt Mulcock:
Or he loves shoes?

Ryan Isaac:
No, he loves shoes.

Matt Mulcock:
Okay.

Ryan Isaac:
And he’s got cool throwback shoes and like…

Matt Mulcock:
Is he a fancy shoe guy? Or…

Ryan Isaac:
No, no.

Matt Mulcock:
All of the above?

Ryan Isaac:
Like Jordan.

Matt Mulcock:
Like Jordans. All right.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, like shoe guy.

Reese Harper:
Like, Retro Nikes.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
Can I admit something really quick?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, please.

Matt Mulcock:
I’ve never owned a pair of Jordans. [chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
I’ve been gifted a pair and I don’t know how to wear them.

0:35:04.9 RH: I don’t think I’ve ever owned one either.

Matt Mulcock:
Okay. I feel seen here.

Reese Harper:
Okay. [chuckle]

Matt Mulcock:
I feel seen.

Ryan Isaac:
I’ve been gifted a pair and they are the most… My daughter, who’s also a big shoe person, like those throwback shoes. She thinks they’re the sickest things ever. She’s like you… And I’m like, I don’t know how and where to use. And I don’t want a single mark on them. I just want them in a case with a light on them.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. But this is the first time ever in my life that I’ve told…

Ryan Isaac:
You don’t really know?

Matt Mulcock:
Another man that I don’t have…

Ryan Isaac:
It’s all right.

Matt Mulcock:
A pair of Jordans.

Ryan Isaac:
Or is it safe.

Matt Mulcock:
And I don’t get the look.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s gender neutral. Doesn’t matter.

Reese Harper:
I’m the person that sends you the mindfulness and meditations book. It’s unlikely that…

Matt Mulcock:
It’s swapping philosophy takes.

Ryan Isaac:
Reese is judging you, Reese [0:35:40.0] ____. Let’s hear from shoe king Studio 8E8, dental branding marketing gurus, Joshua Scott.

Joshua Scott:
Dentist Advisors, one million downloads. Oh my gosh. Envious, jealous, but guys congrats. It’s a huge, huge accomplishment. My best piece of million dollar advice, one of the questions I ask myself every year, what’s the biggest change you are gonna make? I think as business owner, CEO, whatever, you’re leading, forcing yourself to ask that question, what am I gonna change? What’s intentionally gonna change? What are we gonna do different? ‘Cause if you don’t, you always get the same thing, guys again congratulations.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. So first of all…

Matt Mulcock:
By far the best.

Ryan Isaac:
First of all, and not fair to everyone else who so graciously sent us vid… Took time out of their busy days to send us a customized video at our request. He brought his production crew I guess. [chuckle]

Matt Mulcock:
That was full on. He had four people behind him producing that thing.

Ryan Isaac:
This is like, no…

Matt Mulcock:
Mic hanging over his head.

Ryan Isaac:
No one will see this, but this was full on high quality camera, boom mic, in studio, he’s kinda walking through the office.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Dude. [laughter] I just wanna talk about the production quality.

Matt Mulcock:
That was influencer video.

Ryan Isaac:
Jason, I’ll show you this. This was great. Comments on Joshua Scott.

Matt Mulcock:
I like the word he used intentional. We’ve talked about this a lot. That to me stood out more than anything is just having intention behind your decisions. I don’t know if whether you have to change everything all the time. I do like… I do love the idea of asking the question, of like, what am I gonna change this year? If anything, I guess I’d add.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Doesn’t mean you… ‘Cause…

Ryan Isaac:
Or maybe your intention is just to keep going.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s what I’m saying. He said, if you don’t change, nothing’s gonna change, type of thing, which I agree with. But I would just say to that point, maybe you’re not really looking to have anything changed, but I love the word intentional there.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. And Reese was saying this earlier. I think it’s a cool, fine line. It’s a beautiful battle if you will.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
To be present, content, grateful and kind of in what’s happening today, ’cause we don’t know if we have it tomorrow.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
But also balancing that with… But I would still like some things to change. I would still like to progress.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, progress, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
I would still like to achieve the next level. But as of today… Today is a step to that, but it is today and I’ve got it.

Matt Mulcock:
Content, but not complacent, type of thing.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t know. I mean this… I don’t know if this is the podcast for that kind of deep…

Matt Mulcock:
I don’t know. [chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
Deep dive. By the way, there is a video of this. So you can go reference this as we’re mentioning these things.

Matt Mulcock:
Reese has no idea where this is going.

Ryan Isaac:
No, no. I was gonna say Reese has this pose. [chuckle] It’s steeped fingers to the mouth…

Matt Mulcock:
Oh yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
The eyes are fixed in the middle distance just like…

Matt Mulcock:
Yes, I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Ryan Isaac:
And there’s wisdom being formed right now. So…

Reese Harper:
I don’t… [chuckle]

Matt Mulcock:
He’s rubbing his chin.

Reese Harper:
I missed… I’m just deciding…

Ryan Isaac:
Or maybe he’s thinking about the meeting he’s late for, I don’t know.

Reese Harper:
No, no. You’re just deciding which one… I loved… First of all, I love… Joshua sent me a T-shirt that I think I wear more than most T-shirts I have in my closet. It’s a bright green Studio 8E8 shirt from…

Ryan Isaac:
Solid.

Reese Harper:
A year or two ago. And I’ve been wearing that mostly around the neighborhood when I wanna be seen.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Reese Harper:
Which is every day.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, yeah. It’s a daily…

Reese Harper:
Anyway, shout out to that token gift. I like this advice, for me, I’m just trying to think… What I’m hearing there is if you’re not focused on improving something, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. That doesn’t mean… It doesn’t mean money.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah.

Reese Harper:
It’s just like, what relationship do you want to cement even, like what relationship in your life feels like it needs some work, right? Or what do you want to have accomplished this year with your wellness, or what do you want to have done for vacations over the next six months where you look back and you’re like, “Oh, that was cool. We went to this place.”

Ryan Isaac:
A place we thought about for a long time.

Reese Harper:
It’s just conscious, intentional like, what are your values? And go take the next steps towards that value.

Ryan Isaac:
Intention, that’s probably the word.

Reese Harper:
I think too often we feel like, “Oh boy, here we go. Goal setting time,” it’s like, well, you already know what your values are, if you haven’t taken time to understand your values, download a values card deck off amazon.com and just start ranking it around on your desk and pick 10. It’s like 50 values, find yours, rank them and a little pyramid, 4321, find your top three and say “What am I gonna do to support those three values?”

Ryan Isaac:
I’ve never done this. That sounds kind of awesome. A values card deck from Amazon. All right, I’m gonna go do that. I’ll do that for my kids actually.

Reese Harper:
It’s a big deal. I think it could help guide your happiness a lot, because a lot of times the areas we think we’re supposed to be pursuing are not our inherent values, and so…

Matt Mulcock:
It’s just kind of like the know your numbers, but the version of know your values.

Reese Harper:
Yeah Know your values.

Matt Mulcock:
And I think it comes back to that whole idea.

Ryan Isaac:
Drake said “Know yourself, know your worth.”

Matt Mulcock:
Exactly, [laughter] we’ve quoted this, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
We use Drake lyrics.

Matt Mulcock:
We use Drake a lot.

Ryan Isaac:
Podcast.

Matt Mulcock:
He’s a modern day… He’s a poet.

Ryan Isaac:
I’ve got… I’ve got a video here from Morgan Hamon CPA…

Reese Harper:
Oh, no way, shout out, pilot.

Ryan Isaac:
Owner of H… Yeah. Fighter jet pilot.

Matt Mulcock:
Fighter pilot.

Ryan Isaac:
He still flies too, owner of HDA Accounting, and he’s a guy who’s seen a lot of dentist accounting over the years.

Reese Harper:
Did you guys hear about that Ukrainian myth of pilot fighter that was shooting down Russian spies from the air?

Matt Mulcock:
Was that Morgan?

Reese Harper:
I think that was Morgan.

Ryan Isaac:
It might have been Morgan.

Reese Harper:
It’s like a mythical creature that no one knows about. There’s like videos of him floating around on the internet.

Ryan Isaac:
No way.

Reese Harper:
Yeah but anyway, it turns out that…

Ryan Isaac:
Morgan.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s Morgan.

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s check his…

Reese Harper:
It turns out it’s a video game clip, and it was just going viral on Twitter.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, the internet lied, oh crap.

Reese Harper:
It was cool. When I first saw that I thought Morgan…

Ryan Isaac:
I’d like to picture Morgan on a vigilante mission.

Reese Harper:
He just took off from Denver. Just like… He’s like.

Matt Mulcock:
You calling HDA and like “He’s been off for two weeks.”

Ryan Isaac:
We haven’t seen him.

Matt Mulcock:
We don’t know what’s happening.

Reese Harper:
Defending innocent folks.

Ryan Isaac:
Morgan keeps an F-18 in his garage.

Matt Mulcock:
Absolutely, always.

Reese Harper:
Let’s see what top gun has to say.

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s see what the top gun has to say.

Morgan Hamon:
Well, congratulations to Dentist Advisors on their one millionth download of the Dentist Money Show, and I look forward to many more years of partnership. I’m going to share my one million dollar advice, and that goes back to my days in the Navy, and definitely the most useful lesson I learned from my experience as a Navy pilot, and that million dollar advice is, simply put, no excuses. That was the culture in single seat naval aviation that I learned as a navy pilot. And what that means is, if any situation is going sideways or there’s just something not happening the way you want; the first place to look is always in the mirror. Is it me? And when you translate that to business, it can be very powerful.

Morgan Hamon:
So both an accounting firm and a dental practice, these are human based businesses. We have people working for us, and humans are not infallible, so it’s guaranteed whether it’s a client or patient experience like something, someday, something is going to go sideways, and as the business leader, you always have to look in the mirror when that happens and maybe… Maybe there was not adequate training, maybe there was a procedure we had in place, and even though I as the business leader conceived that procedure, maybe that procedure is not effective or [chuckle] maybe there’s no procedure at all. You have to look in the mirror, be hard on yourself, and if there’s something you either did not do or you had a solution that turns out… And it’s ineffective, you just leave the ego at the door, self-diagnose, fix it and take care of it and move on.

Ryan Isaac:
Jeez. I’m so glad that we ignorantly joked about planes and then he actually used real plane analogy.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, that was amazing. It’s not planned.

Ryan Isaac:
From an actual expert with experience. Thanks, Morgan, HDA Accounting. That’s really cool. I’ll just be the first to say that taking criticism and having conversations about it is, is a skill that most people have to develop that are, you’re not born with it, it’s not comfortable for like… I don’t know what the percent of the population. Nobody.

Matt Mulcock:
Just throw a number.

Ryan Isaac:
99.9999% of people don’t like feedback, they don’t wanna talk about what they’re doing wrong. We don’t like to hear it. And it’s totally a skill that you have to develop slowly over time and always, always, because you might develop the skill of taking feedback from co-workers, but then at home, you can’t do it. Or maybe you can as a partner or a spouse but you can’t as a parent or [chuckle] something. So again, Reese, you’ve had a long time of building teams and processes, you’ve had to be the one giving feedback and criticism, and you’ve had be the one taking feedback and criticism as a leader of business for a long time.

Reese Harper:
Plenty of that.

Ryan Isaac:
So I know this is a whole other topic. We’ve talked about books that we’ve read as a team and things to do on this, but what do you think about that? And thanks Morgan. That’s really awesome advice.

Reese Harper:
First, thanks Morgan, that was awesome. Morgan’s always been… In terms of the super seasoned, it’s like an expert CPA. Not a big marketer there. He’s coming in tempered.

Matt Mulcock:
I was just gonna say, can you… Just real quick. He is so…

Reese Harper:
But the contrast.

Matt Mulcock:
Calm. And like…

Reese Harper:
The calm before the storm.

Matt Mulcock:
Every time you talk to him, he’s like…

Reese Harper:
He’s in tax season right now too, son.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, he’s in tax season, he’s sending us a video.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I know, he’s sending a video and it’s so calm and so measured. I’m like of course you just… You are a fighter pilot.

Ryan Isaac:
Of course you’re a fighter pilot.

Matt Mulcock:
You can imagine him in the plane, not a drop of sweat and you’re…

Ryan Isaac:
You’re going a million miles an hour with your life on the line and he’s talking in a calm, slow voice.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. All right, I’m coming in.

Ryan Isaac:
He’d be like…

Reese Harper:
Anyway… So, you…

Ryan Isaac:
“Cockpit to tower… ”

Reese Harper:
As far as the other thing that you were asking about, I would say it’s easy… It’s great to have good team members like you two that make tough conversations easier to have. I think one thing that I would add to this, that was an analogy I heard recently, was really helpful from a book I just finished. It’s called 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership from an author named Jim Dethmer and he runs a consulting business in Northern California and the…

Ryan Isaac:
15… Say it again.

Reese Harper:
It’s 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.

Ryan Isaac:
I think I saw you flipping through your phone on something, like you have a slide deck on that or something.

Reese Harper:
 The first commitment of all the commitments is what they call take a 100% responsibility, where… And the way you kind of assess this is he just draws a picture of a line and there’s above the line and there’s below the line. And when you’re above the line in life, it means you’re curious, wanting to learn and open. And when you’re below the line, you’re closed, you’re judging and you’re convinced that you’re right. [chuckle] So if you find yourself below the line convinced that you’re right judging or kind of defensive and closed, you’re never gonna be in a place where you’re ready to progress. You can’t progress below the line. And we all float above and below the line all day.

Ryan Isaac:
And in different areas too, yeah.

Reese Harper:
Yeah, we all float.

Matt Mulcock:
It depends on what it is, yeah.

Reese Harper:
And some things are very triggering for us, bring us down below the line. We get defensive and tight and closed.

Ryan Isaac:
Closed off.

Reese Harper:
And if you stay above the line, you’re kind of open, you’re hearing people and you’re curious. When someone yells at you and they’re below the line, ’cause they’re convinced they’re right and they’re just yelling at you, you’re above the line and you’re staying curious, going “I wonder why they’re in so much pain? I wonder why they’re so furious at me right now. What is going on in their life that’s causing them to be so angry?”

Ryan Isaac:
And then when there’s a conversation between two below the line people.

Matt Mulcock:
Buckle up, grab your popcorn.

Reese Harper:
Buckle up, son.

Ryan Isaac:
It gets nowhere.

Reese Harper:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s when I pull up a chair and I just watch.

Reese Harper:
Then when you’re…

Ryan Isaac:
That’s really smart.

Reese Harper:
And when you’re both above the line having conversation, man, it’s a fulfilling relationship ’cause then you’re both just trying to feed off each other and learn and trying to…

Ryan Isaac:
You’re constantly asking… What’s the question did you say? I wonder why they’re in so much pain or I wonder why they’re thinking this or feeling this, I wonder why, I wonder.

Reese Harper:
Yeah, or even when you have two above the line people, you’re able to explore business a lot more effectively too ’cause neither one of you are convinced that your good ideas are right. You’re just offering suggestions and you’re…

Matt Mulcock:
Asking questions.

Reese Harper:
Asking questions, and you’re hoping that the other person’s also staying above the line and asking if they might be wrong and/or they might be right and…

Ryan Isaac:
So hard.

Reese Harper:
It’s really hard to stay there.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s hard to learn that, it’s hard to get to a place like that, and it’s not most people’s basic nature.

Matt Mulcock:
It takes work, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Takes so much work. And so as a team or relationships or whatever, you just have to constantly go into that discomfort with somebody for a long period of time and then hope that the team member doesn’t leave the company or that your person doesn’t leave you. [chuckle]

Reese Harper:
Yeah. Or if they do, that’s… Unfortunately you’ve gotta decide, are you gonna stay above the line or are you gonna go below the line for the rest of your life on that situation? You’re gonna judge the reason they left or you’re just gonna…

Ryan Isaac:
Say the book again. Above and below the line, I like that.

Reese Harper:
The book’s called the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. That’s the first commitment, which is take 100% responsibility.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s what Morgan was gonna saying.

Reese Harper:
The other 14 are just amazing. It’s like one of… Well, that’s probably the best book.

Ryan Isaac:
We’ll have you back for a 14 part series.

Reese Harper:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Reese Harper:
Those are 14 separate episodes, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s listen to Dr. Michelle Jorgensen. We’ve had her on our content a few times.

Reese Harper:
Oh, wow. Shout out.

Ryan Isaac:
We’ve known Dr. Michelle for many, many years. What? I mean, you probably met her Reese in ’07 maybe? I mean…

Reese Harper:
She’s amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Michelle does a lot of things besides running a very successful practice. She’s a leader and a mentor and…

Matt Mulcock:
She started a separate business now too.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. She’s heavily involved in a lot of things like big in education. This is an above the line person.

Reese Harper:
Very curious, one of the world’s best gardeners.

Ryan Isaac:
Little known. I didn’t know that.

Reese Harper:
Yep, you name it. She has all kinds of…

Matt Mulcock:
I should be talking to her, I need some help.

Ryan Isaac:
He needs some gardening help.

Matt Mulcock:
In My yard.

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s hear what Dr. Michelle Jorgensen has to say.

Dr. Michelle Jorgensen:
Quick start personality, that’s just me. If I hear something, I wanna do it tomorrow and I wanna see results the next day. So I’m not real patient with things and that’s one of the things that working with an advisor has really helped me with. First of all, I have to slow down long enough to actually ask them their opinion [chuckle] which has been good for me because it’s helped me to create my two rules. Pretty much, there’s two things that I always follow when it comes to spending or saving money as far as my dental practice goes and for my personal life.

Dr. Michelle Jorgensen:
So my two rules are, first of all, my 24 hour rule, I have lots of ideas. Day in and day out, there’s so many ideas spilling out of my head and I just wanna do them all today. But my rule is that I do not let myself do anything on anything for 24 hours. So I give myself 24 hours to think about it, chill about it. If I’m onto the next thing by the next day that I know it really wasn’t that important, and then if I’m still thinking about in 24 hours, I give myself a week to just process it and believe me, this kills me, I do not like to do things this slowly, but this has really helped me spend money on the right things, save money on the right things. And it’s been incredible to see how thinking about this as a long run prospect over time that you actually get to where you’re going faster than you thought you would if you’re just careful about every step.

Dr. Michelle Jorgensen:
My other rule is my gut rule. If my gut feels any hesitation, I listen. 100%, I will listen and say, “Eh, I just don’t think that’s right. Let’s give it 24 hours. Let’s give it a week,” whatever it might be. So I’m 48 and I pretty much have gone to the point where work is optional for me, I don’t have to do this anymore. So I’m doing exactly what I want, I’m doing none of what I don’t want. And that is such a freeing position to be in. And I’m here much earlier than I thought it could be. So listen to your gut, give yourself a little bit of time before making these impulse decisions and step by step, you’re gonna get where you’re going faster than you thought you could.

Ryan Isaac:
Dr. Michelle, everybody. My wife makes decisions that way. I’m the person who…

Matt Mulcock:
Well, on a whim?

Ryan Isaac:
No, no, no. Thoughtfully, thoughtfully.

Matt Mulcock:
Or slows down? Okay. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And she gets what she wants out of decisions. Out of anything. It could be a shirt, a car, a trip. I’m like, it gives me like 70% of what I want, but I can get it now, instead of getting a 100% of what I want and get it later. I’m like… I like to get…

Matt Mulcock:
We’ve talked about this. I’m the same way.

Ryan Isaac:
I like to get things done. I just like to get ’em done, check ’em off, move on to the next thing. I hate trying to be patient. I hate waiting. Yeah. It’s tough for me.

Matt Mulcock:
I thought what was interesting about what she said… She said it twice… Something to… Along the lines of, You’ll get it faster than you think, just by slowing down. I thought of… I think there’s this… What the military saying, that’s like… So slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. So I repeat that to myself when I’m paddling. So sometimes I’ll paddle out to some waves, and if it’s a bigger day or it’s just like really kind of a lot of commotion, it feels like I look clear out there where the people are sitting, I’m like, I’m never gonna make it. I’m just getting like slammed by waves. I repeat that to myself all the time. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. That’s all I could think of when she was talking is that.

Ryan Isaac:
Smooth is slow, slow is fast. No.

Matt Mulcock:
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Smooth is fast. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
So it’s like, slow down, and it’s actually gonna happen faster than you think.

Ryan Isaac:
You’ll go smoother, and then smooth is fast.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. And I loved what… She was very pragmatic. She’s very pragmatic in her approach ’cause I think a lot of times we talk about things, and it’s like, the idea sounds obvious. Like, Okay, the idea of things, it’s easier said than done. I like that she acknowledged that she struggles with this and she created…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Knows herself.

Matt Mulcock:
A very simple… Yeah. She knows herself, first of all. But then she created a very simple… Some simple rules to say like, here’s how I’m actually gonna apply this. And it seems like it’s worked really well for her.

Reese Harper:
I wanted to give Michelle a compliment. And I don’t know, she may not be listening to this ’cause she’s too busy. So, hopefully, this applies to the audience as well. But…

Ryan Isaac:
We’ll send her this clip.

Reese Harper:
I think she has a unique… I don’t know if she realizes this. I’ve never talked to her about this. But for someone to be able to say all the stuff she’s saying about how she feels centered or content and happy and that this has all kind of worked out. She went through a lot to get there. And what I saw her doing was really wise and I think it was intuitive to her. But there’s this old Japanese proverb, kind of concept from the fourth century, it’s called Ikigai. And it means life value or finding value in life. It’s two words. Iki is life, and gai is value. And it basically is… What they’re trying to say is they’re teaching about professions and what makes a healthy career and what makes you feel fulfilled. And they said it’s a hybrid between four things, and that everyone’s imbalanced in one of those four areas. One thing is what you love, another thing is what you’re good at, another thing is what the world needs, and then what you can get paid for.

Ryan Isaac:
Dang.

Reese Harper:
And all four of those things, what you can get paid for, what you’re good at, what the world needs and what you love, we kind of float around in our life, and sometimes we’re overbalanced in any one area, and sometimes we think we want what we love, and then we realize we can’t get paid for it, or…

Ryan Isaac:
Or we’re not even good at what we love.

Reese Harper:
Or we’re not good at what we love.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I love it, but I’m terrible at it.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m not even good at it.

Reese Harper:
Or the world doesn’t need it. And so you find an imbalance there. But she’s added all of those things to her life. She’s got a pretty diverse life. And it has… It’s had to… For her to make life work and for her to really thrive, she’s had to pull from a lot of things outside of a traditional 9:00 to 5:00 dental practice in order to find that balance. And when you find that for yourself, that’s when you really thrive in life. And whether you’re a business owner or not, it doesn’t matter. Those are your four kind of balancing acts. And I just saw her do such a good job of adding things to her life when she felt kind of off kilter. And I think that’s helped her accelerate her growth.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, and I was just gonna say, you’ve known her for a very long time. And when you… You know when you hear people talk, and you’re like, You’re saying these things ’cause you’ve lived them?

Reese Harper:
Oh yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Like you just know. And yeah, she… That’s some wisdom right there. That’s really cool.

Reese Harper:
Yeah. She’s great. Anyway.

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s do one more. This has been a longer episode, but it’s been really cool.

Matt Mulcock:
But again, million downloads.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s a millionth download. And…

Matt Mulcock:
We’ll do this again on the 2 millionth download.

Ryan Isaac:
We’ll see you again in six years.

Matt Mulcock:
Which you know what they say, the first million is the hardest.

Ryan Isaac:
First million is the hardest.

Reese Harper:
I think someone said that once.

Ryan Isaac:
They were referring to podcasts.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. I think they were.

Ryan Isaac:
It was in 1872.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. It was.

Ryan Isaac:
And they were referring to podcasting.

Matt Mulcock:
Gerald P. Washington, I believe.

Ryan Isaac:
The third. Esquire, the third.

Matt Mulcock:
The fourth.

Ryan Isaac:
The fourth. We’re gonna close… Wrap things up with Michael and Laura from our pals at Wonderist Agency. Speaking of the most frequently worn shirts in the dental industry, mine totally comes from them. They have that bright blue big block lettering on the front that says, “I do it at least 14 times a week,” and then on the back, it’s a toothbrush. Which is also not true, ’cause I don’t brush twice a day sometimes. Just kidding. And so speaking of T-shirts, man, one of the coolest offices too down in San Diego.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. They just live down the road from you.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Their office is so… It’s like one of those restored older, kind of industrial-looking buildings. It’s all open. It’s so cool. Awesome team. If you wanna follow a company who does some really good leadership and team building, man, they do some cool stuff, and they always post about it. Here’s Michael and Laura talking about their million dollar advice from the Wonderist Agency, coming to us from their studio too. So Wonderist Agency.

Laura Maly:
Hey, guys. Laura Maly here and Michael Anderson, co-founders at Wonderist. And we’re here to give you our million dollar advice. And that is that consistent brand presence across all of your marketing channels can increase revenue up to 23%, according to Forbes.

Michael Anderson:
So what does that mean? What that means is ditch stock images, find something that makes you different so that you stand out in a sea of practices where everybody else is raising their hand saying “I’m a dentist, I’m a dentist, look at me,” and have something different to say. And make sure that you do that consistently in all of your marketing channels.

Laura Maly:
Any other advice?

Michael Anderson:
The only other advice I have is make sure that your wife does the finances.

Laura Maly:
He’s right.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Michael and Laura, that’s so good. Those guys are…

Matt Mulcock:
I love that every one of these have been so different.

Ryan Isaac:
They’re all so different.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
The thing it reminds me of…

Reese Harper:
They’ve all found their Ikigai.

Ryan Isaac:
They found their Ikigai.

Reese Harper:
They’ve all really found their zen.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you know how to spell that?

Reese Harper:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t, I’m trying to like picture how it’s spelled.

Reese Harper:
I-K-I-G-A-I.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Their IKIGAI. The thing that makes me think about is just looking back on the course of Dentist Advisors and the early struggles we had in an industry where a lot of the profit, a bigger source of revenue or profit comes from just finding older people with money to manage, right? Retired people, that’s a lot of and selling them products usually. But that’s where a lot of our industry focused. I remember the early years trying to think about what’s this balance between building a business that’s gonna actually run and make it and actually have revenue. And diving… You said this earlier, diving into one thing that we can become an expert at. And they were talking about having something personal and specific and I don’t know if they used the word niche but…

Matt Mulcock:
Standing out.

Ryan Isaac:
Standing out where people they see your company and they know who you are and what you’re about, because you’ve really put your flag in the ground and said “This is where we’re standing, this is who we are, and this is what we’re gonna do.” When you look back to the branding process, I remember when someone was trying to convince us to change our name from a generic name to Dentist Advisors for the first time, we were like “Are we really gonna do it?”

Matt Mulcock:
Lean into this one.

Reese Harper:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Are we gonna say no to everyone but a dentist forever? Is that gonna work? Or are we gonna look back in five years when we’re closing up shop and be like, well…

Ryan Isaac:
“We tried.”

Matt Mulcock:
“We tried.”

Reese Harper:
Gave it a shot.

Ryan Isaac:
What do you think about that Reese? Branding and making sure people know who you are standing out, like they said.

Reese Harper:
Well, I love that advice and feel it’s… I was thinking of a ton of practices that came through my mind that stand out uniquely in ways that they probably don’t make a lot of sense. So I want to shout out to my brother-in-law who I think does this pretty good in Southern California.

Ryan Isaac:
I have his sweater.

Matt Mulcock:
Speaking of shirts and hats that you wear more than anything…

Reese Harper:
I wear…

Matt Mulcock:
Every day I see you.

Ryan Isaac:
He might be one of the best non-apparel apparel makers.

Reese Harper:
Yeah. So he is really into apparel. He’s just really into apparel.

Ryan Isaac:
Good gear.

Reese Harper:
And he is into apparel for just general life, life casual, he’s in Southern California, the apparel company headquarters of the world.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Reese Harper:
And he’s just got a good sense of style. Now that doesn’t really… You wouldn’t think that would… It’s why does that matter? Does it matter?

Ryan Isaac:
As a dentist.

Reese Harper:
But he’s kind of embraced like his swag.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah.

Reese Harper:
And it’s been circulated through some really surprising circles. Now with professional athletes and professional surfers and a lot of the crowd in SoCal. I’m sharing that not as the perfect example, what I’m sharing that for… Even though I do think, which is amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Reese Harper:
Hada Family Dental, if you don’t know it.

Ryan Isaac:
HFD, I’ve got the sweater right here, too.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, you walked in with a lot.

Ryan Isaac:
I walked, I wore it this morning. Yeah.

Reese Harper:
And I just think he’s found something that he can authentically connect with.

Ryan Isaac:
Authentically. I was gonna say that. Someone didn’t tell him “Oh, you should make cool T-shirts and hats and sweaters.”

Reese Harper:
No, he just did it cause he loves it.

Ryan Isaac:
‘Cause he does it…

Reese Harper:
And then his office is what he loves and his brand is…

Ryan Isaac:
It’s a reflection.

Reese Harper:
Is a reflection of his interests.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s what Michael and Laura was saying. It’s a reflection of them.

Reese Harper:
And I think especially in a dental practice that’s really important, just because it’s such a commoditized perception. And anything you can do to stand out that’s authentic to you, just make that really clear. And I think their precise advice was when it comes to imagery and photography, I think that’s a really quick way to stand out. I don’t care if it’s the worst looking home photos you’ve ever taken, those are still better than stock images. If it’s authentic, right?

Ryan Isaac:
I mean, non blurry would be a plus.

Reese Harper:
I mean it’s a bonus, but I’d still take it.

Ryan Isaac:
Focused.

Matt Mulcock:
Not a shaky camera.

Ryan Isaac:
Some light.

Reese Harper:
Shout out to Laura and Michael though. I remember a long time ago we were having dinner in Scottsdale and we were talking about them. They would’ve already started to get a lot of traction and their business was moving. I don’t know if this is 10 years ago or something, but I felt like they embodied that same advice…

Matt Mulcock:
Totally.

Reese Harper:
Really well, they’re…

Ryan Isaac:
With their own company.

Reese Harper:
Yeah. They’re trying with their own business to do that same thing, they’re also just hard workers.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Reese Harper:
And they put the hours in and I admire that.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Love those guys. Shout out to everyone who did this. We didn’t even get to all the comments from Facebook and everything.

Matt Mulcock:
Well, we don’t want this to be a Joe Rogan episode, three and a half hours.

Ryan Isaac:
How many downloads does he get?

Matt Mulcock:
Like 10 million a week or something. No big deal.

Ryan Isaac:
Can you believe that? Matt, Hoss, thanks for diving in. Big Reese Harper being here. We gotta do this more often.

Reese Harper:
No, you guys are great.

Ryan Isaac:
I like this three person panel.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, we should do this…

Ryan Isaac:
We should do this more often.

Matt Mulcock:
Like the next 10 download…

Reese Harper:
I’m one of the biggest fans. I still listen to the show.

Ryan Isaac:
You are a big fan. I appreciate that.

Reese Harper:
Like I said this and The Writer Files are my only two podcasts.

Matt Mulcock:
These are the two.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m glad we’re up there. Thanks to all you for listening and tuning in as always, you always hear people say that, thanks for choosing us, thanks for listening, thanks for shopping here, whatever.

Matt Mulcock:
Thanks for shopping.

Ryan Isaac:
If there were no downloads, we would’ve just quit. We would’ve stopped doing this and…

Matt Mulcock:
I don’t, maybe we wouldn’t have though.

Ryan Isaac:
Maybe we would have just kept talking to nobody.

Matt Mulcock:
We just love this.

Ryan Isaac:
I’ve never had a problem talking for talking sake, so that’s probably true. But the questions come in, we get comments about how this has helped make people’s decision making easier, given them insights, relieve stress. So we’re just super grateful for that. And this is maybe one of the most rewarding parts of my career, besides working directly with people in relationships. So I’m grateful for it. I know you guys are, and this is… This has been such a fun ride, six years, and I hope we have many, many more to come. So thanks for tuning in on another episode of the Dentist Money Show. If you have any questions for us, go to dentistadvisors.com, click the Book Free Consultation button and we’ll have a chat. Until next time, we’ll catch you on the next one. Goodbye everybody. Thank you.

Advisors