What It’s Like to Work With Dentist Advisors: A Year in the Life of a Client

Ever wondered what it’s like to work with Dentist Advisors? On this episode of The Dentist Money Show, Matt and Taylor walk through Dentist Advisors’ client experience, explaining every stage of the financial planning process—from the initial consultation and kick off call to building a personalized financial strategy and providing ongoing guidance as life evolves. They explain how the process starts by understanding your goals, values, and financial priorities, then moves into organizing your financial picture, assessing your financial health, and creating a clear plan for what to focus on next. They also discuss what ongoing support looks like and how your financial plan evolves as your career, practice, and life change.

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Podcast Transcript

Matt: Welcome back to the Dentist Money Show, where we help Dentist make smart financial decisions. I am Matt and I am joined with Tay Tay, Taylor Sutterfield. Tay Taylor, how are ya?

Taylor: I am doing well, Matt.

Matt: You didn’t know. I was it was either gonna be that or milk mustache. I didn’t know which one, but I just went with my heart. So ⁓ Taylor, this is gonna be coming out in a a few weeks after this, but probably a month after this. But we had a big moment happen yesterday, not for the better, not a good thing, but I don’t know if you saw this in Salt Lake. We hit an all time record high temperature in Salt Lake City. They’ve been taking records on temperature, I think it’s since eighteen seventy. And yesterday, ⁓ in July, we hit it was July twelfth, we hit a hundred and nine degrees at the Salt Lake Airport temperature tracking area. So a hundred and nine. It’s pretty wild.

Taylor: Wow. Yeah, it was in the high nineties down where I am and that felt hot enough. So I can only imagine what a hundred and nine feels like.

Matt: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And people listening right now in Arizona and Vegas are like, you guys are a bunch of babies. Who cares? That’s like a Tuesday. But it was brutally hot this weekend. And then I saw that it we broke a record and I was like, Yeah, that that makes sense. It was hot. So that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about at all today. I just wanted to to mention that that it is very hot in Salt Lake right now. And I cannot wait for fall for it to cool down. So ⁓ really cool show for you today we want to talk. We did this a few years ago. Taylor, you deserve all the credit for this actually of of us revamping this show because you’ve been pushing this for a while. a show we did a few years ago, Ryan and I, around a a year in the life of a dentist advisors client. And you you’ve sent it to a lot of people. You said it’s it’s been it’s come up quite a bit for you in conversations, and it’s but it’s been probably five years since we did it. So we thought we would kind of revamp it as this some things have changed, enhancements made. ⁓ anything you anything you want to add to this for context of kind of why we wanted to even do have this discussion?

Taylor: Yeah, well, I’m excited to be here today just because, you know, when I first started, you know, I’ve been with Dentist Advisors now since 2020 and you guys recorded this podcast right before I started bringing on my own clients, right? And when you’re bringing on clients, you’re really like worried about, well, what what am I offering to my clients? Right. What is financial planning? I think we’re gonna dive into this later, Matt, but like a lot of people don’t really know what financial planning is, right? It’s a really, really hard concept to understand. And like depending on who you work with, financial planning can be a lot of different things. So you may have had an experience or a relationship with financial planning in the past, but it could be very different than what we do. Right. And so when you’re working with someone or you’re on that first meeting with someone and they don’t know anything about you, or they’ve listened to a podcast or two, or they just have a brief background, it’s hard in a half hour conversation to really just outline everything it is that we do with clients, right? And so I loved this podcast. I sent it out to all of my consults that I worked with so that they could listen to it, just get a sense of kind of who we are, what we do, how we work with clients. But over the last couple of years it’s ⁓ become a bit out of date, right? ⁓ so we just, you know, I as most firms do,

Matt: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Taylor: Right. We’ve improved, we’ve gotten better, we’ve adjusted, we’ve changed to certain things. And I just think we’re due for an update. Right.

Matt: Yeah. Which to that point, I take it as a good thing. B t to that exact point. Businesses are should be, I think, growing, improving, changing. all most of our changes, if not all of them, on the service side have all come from natural adaptations prompted by feedback or or and we’re not saying we do it perfectly. You’re never gonna get it perfect, but I think it’s a good thing that we Have changed over the last five years of how we approach things. We’re trying to adapt and ⁓ get ahead of a lot of these things of how to add the most value to our clients. So ⁓ again, I look at that as a as a really good thing. So to that point, yeah, I think this is great. I think it’s really helpful. And I I also think this points to one of our core kind of values and things that we pride ourselves on, which is transparency. Like we have nothing to hide here. We’ve been doing this show for over 10 years. We put out Tons of different education and content and we tell people like here here it is. Like here’s what we do. ⁓ we’re not trying to to hide anything. We we’re not these kind of guardians and with this in front of this cave of information that you don’t have access to. Like we want to put this all out there and hopefully this show is a it’s a testament to that. Taylor, anything else you wanna add before we jump into this episode?

Taylor: No, I’m I I’m looking forward to doing this and I I hope this is a valuable resource for people out there who are on the fence or just trying to decide what is the right fit for them moving forward when it comes to their financial planning needs. Right.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And what I’ll say too, hopefully this is valuable. Like, ⁓ obviously we’re we’re we’re not hiding anything. We are Dentist Advisors. The show is brought to you Dentist Advisors. We are a full service, you know, full-time business of in the in the world of financial planning, investment management, tax and accounting for dentists. So we’re not hiding that fact. But we again we very much pride ourselves on education. And I think if anything you take out of this, what our hope is. Is that if you’re out there looking for an advisor, it may not be us. You know, there’s a lot of great ones out there, but we hope that you can l this gives you some context and maybe a few different things to be thinking about ⁓ around what this even should what value this should even add to your life in financial planning and and and on this whole world that it that encompasses.

Taylor: So just piggybacking off what you were saying there, Matt. ⁓ really, I think a lot of times people think of financial advisors as like, hey, they want to work with anybody. They’re just in it about money. You know, there’s a lot of negative perceptions out there. But just to give context, in the dental space, right, there are about 200,000 dentists in the US, right? And we work with about seven to eight hundred. Dentists across our firm. So that means we work with less than 1% of all dentists. Right. So we work with a lot of dentists. I mean, don’t get wrong. ⁓ working with hundreds of dentists across the country, we get a lot of valuable knowledge from that, but there’s still so many dentists out there. And we can’t, as a firm, service everybody. So, really, when we work or jump on with a consult, our main goal is not just to sell them and say, hey, sign up with us. I mean, more often than not, I’m telling people this isn’t the right timing, or this isn’t the right fit, or you’re looking for something else, right? And so the point of this podcast is not to be like, hey, we’re amazing, come join us. More far from it, right? What we want to do today is really just highlight this is what it actually looks like working with us, right? Is this what you’re looking for? Right? Would this be valuable and helpful in your life? Or if not, great. There’s a lot of other really great firms out there doing great.

Matt: Yeah. Yep, yep. Yeah, that’s a really good point, Taylor. And weird. I’m gonna use a fitness anal health and nutrition analogy shocker. But it is very similar where someone might say, I work in fitness or I work in health and nutrition. Well, there’s a lot of different things that that could mean. ⁓ that could mean I’m selling a supplement. I work for or I built a supplement company and I’m selling you a magic pill versus I’m a personal trainer and I have a a very specific methodology of what that means. And how I c help my c clients create healthy habits to build a healthy lifestyle over the course of their life. And I’m an accountability partner for that and everything in between. Right. So I I love that you brought that up and and hopefully that that we can look through that lens and and help or help people look through that lens and have that context as we go through this. So okay, enough throat clearing, I think, as we and preamble as we’ve set this up. So first thing we want to do, ⁓ We we’ve broken this up into several different parts. Again, the whole idea here is ⁓ a year in the life of a dentist advisor’s client and beyond, we’ll say. ⁓ first I think it’s just important to take a minute or two and just talk about with kind of the the classical kind of like end in mind, like what is the ultimate point of this? If we define financial planning, the the what are we solving for? ⁓ if we could boil it down to one thing, what would that be and kind of why are we even doing this in the first place? ⁓ for all I’ll say first, Taylor, because I threw this in the dock before we jumped on and kind of threw it through, kind of put you on the spot. So I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll say first, if I could bullet down to one thing, if anything, if anyone took anything away from like what should financial planning in our mind do for you, especially for a dentist, to us, there’s two parts. Number one, it’s what we say in the podcast, we intro it every day. Make smart financial decisions with the intent of making work optional on your terms. I think that’s that’s kind of what what I’d say. And I’d maybe add a third, if I may, around living a meaningful life along the way. Like those are probably the three main parts making good decisions, making work optional on your terms, and along the way, living a meaningful life and using money as as a proper tool for that. So that’s probably more than ⁓ I meant to have it be, but that’s kind of in a nutshell what I’d say. Anything you’d add to that.

Taylor: Yeah, well, the nice thing about our profession, Matt, is I know the answer to every question that anyone ever asked me. Right. And the answer to that question is always two words, right? And the two words are, it depends. Right. And I love how you said on your terms, you know, make smart decisions, you know, everything you basically highlighted there was it really depends, right? Financial planning is very, very specific and tailored to your situation.

Matt: Exactly. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Taylor: And because of that, we have to do a lot of things to get the background and all the information in order to make this as valuable to you and your life and your goals and your hopes and your dreams.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Love that. and it’s so true. This is why we’ve joked around a lot. Like it’d be ⁓ so much easier if we could just sell the product. It would be so much easier if we could just sell a magic pill, but we’re not. We haven’t. We’d almost 20 years of doing this as a company and we just continue to fight the uphill battle of of doing this in the ink it depends type fashion. So okay, ⁓ I think we’ve we’ve s solidified kind of why we do what we do. We’ve talked about this a lot, but if we apply this why specifically to dentists, we’ll just say because of dentist life, anyone out there listening knows a dentist life is so complex. It is so complex. We feel like we can add the most value to one group being dentists, go really, really deep in understanding. We’ve been dedicating our whole business to this over the last almost 20 years. ⁓ but with all that said, let’s let’s talk about what our kind of overall process is. So, Taylor, let’s talk about part one of this whole of this whole thing. We’ve we’ve talked about the why, we’ve talked about why dentistry, what financial planning means to us, kind of what we’re solving for. In this first part, we’re gonna talk about what we call the courting process. What what are your thoughts on this of of the of the courting process and overview?

Taylor: Yeah. And I I borrowed this part one directly from your original podcast with Ryan just because I like the analogy so much. Because it really feels a little bit like you’re dating the first time you jump on with somebody, right? ⁓ in the sense that first time you jump on with somebody or the first time you go on a date with somebody, they’re pretty guarded, right? You’re not just going to come out on a first date and spill your entire life story to someone, right? Or if you do.

Matt: yeah. Some might some might, I don’t know. Yeah, but but you s yeah. Yeah.

Taylor: If you do, it’s a little bit of a red flag, right? ⁓ but for the most part, when you jump on with someone for the very first time, it’s a little again, they don’t know what we do, right? They don’t want to like just share everything they’ve got going on. Financial planning is kind of an uncomfortable subject. You know, a lot of the things that we discuss, people don’t discuss with their very best friends, right? Finances are, you know, a very, very intimate, close thing. And so I think the first thing that we do during this courting process is just like a please, we’re trying to, you know, appear as a normal human and not a scary red flag dating experience as possible. Right.

Matt: Yeah. I like that. And it’s true. I mean we talk to hundreds of dentists outside of our clients every single year. And we do our best to your point of making this a really an approachable conversation. Like we just want to we say this all the time. We just want to hear your story, hear what you’re struggling with, and and ⁓ let you ask some questions and then help you understand how we may or may not be able to help. And I think you made a really good point earlier. There’s lot of situations in this first initial process, this kind of dating process, if you will, on this consult discussion, where for one reason or another, it we tell them, hey, we’re not the right fit. This isn’t what you’re looking for. I’ll I’ll give ⁓ a really specific example where this can this can happen, where we in this process of getting to know what ⁓ a dentist is struggling with, maybe an acute issue they’re dealing with. It is very clearly a very specific practice problem that needs to be solved by a practice consultant. And not saying there’s other things that we can’t help with overall in the totality of their career and life, but what they’re dealing with in that moment when we talk about like proper sequencing of problem solving, it’s very clear hey, like you need a consultant, you need to go solve this problem. Let us help you with that, and we’ll get you connected with someone and like let’s let’s stay in touch. That’s a very specific example, but something that comes a comes up, you know, not like not infrequently. Like we, you know, we we see that quite a bit. And there’s a lot of different things that can come up where we’re saying, Hey, we’re just not the right fit. But w I I like that you’re trying yeah, we’re trying to dispel this like concern or worry, like ⁓ of this courting process and not we’re not kinda the we’re not the weirdo on the first date, is what we’re saying.

Taylor: Yeah. Yeah, and that’s again the a first thing you’re gonna do if you want to come on board or talk to us is go on our website, click the link that says book a free consultation. You will be paired with one of our CFP financial advisors, and before the meeting, we’ll send you out a quick survey just to get some background information so that that call can be as valuable as you can make it in a half hour, right? But the first thing we really want to make sure people understand is. Number one, we’re not gonna sell you anything right out of the gate. This is not a a product sales pitch that you’re first gonna come on board. And as Matt described, we really just wanna get to know you and see, hey, is this possibly a good fit? Right. Should we continue this relationship? Should we continue figuring out if it makes sense for us to work together or not in that first 15 minutes, right?

Matt: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. A anything else you a I wanna add on that?

Taylor: So No, and and the other thing that we try to give a a sense for our clients is just giving a background about who we are. And you’ve already been kind of mentioning this as we’ve been talking, but dentist advisors, we’ve been around now for almost two decades. I think it’s what 17 years is like the official timeline. ⁓ we are what’s called fiduciary advisors, right? Which again, that’s a semi-unique thing in our industry. what what’s the stat, Matt? I think eighty-five percent of our industry are what some type of commission based advisor. And only about fifteen percent are what we would call the only fiduciary advisors. So those are some terms that you may or may not have heard of. Like how would you describe those in more simple terms, Matt?

Matt: Yep. Yeah, this is a good I’m glad you brought this up. It’s somewhere between fifteen fifteen and twenty percent are truly fiduciary fee only advisors. ⁓ like you said, versus the, you know, eighty to eighty five percent that are not. I think where this gets really confused is and the simplest way I can put it is if you are if you are t titling yourself fiduciary fee only, and this is all regulated, what that means is you sell no products and you take no kickbacks. And that is like legally like you cannot do that. Where this gets confused, ⁓ is advisors out there that say we’re fee-based. And I hear this all the time. yeah, my advisor’s fee fee-based. And they or they say fee only, but you dig into it and they’re really fee-based. And what fee-based means is that you can kind of have your the advisor can have their foot in both camps. They’re kind of standing ⁓ on kind of over that line, ⁓ one foot in in both camps where they can sell you products, but then they can They can take that hat off, put on the other hat, and then charge you fees for planning your investment management. I know this very well because I did this for over five years. That was the camp I lived in, was this what’s called duly registered fee-based advisor. So that that language might seem like, semantics based versus only. It matters. Fiduciary fee-only advisor, again, means no kickbacks, no commissions from any outside parties. The only way we are paid is directly from our client. Either through planning fees or investments under management or like investment fees. But that’s it. And that’s a huge difference between a commission based or fee ⁓ fee based advisor.

Taylor: Yeah. So I think a lot of times on that first call, it’s like you’re saying, get to know you, explain who we are, explain what we do, explain, you know, what a fiduciary is, explain the fees, right? And it’s really just like, hey, this is what we look like, right? And it’s just helping a a prospect understand what Dentist Advisors is, what we do, and how we work with clients. Right. And then the other thing that we try to accomplish in that meeting is just to help people understand who they’ll be working with. Right. And it’s a really common question I get almost without fail. Like, hey, ⁓ if I come on board with you, will I work with you or will I be with someone else? Like, I think it’s a very, very common practice in our industry or just in any industry where there’s a salesperson on the call who you’re talking to that you have a great conversation with and then you get passed off to someone else. Right. And there’s a big fear, like, am I gonna get passed off? And and I will say that does happen sometimes in our firm. But for the most part, we try to get our actual COP advisors on those consults talking with clients so they can begin to build that trust and relationship, right?

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the one thing I like to remind people in this situation as well, when ’cause we get that question, like you said, all the time. ⁓ the benefit that I think we have that I pride ourselves or you know, that I’m very proud is that we’re a relatively small firm. I I’d consider us if you look at the overall industry, we’re considered kind of medium sized firm based on, you know, how much how much we how much we manage, you know, with assets and just our team size. ⁓ But we’re still very much what I’d consider a boutique firm and and not not huge, right? There’s a lot of huge names out there. And the benefit that that provides is that when whoever you’re working with on a in a one on one basis, because every single one of our clients has a one on one relationship with an advisor, and then we’ll talk about the support team. But what you get access to, and I tell this people all the time, is you actually get access to the entirety of the team. We’re small enough. We are still meeting at a minimum weekly as a whole team to s swap ideas, to bring up problems, to ask each other questions. So you’re actually getting access to not only our entire team, but the entire kind of collective experience and knowledge that we’ve we’ve gathered from all of our hundreds of clients, because we’re continually bringing that to each other. And so that’s different than what you’re getting in kind of a lot of time silos in bigger firms. It’s a huge advantage.

Taylor: Yeah. Well, and and honestly, I I know Matt that your ⁓ two children, they want to grow up and be dental specific financial advisors because that’s a really common thing that most children want to grow up to become, right? But that was not my story, right? I did not ⁓ dentist advisors was not even on my bingo card coming out of school, right? And similar to you, I was with a firm before Dentist Advisors and it was a very different experience.

Matt: Absolutely. They tell me all the time. Yes, yes. Yeah.

Taylor: Right. ⁓ it was a very cutthroat competitive environment. It was like eat what you kill. We did not work together. You know, advisors, it was like, we don’t want to work together. The only time that you would work together is if they actually got a split off of the money or the revenue that you were generating. Right. ⁓ whereas here at Dentist Advisors, to your point, Matt, like I work with about 130 relationships. ⁓ but across you, Jake, Will, Lauren, Cody, Sean, we have seven to eight hundred different dentists, different households, different life situations, career goals, stages, different situations that arise. And it’s so helpful and valuable for me as an advisor where I can come and be like, hey, I’m dealing with this issue every single week and come to the group and say, Does anyone have experience with this? Have you seen this in the past? How did this client handle this situation previously? And it really does bring a huge value add to my life as an advisor, but more importantly, the client that I’m working with.

Matt: Yeah, it’s a great point. And then if you add in our accounting team now that we’ve been able to have that strategic partnership with ⁓ over the last, you know, year or so, ⁓ and that you know, having access to what 15 CPAs now, ⁓ it it bolsters that even more. So that’s a that’s a really good point. So let’s talk about Taylor, what does that team look like? So cause we get this question a lot. Okay, so we’ve got an advisor, we know that. what does the rest of the team look like and why do we structure it the way that we do?

Taylor: Yeah. Well, n we’re not gonna use a sports analogy, so we’re not gonna call ourselves the quarterback, right? But what we try to do here at Dentist Advisor is position ourselves as the ⁓ general contractor of your financial life, right? And the idea there is if we can do the job for you, we wanna get it done, right? And if we’re not, we wanna make sure that we have the connections to the right people. So within our staff, it’s really important we

Matt: Nope.

Taylor: Want to make sure that you have your advisor that you meet with on a regular basis, that you can have conversations that build and grow off of those conversations so that you don’t re-explain yourself every time. But to help support that advisor, we have an associate advisor team. We have an investment ops team. We have the man, the myth legend, Rabih Dimachki our CFA on staff, who is head of our investments department and run and manages the day-to-day trading of ⁓ our our investments. We have Chris Uhen Christine Uhen, who is a practice strategist that has forgotten more about dentistry than I will ever know about dentistry. You know, so valuable ⁓ just from her background, which again, another reason why we’re updating this, Chris was not even, you know, part of the Dentist Advisors team when we last recorded this podcast. Right. And then we’ve, as you mentioned, Matt, added recently within the last 18 months a CPA group. Right. So that not only can you do your financial planning with us, but you can also do all of your taxes and tax planning as well and have all of those things in one under one roof, right? And under under one umbrella. And then if we don’t do the tasks that need to be done, we also have really great relationships because we’ve been doing this for the better part of two decades, right? ⁓ practice consultants, attorneys, insurance agents, you name it, right? And the whole point here is we really want to make sure that we have a full service comprehensive approach to your financial planning where we can either do the work for you or get you in contact with someone that will make sure we can, you know, come up with a solution to your problem.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a great point, Taylor. And what we’re trying to do here is strike the balance of we first and foremost always want continuity of communication relationship. So we’ve talked to plenty of dentists out there have come from other firms who have said, I don’t even know who I work with anymore. Like it’s this team approach, but I just like send emails to like the ether, like this general kind of ⁓ email. And I sometim like I don’t know who’s even getting back to me from the team, it so they that’s really frustrating. So we want to first and foremost have that continuity of communication and relationship building with an advisor and then but then have the benefits and support of the entirety of a team because there’s no possible way that one person is going to be able to have just housed inside of them all of the the knowledge and skills and ability to like answer every single question all the time. So we want to build that team around them. So that whether that’s internally or externally. So I think that’s a really good point. We’re trying to strike that balance all the time. So okay, we’ve given the overview, we’ve talked about the team, what that looks like, what a consult, even what’s the point of that, like kind of what you’re getting out of that. ⁓ so now we’re at a place where Dentist says, okay, awesome, love it. Wanna come on. Let’s talk for the re for the rest of this around what that looks like. So that first kind of year and then beyond, Dentist says, Coming on board, they’ve signed the client agreement. We then begin the process. Taylor, walk us through kind that first part of when a client comes on board with us.

Taylor: Yeah. So as you mentioned, first part kind of the courting process. The second part is what we would call onboarding, right? ⁓ so onboarding begins with what we call a discovery call. All right. And the reason why we call it a discovery call is really we’re still trying to get to know you, right? During that onboarding, we’ve been doing our best to allow you to get to know us. And we’ve done a little bit of like background info, but we haven’t had a lot of time to just spend with the client and get to know them, right? And on this first call, we try to ignore the numbers, right? And we really try to focus on the why behind financial planning, as Matt alluded to at the very beginning. What is it that you even want to accomplish, you know, by coming on board, working with us? What are our greater goals? And so I always like to describe this as like this is us trying to get to know your dreams, hopes, goals, vision when it comes to your finances and your future. Both in the immediate, midterm, and long term, right? When it comes to your finances.

Matt: Yeah. And and we’ll acknowledge right here, I think and we’re not shy about this. We may lose like people listening to this, we may lose people in in regards to like meaning like like ⁓ checking out, like be just being like, I don’t this is not like I just need an insurance policy. I just need a transaction done. And we’re acknowledging like that is perfectly fine. We take what we do very serious and we have a very intentional process in how we do this and what we’re trying to accomplish with. The right dentist who is looking for this. But the reason I bring this up, Taylor, sometimes we get on consults or we get to this process. I shouldn’t say it, we we don’t get to this process very often because we’ve usually kind of weeded it out, but prior it, but it happens. But on the console, and even again, listening to this, we we will fully acknowledge that this may not be for you. That’s okay. We go, we go wide and we go deep with our clients. We want to understand everything. And to your point, this is the most critical foundational step with a dentist of understanding kind of ultimately what is the ultimate purpose of all of this for you. For you as the dentist, you are the hero of this story, not us. We’re just here to support you. And you know, some depending on the personality, some dentists might this might be whatever you want to call it, woo woo, mushy gushy. I’ll be honest, we don’t we don’t care. It might not be for you. This is super important. This is the most important step of the entire process.

Taylor: Yeah. And I tell people this all the time. Like in financial planning, there’s gonna be a spreadsheet answer and there’s gonna be a right answer. And more often than not, they are not the same. Right. I’ll tell you first and foremost, I have four children. The spreadsheet does not tell you to have four children, right? The spreadsheet tells you to have zero, zero children, right? the spreadsheet is not favorable to children, right? ⁓ but that’s the whole point, is like.

Matt: Yeah. It tells you to have six. Yeah.

Taylor: You want a life, like I’ve never met someone who actually wants a life that the spreadsheet tells them to have, because the spreadsheet tells you to live in a box, eat rice and beans, work seven days a week, right? Work 20-hour workdays, right? And save and invest every penny. Right. Who have you ever met that actually wants that?

Matt: Yeah. I mean I’ve never met anyone like that. They maybe all live online, faking it, faking it.

Taylor: Yeah, I don’t know them. But corporate finances and personal finances are very, very different animals. And the discovery call is a really, really crucial step in beginning to uncover and unearth really what makes the right answer the right answer for you. Right.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, what are we solving for? Basically.

Taylor: So after we’ve done that, then we do get to dive into the numbers, right? And we try to gather all of your important documents. This is where our associate advisor is going to really step in and be a really valuable resource. We like to gather income documents, tax returns, W-2s, pay stubs, insurance documents, life, disability, professional liability, umbrella, original loan documents for your student loans, car loans, practice loans, home loans, you name it. Right. ⁓ investment statements and estate planning documents. Right. So we like to get all of those things from you prior to jumping on any call that we talk about strategy or implementation. Right. So so far, even at a minimum, at this point, we’ve done three phone calls and we have not talked about selling you anything, right? ⁓ talking about any product. You know, we’ve done a consult, we did a discovery call, part of this.

Matt: Yeah Yeah.

Taylor: organization step where we are gathering documents. You’re gonna have an organization call with our associate advisor who’s gonna walk you through the documents you send in. And they’re also gonna help you set up what ⁓ an online dashboard, right? A portal. most people have seen these these days, but it’s a third party data aggregation software that allows us to connect to your assets, liabilities, personal business accounts, track spending. Really just be able to see all the numbers and get the spreadsheet data to then pair with the discovery.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s funny, we say it kind of tongue in cheek. We’ve had multiple calls up to this point and we haven’t sold anything. But the reason we say this is because the industry is like this is very unique in the industry. It really is. ⁓ I’m not saying that no other advisor does this. Of course they do. There’s a lot of great advisors out there, but it’s still very much in the minority of putting like actually going down this road and and putting in the time and energy to to do this with a client. Every single time versus, as you put it, selling you something, a kind of a selling you an insurance product or selling you an investment product and then kind of walking away. Like this isn’t and we tell people like this is an arduous process and in some cases on both sides for a while. Like we are, we are kind of forcing change because you’re people who call us, they’re struggling with something in their life financially that needs to change. And in order to do that. You have to break through that attrition. And sometimes, a lot of times, that’s simply gathering these documents. It some like how many times, Taylor, have we gotten to the end of an onboarding process and just shown them their net worth or their dashboard? And it’s the first time they’ve ever looked, they’ve ever even like taken the time to look at that. Right. They’ve never even like thought or said, like, or they never even like been like, I don’t even know what my net worth is. And how many things during onboarding during this process, the guy the information gathering process, have we just uncovered something like an ins an insurance being expired or or something like that? this part is really critical to like get that ten thousand foot view to see where you stand and then build upon that.

Taylor: Well, and it’s such a good point, Matt, because it does happen a lot where people are they they have a lot of apprehension about this step, right? They have a lot of apprehension about actually gathering everything, looking at everything and getting it all organized. It’s a little bit of like, ignorance is bliss. I kind of don’t want to know. I don’t want to see it. But you’d be shocked before we’ve given any piece of advice, talked any strategy or any implementation, just after this step where we’ve got them organized as you’re describing. How many people do say,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Taylor: Thank you so much. This just feels good. And I’m like, I haven’t done anything yet. Right. Like as the advisor, I’m sitting here like, ⁓ we still got a ways to go. Right. Like, but it is crazy to see how many people just feel a whole lot better getting the monkey off their back and getting organized and seeing everything for the first time. It really is like emotionally feels really good.

Matt: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It’s No matter what the numbers are, right? We’ve seen this. No matter what the numbers look like, bad, good, bad, or or indifferent, just to that point, seeing it, putting it all in place, something that most of the time they’ve never done it before, I totally agree. It’s usually just a huge sign of or sigh of relief for most dentists. So then where do we go from here, Taylor? So we’ve gone through the discovery, try to understand the why, the purpose, kind of the the what are we solving for? We’ve gathered all the documents. We’ve built the dashboard. We’ve built the cash flow statement. Where where do we go from here?

Taylor: Yeah, so next up we call it it’s the initial strategy call, right? And I really think we need to rebrand it to calls with an S because I know for a fact that we’ve never ever been able to get through anything, I mean everything in one phone call, right? ⁓ but the reason why we call it the initial strategy call because it implies this is the first of many, right? The first of many strategy calls that we’re gonna have together over our relationship, right? But specifically during onboarding.

Matt: Yes. It’s never one. Yeah.

Taylor: I’d say what would you say here, Matt? I I always tell clients three to five meetings, depending on complexity, right? ⁓ I don’t think I’ve ever been able to do it in less than three, to be honest. Right. Which if you’re keeping track between consult discovery, dashboard call, and strategy calls, it’s usually six to eight meetings, right? In total during this onboarding process.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s probably true.

Taylor: But again, these strategy calls is where we get to pair that discovery call conversation we have about the what, why, and we get to compare it with with the data, right? And we say, okay, this is where we want to get to. This is where we are. How do we bridge this? Right. How do we get to where we want to be? Right. And that during those strategy calls, we’re going to be talking a lot of different things. It’s going to be cash flow, income, profitability of the practice. debt, spending, taxes. We’re gonna talk insurance need. We’re gonna talk investments, investment strategy, investment philosophy. We’re gonna be talking ⁓ account implementations, you name it, right? We’re gonna be going through a whole lot of meat during those three to five calls, right?

Matt: Yep. Yeah. And customizing it to the to the client, right? Depending on you said at the very beginning, it depends. Like we’re gonna customize this approach. Even though everybody goes through the same process, the outputs of that process are completely different depending on what you’re dealing with.

Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. And during this like process, we actually have coined like we have our process that we use. And we have we call it a four-step process. We have organize, which is everything we’ve been discussing, analyze is where we’re going through the data, right? That during these strategy calls. But to your point, Matt, the third step is decide. Right. And a lot of times going back to that right answer versus spreadsheet answer, we’re going to come away from this and analysis and say, okay, here’s what. The spreadsheet says we need to do, right? But I mean, this is not uncommon, right? Where we go to decide what we want to do, which is a step in and of itself. And for whatever reason it doesn’t sit right with a client, right? Or it’s not the right fit, right? And that’s okay. Right. I mean, I think this is either coming from you, Matt, or Ryan or Reese. I never know. We just have a lot of dentists’ advisors, isms, right, out there.

Matt: Yeah.

Taylor: But ⁓ one of my favorite ones to say with clients is the best investment plan is one that you can stick to. Right. So the right answer coming out of all of this organization and analysis may be different for you than another dentist that we’re meeting with. Right. Because what you, what feels right to you can be different than what feels right for somebody else.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it’s so true. By the way, I’m pretty sure I stole that from David Booth. So I’ll I’ll give him the proper credit. ⁓ yeah, and I think it’s worth noting here that I think part of this process is helping so oftentimes, depending on personality, is for the first time, maybe ever, for a lot of dentists that we work with, part of this process is uncovering what you even want. And that sounds maybe obvious, but

Taylor: Such a good point.

Matt: Or maybe that sounds like, wait, what do you mean? I think there’s a lot of dentists who we work with who don’t even know. Like you get on the discovery call and you ask them some questions that are open ended that they’ve never been asked before, and they’re just staring at you blank face, which is totally fine. Or they’ll give you like really surface level, like surface level answers, which again, because they’ve never even thought about it. They’re just grinding and it totally makes sense. Dentists have been grinding since you know, elementary school, high school, like you’re just heads down grinding to get to this point. And now you’re at this point sitting across from one of us, and we’re asking you sometimes like bigger types of questions and to think about the future. And a lot of times it’s like, I have no idea. And that is perfectly fine. A big part of this process, not even through this onboarding process, the ongoing relationship with us is helping that evolution happen of uncovering for yourself and your spouse, your partner and your family,

Taylor: Yeah.

Matt: What do we actually even want out of this? I think that’s a really underrated part of this financial planning as a whole.

Taylor: It’s such a good point. And and that’s also just I hope comforting for people to understand. Like, we’re not gonna come out and be like, okay, here’s our one size fits all plan for you. Right. We did all this work, we listened to you, and it didn’t matter. We’re just gonna put you in the same thing we put everybody else in. Right. Like we really truly wanna find the right fit that’s going to, you know, because I tell I only have a few jokes, right? Because I’m not a funny person. But

Matt: Yeah, exactly. I think you’re very funny.

Taylor: One of the few jokes, one of the few jokes that I’ll tell, and my clients have all heard this. So they’re, you know, if anyone’s listening, they’re gonna be like, yeah, I’ve heard this before, Taylor. But I tell people I got my undergrad and masters in accounting. So I got my master’s and not having a personality, right? So I’m the crazy one that likes looking at the spreadsheets. I like looking at the numbers. I look, I like looking at the data. And whatever I do with my clients, honestly, that’s kind of all it is, is a bunch of numbers on a screen, right?

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Taylor: But for my clients, this is their life. This is their future. This is their hopes, their dreams. This is their ability to provide their children’s education or retire at the age or on the terms that they want to retire on. Right. And so everything we do together for me is a bunch of numbers on a screen. Everything we do for them, it’s everything, right? And so we really want to make this decision process be an iterative process. It’s not like, hey, do this because I said so.

Matt: Yep.

Taylor: Right. It’s like, hey, here’s what we probably should do based on the numbers. Tell me about what you think here. Right. Does this make sense? How can we adjust this? What what do you want to commit to from your end? Right.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s a really, really good point. I’m glad you brought that up. And and even taking that further, most of these decisions to be made are simply trade-offs. And I think like we people we always joke, people get frustrated with like the it depends kind of lens, but that’s real that’s the reality. The reality is well that I think we try to get people out of the mindset of like a solutions-based mindset. Most of life and most financial planning and most career decisions and most everything we do. Is not a black and white solutions based like multiple choice, there’s one right answer. It’s a a game of trade-offs. And I think that’s it we’re trying to do through this entire process with people is helping them understand which decision, like which trade-off you’re making, which thing are if you’re going down this road, which thing are you eliminating, what constraints are you bringing into your life, what’s the trade-off of that or this? And then helping them just make that choice and We I we always tell people, you’re the CEO, you and your spouse and partner are the CEO of your life. We’re here just to guide it. But I think that’s a really important distinction that it’s not often, if ever, a black and white yes, this is the answer. It’s often a game of trade offs.

Taylor: My my job would be a lot easier if it were. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, it would. Well, and again, we’ve said this so many times. The people that are selling products want to make it seem like that. And guess what the answer always is? Their product. That’s the problem that we’re we’re constantly battling is is that exact mindset. Is there there truly there truly is very rarely a set direct answer. But yes, I’m with you. It would be a lot easier if there were.

Taylor: Well, now let’s say we’ve decided, right? We’re ready to move on and we’re ready to implement, right? Coming out of onboarding, right? So we’ve had our meetings, we’ve gotten to know you, we’ve kind of decided on an action plan. Now the last step here is to act in onboarding. ⁓ what would you say matter some of the common things that you see that we address a lot of times coming out of onboarding?

Matt: Yeah. And before we do that, really quick, Taylor, I want to back up really quickly, just when we talk about the analysis step, I want to highlight one thing for maybe some OGs listening who are sitting here maybe thinking, Wait, you guys haven’t mentioned like elements or anything like that from the past. That’s one thing that’s also changed over the last five years. But I think it bear it’s worth just highlighting really quick in the analysis step, what we’re trying to accomplish there. After we’ve understood the the why of via discovery, after we’ve got you new gotten you organized, the analysis step is helping you understand where do you stand in the here and now. And we still very much follow this methodology that again is rather unique in the space, which is helping you understand like what are the 12, there’s really only about 12 kind of key overall indicators of your financial health that we’re trying to help you say or help you understand. Where are you weak? Where are you strong? Where are some things you need to focus? Which informs this next step? So things like cash flow, your mix of assets, your the overall risk in your in your plan, not only in your investments, but also things like insurance and your estate plan, your legacy. All of this leading up to when can I make work optional? Like that’s the lens in which we’re looking through all of this analysis step is how do we get you to being work work being optional again on your terms? But in order to do that, you have to understand where you stand. Like how close am I to work being optional? And how do you know that? So I just wanted to highlight that. The what we call it now is the financial hygiene chart. but it answers the same question, which is just where do I stand and and where do I focus? Which again informs this next this next piece we’re talking about, which is actually deciding and acting. Anything you’d you’d add on that, Taylor, before I answer your question?

Taylor: No, I’m glad you you you brought that up. It’s like I’m I’d be remiss to not mention the elements in financial hygiene chart and all of the actual things we look at during that analysis part. So I’m glad you brought that in.

Matt: Yeah, it’s a it’s a huge piece of it. So to to the act part though, yeah, there’s a lot of common things that come up. Things like liquidity. Like you either have too little cash, or what we see a lot of times with dentists who hire us, they have excess cash. organization overall of just like I’d say just overall like simplification of the balance sheet. ⁓ speaking of cash, we see this quite a bit where people ⁓ people collect cash cash accounts over their career like baseball cards. You know, and we’re I’m like we get to the point where we’re looking at the balance sheet. It’s like you’ve got eleven cash accounts. ⁓ that’s just on the personal side, not to mention your business. And you know, people will like, yeah, you know, this came from that loan or I had a I went to this bank and I never changed over the cash. So simplification of a balance sheet. The other thing we see a lot is like ⁓ excess like multiple like IRAs scattered across different custodians, which have which is difficult to have a succinct investment plan when you’ve got, you know, first and foremost, all these accounts scattered everywhere. So those are some things that come to mind. And then I’d say maybe another thing is like debt, not like a set strategy with with things like debt. ⁓ but those are the first things that come to mind that we see around like the what are we gonna act on initially. Anything that you’d add to that?

Taylor: Yeah, no, I and and these are like again common things that we actually come out of onboarding changing, right? An action plan around what to do with your excess cash, a simplification of your balance sheet, a consolidation of your accounts. Like I had a client a couple years ago and she had 15 old IRAs, simple IRAs, SEP IRAs. It was it was insane. And the funny thing is it started at 10. And as we went through the process of consolidating,

Matt: That might be the record.

Taylor: She kept bringing up, ⁓ I found another account that I had from 20 years ago. You know, she’s she was in her mid-50s and she just had a lifetime of of working, an entire career of like old accounts and things. And, you know, we’ve cleaned it up a lot, but there’s still like little miscellaneous ones where it’s like she hasn’t been in contact with this HR director in 20 plus years. So tracking down the information and getting the statements and everything that you need in order to consolidate the accounts. It’s a big task, right? It’s a big job to be done. As well as, again, getting cohesion around your investment strategy. But most important, I think what we want to add in here and come away with is having that system of savings, right? A system of automated savings where really it’s kind of the game plan or the plan of attack moving forward, right? In order to Practice on your terms, retire your terms, make sure that we’re moving in the right direction. Well, what things have we already set up and put in place? And, you know, what accounts do we need to implement, put in place, and what monthly drafts do we need to have going? Right.

Matt: Yep. And then how are we investing that money based on your goals in life? Yeah. I think it’s a great point.

Taylor: Right. And that’s, you know, it’s easy to say this is what we need to do. It’s a whole nother thing to actually do it all. Right. which is why again we have a team who our associate advisors, our investment ops, Robbie Domatchki, our CFA, working with Chris in the practice strategy. You know, the implementation is a step in and of itself.

Matt: Yep. Yeah, exactly. Well, and this is why we talk all the time about and we try to get people to understand that this is not a one-time plan. Like, there’s advisors out there that’ll be like, We’ll go through this process. Here’s your plan. Great. Good luck. It’s a great doorstop. This leather bound book. ⁓ but if there’s no action behind it and there’s no ongoing communication and accountability behind it, it’s it’s worthless. And so At the end of this, yes, we absolutely create an action plan that is a living document. We’ve now started calling this lovingly the financial treatment plan. You know, it’s only taken us about 18 years to start using dental language in our in our in our ⁓ documents and in our ⁓ business, external marketing. ⁓ but we we started calling this a financial treatment plan, which is basically the the the

Taylor: E external marketing, yeah.

Matt: The overall kind of final document that comes out of all of this, it’s where, it’s where every piece of your financial life, like this is could be known as the what most people would call like, here’s your financial plan. We call it a financial treatment plan. But again, it’s only as valuable as the action behind it. And that’s where we st and we’ll talk about this the to wrap this up, is the last part of this is what does it look like after this? So anything that you would add or f or summarize in everything we’ve talked about up to this point, Taylor, of our process?

Taylor: No, I mean, just to summarize though, like like I was saying earlier, I think, again, from the time that you first meet and have a consult with us to the time that you are fully onboarded, that’s usually going to be six to eight meetings, right? And it’s probably gonna take you anywhere from six weeks to three months, somewhere in that process to begin the relationship and to get fully onboarded, right? ⁓ and then by the end of it, I always tell my clients, I’m like, hey, now you get a little bit of a break, right? You’re probably sick of seeing my face. You know, we’ve been doing this a lot. but we’re gonna get a little bit of a break. We’re actually gonna put into effect this plan, right? We’re going to actually see how it feels. And to your point, you know, we like to have something to give them, right? Something tangible. But I always tell my clients at the end of it, the one thing I can guarantee is that this plan is wrong tomorrow, right? Meaning just because we did all this work doesn’t mean the process is over. And everything’s done and you’ve figured it all out, right? Because life is not as clean as a spreadsheet, right? Your life is going to change and adapt and grow and your interests are going to shift, right? And what you want out of life may change. And just because we wanted something now doesn’t mean we’re going to want it down the road, right? Which is why after we finish onboarding, we want to have this ongoing piece of advice, which is where again, most of the time, most of your relationship with us is going to live, right?

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

Taylor: You’ll do the initial onboarding, but that’s just the first entry into working with us. And then for the next, hopefully, I mean, we’ve had clients now for 15 plus years, right? And for the next however many years that you work with us, hopefully a long time, right? ⁓ you’re going to be getting what we call this ongoing advice.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We ing we tell people we engage in a it with the mindset of a lifelong relationship. That’s our goal. That’s one of the advantages we feel we have as being a younger team is that we’re we’re, you know, not only are we adaptable and and ⁓ you know, things like technol we’re up on technology and all those things. I think an underrated piece of this is we want to grow with our clients. And that’s something that we’ve done. We really pride ourselves on this. we I I tell this people the very first dentist who ever hired us is still with us. And that’s a really 18 years ago. And that’s something we very much pride ourselves on is ⁓ engaging in a lifelong relationship, but a a really a lifelong process to your point, Taylor. And so what does that look like? ⁓ kind of we’ve gone through this six to eight week kind of onboarding process, multiple calls, we’ve laid the foundation. N now what do we try to do, Taylor? ⁓ what does that overall process generally look like?

Taylor: Yeah. So again, I’m stealing from the great Matt Mulcock on this. ⁓ but I always tell my clients, nature of our relationship moving forward is that there is no maximum, but there is a minimum. Right. And what I mean by that is at minimum, I’m going to be reaching out several times every year to get you on a call, right? Because there’s certain items that I want to check in on and make sure that we’re organized, we’re getting new data, new information, and we’re just staying on top of your

Matt: Ha ha ha.

Taylor: baseline financial planning needs, right? But there is no maximum because we spent all the time gathering your important financial documents in one place, storing them in a secure online file share, building an online dashboard that connects to your assets, liabilities, personal business accounts, the ability to track spending, you can reach out as needed for ad hoc advice, for emails, calls, texts. Like I know for a fact, Matt, that you have several clients that almost checked you ⁓ you know, at least weekly, sometimes daily, right? In some instances, ⁓ for ongoing advice and just check-ins and different things that are going on. But again, for the most part, at minimum, that’s easier to describe. we reach out three times a year to all of our clients. Now, are we gonna force you to meet every single time? No, right? Life happens, different things. You may be comfortable, may not want to, you know, meet for whatever reason. But at minimum, we reach out three times a year, beginning, middle, and end of year.

Matt: You know who you are, I love you. Yeah.

Taylor: Right. And on each of one of those meetings, we like to have a different focal point. Right. Beginning of year, naturally, we like to focus on profitability of the practice from the previous year, income from the previous year, spending, debt, taxes, really focusing on cash flow again. Right. Because again, we do that in onboarding, but anytime we do that once, it’s helpful, but it’s not as helpful as us. Hey, this was your spending in 2026. This was your spending in 27, 28, 29, right? As we can develop trends, that information is way more valuable than any one-time static data point, right? And so we want to make sure at least annually we’re getting updates to those and we have a plan of attack and an action plan for your savings plan and your goals for that year. Then on the mid-year, we like to focus on risk management. So that’s going to be insurance planning, investment allocation, ⁓ estate planning, right? Just making sure again.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

Taylor: That we’re touching base on those important things at least once a year. And then end of year, we like to focus on investment performance. How do we do from an investing perspective? Net worth progress. How do we do from growing our investments and our actual savings? It’s one thing to say we want to save, you know, $2,000 a month. It’s another thing to actually do it, right? What did we actually save? What did we actually accomplish? What debts did we pay down? And then do any tax planning items before you’re in. Right. So the hope is at minimum we are hitting a lot of the items you did in onboarding, but every single year. Right. And we’re getting updates to all.

Matt: Yeah. And and to your point, not only because this this goes ⁓ this needs to be updated regularly because it’s out of date regularly. The second you start living your life, it’s out of date. But I think the other pe piece of this it’s super underrated. Like let’s just talk about the net worth progress. When you do that over a period of time, for better or for worse, I think our greatest gift, one of our greatest gifts as humans is also our greatest curse, which is our ability to adapt. And I think one of the anecdotes of a of adaptation on the negative side, meaning us getting used to our life and like us forgetting where we came from, especially on the financial side. I think one of the antidotes to that is tracking your progress, is actually seeing where you came from. And it’s really cool when we start to show, even over the course of one year, but you start to do it over two years, three years, four years, we can start to show a one of our we show our clients, look at this, look at your progress. I still remember sh sending a a congratulations kind of like celebratory email that set up a call and talk about this. To one of my clients, they they know who they are as I say this. when they hit the million dollar net worth mark, this was a few several years ago, but they started out negative, negative net worth, which happens all the time. And then I remember when they hit that positive or they they hit that seven figure net worth, and it was like this super cool moment. But it would be so it’s so easy to hit that million dollar net worth and then it becomes Wednesday and you’re stressed with your team and You like you just adapt and you don’t think about it anymore. You don’t think about where you came from. Like tracking your progress is such a critical underrated piece of this.

Taylor: Well, and it it’s it’s cool from just knowing where you’ve come, right? But it’s also helpful from are we actually doing enough? Right. So one of one of the things that we’re doing in addition to these ongoing meetings is we have an amazing staff who’s producing quarterly net worth statements every single quarter, right? Where we’re actually going through all of your balance sheet and getting updated amounts. And we can see, well, again, we know how much we need to add every year in net worth in order to

Matt: Yeah.

Taylor: Be on track for your goals. And this is a great chance to look back and say, well, how do we do? Right? Are we actually on pro on track? Right. Or do we need to make some changes, right? Because we’re not tracking for those goals, right? Or we had a great year and it was well above what we needed to. But the whole point of tracking this is just giving us data. It’s giving us information so that we can make smart decisions along the way. Right.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a good point. And I think a lot of our world, the financial planning, we live in ⁓ looking forward, like looking ahead, which is which is important. So I think that’s a really good point you’re making is as we’re able to track enough data over time, we’re able to make some informed, kind of probability based ⁓ projections of, well, we have three years of data of your spending and net worth progress. We can kind of see if this continues where you know, how quickly you’re gonna get to this idea of work being optional. It’s never gonna be perfect, but the more data we can gather, the more we can understand that. So that’s a really good point you make. anything else you’d add to this, Taylor?

Taylor: So yeah, just ⁓ you know, that financial hygiene chart or the element scores, right? Those 12 key indicators, those are things that we’re also updating every single year during those meetings. So we’ve got those three surge calls at minimum. We’ve got the quarterly net worth statements, we’ve got the financial hygiene chart that we’re updating. We’re checking in periodically, hey, here’s what we have for your insurance, here’s what we have for your investment allocation, here’s what we have for your, you know, ⁓ loan documents. And most of the time those are quick emails back and forth just saying, yep, things look good. But sometimes it’s just, yeah, I forgot. I increased my disability policy or I added a CBCT scanner. But it’s just like making sure that we’re staying on top of keeping you organized. Right. But then going back to that, well, there is no maximum, we’re always here, right? So if you do have questions or your life is changing or circumstances, whatever it may be, things are going on and you want to talk about it. That’s what we’re here for. Right. So I’m going to put you on the spot here in a minute, Matt. Right. I’m going to ask you the question. Just recently, can you think of something that came up that someone wanted to talk to you about? But I actually went back and looked at because I was like, okay, we’re talking about a year in the life. Let me go back over the past year and just think about my clients. What are the things that we’ve talked about outside of our normal surge meetings? Right.

Matt: Yeah.

Taylor: And it’s just funny that we had this because literally I had someone text me on Saturday morning and they were like, Hey, I know you don’t usually don’t do weekend calls, but is there any way we can jump on a call? And this is someone that I’ve been meeting with because they’re trying to buy a home and they want to know how much they can afford. And we had a s ⁓ previously established like a threshold of, hey, this is how much you can afford. There was a home that came on that they really like was above what I’d recommended. And they were like, is there any way? We’ve missed out on a bunch of offers. Anyway, you can meet today. All right. And so I jumped with them, jumped on the call with them on Saturday and we went through this and we went through the house that they were looking at. We looked how this would affect and we talked about the trade-offs that would happen if they did buy this home that was going to be more expensive than we initially thought. That happens all the time, right? Can I purchase this car? Can I afford this home? Can I afford this piece of equipment? Those types of calls all the time, right? Just this last month, I was talking with someone who’s transitioning out of their practice. They’re selling their practice to someone and they’re switching from being an income earner to depending on their net worth. And lots of worry comes with that, right? Lots of stress, right? And we probably had four or five meetings just discussing that transition and what’s gonna and where we’re gonna pull income from and where we wanna strategize and what are the tax consequences. I have had Social Security calculations in the last month. I’ve had in the last year two people get divorced and we had to navigate a divorce. I’ve had inheritance conversations over the last year. I’ve had ⁓ a client just two months ago get in a car accident. ⁓ she was 30 weeks pregnant, right? And she’s a dentist and she’s gonna have to have surgery on her right wrist, right? So we’ve had to talk about disability and ⁓ all the different things that are gonna be associated with that. not a fun conversation, but

Matt: No.

Taylor: Life happens, right? One in four dentists will file a disability claim at some point in their careers, right? ⁓ I’ve had four of I think five people doing startups and just going through the ringer with them in the startups. Like you kind of just need to be an emotional support animal through a lot of that, right? I’ve had three different people buying practices where with one, I kid you not, we probably analyzed 15 different practices and profit and loss and different things. I’ve had

Matt: Yeah.

Taylor: Four different clients within the span of three months talk about dropping insurance. And we are strategizing how to handle their Delta transition. Shout out Delta, right? ⁓ expansions, adding associates. I’ve had seven meetings with Chris about practice strategy since January. And literally, again, over the weekend, a client emailed me, they just had their second baby girl, right? And babies and kids and different things and updates like that. These are things that I didn’t even actually get back through a full year, but those are all conversations and items and things that I’ve discussed with clients that fall outside of that traditional three ⁓ three meeting cadence, you know, minimum surge calls.

Taylor: So again, those were just some of the things that I have seen over the past year that my clients have reached out ⁓ just ad hoc, right? Questions, different situations arise. So I know I’m putting you on the spot here, Matt, but any other things that come to mind from clients that have reached out to you just in the last several months that were outside of these like regularly scheduled surge calls?

Matt: Yeah, it’s funny because I hear your list and I’m like you’re going through. I’m like, Yep, heard that. Yep, heard that. ⁓ the ones that come to mind just recently, just a handful just recently. Like I was traveling a couple of weeks ago for the Fourth of July, getting emails and texts from a a client about home. They they’ve they’ve kind of had some back and forth moving around. They finally are moving back to a previous area. They’re trying to find how much home they can afford. So that one for sure happened have another client who recently reached out about buying a a second home, buying a cabin. And we did a lot of back and forth about how to finance that. Have another client in the home category. That’s kinda a lot of homes lately, actually, now that I think about it. have another client who’s building. They’re ripping down their house and rebuilding their entire home. So that’s just in the home category. ⁓ another client who reached out with a disability issue, ⁓ having some some wrist problems. And trying to navigate how to handle that with his practice. ⁓ those are the ones that come to mind most recently. ⁓ to your point, divorces, yes, ⁓ not as many babies for me, but yeah, divorces have happened over the last ⁓ six or so months as well. So very, very similar for sure. ⁓ I’ve actually unfortunately had not to make this dark at the end here, but a couple of deaths as well. ⁓ either parents who and they’re dealing with inheritance to your point, or unfortunately clients and or like spouses of clients that’s been that’s been really tough to navigate. So kind of across the board.

Taylor: Yeah. And that’s just to highlight like life happens, right? It’s just going back to what we said earlier, like you can’t do financial planning once. Like your whatever plan we make is wrong tomorrow. And this is something that we need to revisit every single year. And every single year you’re gonna have different situations that arise and different questions. And the whole purpose of us doing all of the work on the front end and throughout the year is so that when your life happens. We’re here, right? You can jump on a call. You don’t have to re-explain your situation, give all the background, all the backstory. Like in in some instances, this is someone that you’ve talked to for years who has been having conversations with you that understands your background. And you can just get advice and have a sounding board and talk to somebody, have an accountability partner that’s holding you accountable to your goals, which is really just why we’ve created our system and our process the way that we do to, you know, at least make sure we’re meeting the baseline standards when it comes to your financial planning, but also giving you that freedom and and peace of mind that you can reach out whenever you need.

Matt: Yeah. I I love that you went there, Taylor, ’cause I think we get a lot of questions around like, you know, can you define the value of this? Like kind of like, am I gonna get bigger investment returns if I hire hire you guys or hire an advisor? And they and I understand the question. Totally understand why you’re why people’s brains go there. Like it’s more of transactional thinking. Like if I do this, am I gonna see better results? But what you’re highlighting is A, it’s hard. It’s hard to We can’t prove the counterfactual. Like you would be better off hiring us than not. And let me show exactly like the two different scenarios. We can’t prove that. But I love that you’re highlighting this in showing life happens and you can never you can never know when things are gonna change or come up or you change your mind or you’re the big what the big mistakes are gonna cost you. That’s something sometimes we say that as like sometimes having A lot of times having an advisor in your corner to your point who understands you, who you built a relationship with, it’s big and big mistake insurance. It’s helping you avoid those big mistakes and have someone navig to navigate these big decisions that inevitably come up anywhere from one to 10 plus times a year, depending on what’s happening in your life. And it’s it’s hard to prove that. It’s hard to be like, yep, here’s the document that shows that. But i i the exactly.

Taylor: Well, they exist in parallel universes. Like it’s impossible to say if you do this, this is what it will be. And if you stay keep doing what you’re doing, this is what it’ll be. Y you just can’t know, right? But i I I don’t even think it’s the client’s fault a lot of times. I mean, I I think we train we being financial advisors as a whole, we have trained the industry to believe that our value add to a client’s life is added return. Right. And I think there’s still advisors out there that believe in my

Matt: Exactly. Yep.

Taylor: In my ⁓ opinion, incorrectly, that their value is added return, right? So that’s why we see that a lot. But the hope is by going through this process and showing people kind of what we do and how we work with clients, it helps them realize like that’s not our goal here. Right. Now, that’s not to say, I mean, we just recorded a podcast a month or two ago, Matt, talking about all the things that we do believe we add when it comes to return. And I wholeheartedly believe that we will add.

Matt: Yep. Yep. Totally. Yep. It’s real value.

Taylor: several percent return to the average person that we work with. But I will also say in the same breath that there are people that I have probably talked out of to I talked them into a smaller net worth down the road. Right. there’s been people that just because they didn’t know any better were saving and investing way more than they probably needed to, right? And they were spending well less than their potential. And so by working with me, I was like, hey guys, Is your main goal just to be a crazy wealthy 80-year-old? Or do you actually want to enjoy some of this today? Right. And you could look at it and say, I’ve been worse off for their net worth, right? Like that is an actual thing. Objectively, I’ve probably hurt their net worth down the road when they pass away. But I’ve probably made their life better. Right.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Sure, sure. Exactly right. Well, and to your point earlier, you don’t live life on a spreadsheet. And that’s a fundamental kind of like main focus we have is I like that you’re saying this. There’s no there’s no ⁓ there’s no reward for being a billionaire eighty year old, you know, being the richest eighty year old out there is our boy Jake Elm says there’s no reward for being the richest person in the in the ⁓ in the graveyard. You know, that’s not that’s not usually the main focus. ⁓ so ⁓ I love that you’re highlighting that, that it might be worse on the spreadsheet, but better for your life. And that all comes back full circle to what we do at the very beginning and why we spend so much time and energy on that discovery call to understand what is it you’re trying to accomplish in your life. And by the way, revisiting that on a regular basis because that changes. Your 30 year old you, ⁓ what you wanted and what you what you thought you wanted is vastly different, my guess, than 50 year old you and everything in between or 65 year old you so that’s why this iterative, like as you said, ongoing process to us is required. It it it it’s not a one-time thing. A one-time plan is, I’ll be honest, relatively worthless because it doesn’t focus on the adherence to the actions required to actually execute it and to your point, improve your life. So I’m really glad that you said that. So Taylor, anything else you’d add to this to wrap it up on our process. Or anything else we’ve covered so far up to this point.

Taylor: Yeah, I mean, the only thing I would add to this, again, my my hope is that by listening to this podcast, if you’re still with us and and you’re considering working with us or working with an advisor, that it’s at least given you a peek into what we believe financial planning should be, right? Onboard from brand new consult to onboarding to working with you for a year plus, like what what does that actually look like? But I think just to kind of echo some of these things we’ve talked about and especially we’ve talked about on the podcast in the past, like I think the biggest value that comes working with us long term is just having an accountability partner to reach your goals. Right. And unbiased, non-emotional. Like I literally had several clients in the last month tell me this: like, it’s just really nice to have somebody who is not emotionally tied to my to our finances. Right. ⁓ and you know, we can sit down, have a conversation, look at the numbers, and then talk about the trade-offs. Talk about, you know, what their goals are, what they’re trying to accomplish.

Matt: Yep, exactly.

Taylor: And then help help hold them accountable through tracking their data, by sending them quarterly net weight worth statements, by giving them context to their financial hygiene chart. Like there’s so many things that we hope we add value to, but at the end of the day, I think the most important thing is just having an accountability partner or an accountabity through it all.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, love it. I think we should end it there, Taylor. This was great. ⁓ Taylor, as always, really appreciate you being here. If you were out there listening and thinking, this I need help. I need help with these things and I at least want to have a conversation. We are here to help and hear your story, help answer your questions and guide you along the way. You can go to dentistadvisors.com, book the ⁓ click on the book free consultation button, and we you’ll get one of our friendly advisors. If you’re lucky, you’ll get Taylor. If you’re lucky. Or ⁓ we’ll see. We’ll see. Well, again, Taylor, thanks for being here. And everyone, thanks for listening. As always, till next time, take care. Bye-bye.

Taylor: If you’re luckier, you get matt.

Keywords: financial planning, dentists, onboarding, strategy, ongoing advice, transparency, team approach, financial hygiene, net worth, decision-making

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