What You Should Expect From Your Financial Advisor – Episode #568

Are you considering hiring a financial advisor but unsure about what to expect? On this episode of the Dentist Money Show, Matt and Ryan break down some of the essential roles and expectations you should have for your financial advisor. They cover key qualities to look for in a financial advisor, the services they should provide, and how to establish a collaborative partnership to get the most out of the relationship.

Related Readings

10 Questions a Dentist Should Ask Before Hiring a Financial Advisor

10 Mistakes That Can Cost Dentist $10,000 or More

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Podcast Transcript

Intro: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the dentist money show brought to you by dentist advisors for great show for you today. Ryan and I are recording from the productive dentist academy event in Frisco, Texas. And we are talking about what to expect from a financial advisor. We try to share our experience as being advisors, combined, over 20 years in the industry, working with hundreds of clients over the last 20 years and wanted to impart our thoughts and really give you some perspective of what to be thinking about when hiring an advisor, what should an advisor provide for you versus what they should not provide for you. as always hope you get a ton of value out of this and we hope you enjoy the show.

Ryan Isaac: Matt where are we right now?

Matt Mulcock: We are at the illustrious 20th anniversary

Ryan Isaac: platinum plus

Matt Mulcock: 20th anniversary of Productive Dentist Academy, PDA.

Matt Mulcock: Welcome to Frisco, Texas. we were just saying, this is my 6th or 7th in a row. we also were joking about how we came here in March. They do this every March, every September.

Ryan Isaac: Oh, this is my

Matt Mulcock: And so, we were here in March. It was just you and

Matt Mulcock: And the show was done. And

Ryan Isaac: I’m sure this is purely coincidental.

Matt Mulcock: Purely coincidental.

Ryan Isaac: Crazy.

Matt Mulcock: You and we love Christine. We love the PA PDA team. they come up to us and they’re like, so the next, for next time it’s our 20th and so we would love. to have you bring more people that are different than you guys. I threw that in there, but it was funny. We were joking. So we brought a whole crew

Ryan Isaac: We got our crew.

Matt Mulcock: people with us. Well, total six of us. So four more. And they were so excited. The PDA team was like, you brought more people. You’re like, yeah,

Ryan Isaac: if it’s because we tend to wander off. You and

Matt Mulcock: We do

Ryan Isaac: We tend to just be like, what’s that? And we’ll just wander off and we need someone at the booth a little bit more frequently. So we are, I love

Matt Mulcock: We wander around and they’re like, so I do think that’s probably part of it. They’re like, How do we tell these two guys to just sit at their booth? And so instead of doing that and being really like confrontational with us, they’re like, hey, just bring more people.

Matt Mulcock: So we always have someone at your

Ryan Isaac: It’s also possible that they actually directly told us and we just didn’t listen.

Matt Mulcock: Very possible. That’s

Ryan Isaac: Cause we got distracted. Alright.

Matt Mulcock: It’s like something about not listening. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.

Ryan Isaac: But we are here, the theme seems to be something around, the sport of football.

Matt Mulcock: You know, who’s coming

Matt Mulcock: So for the 20th anniversary of PDA, they have, Emmett Smith ever heard of him?

Ryan Isaac: I’ve heard of him. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: So, Emmitt Smith though, Cowboys legend. He’s gonna be

Ryan Isaac: Did he always play for the Cowboys?

Matt Mulcock: Most of his career, he ended up, his last year, maybe he did two years, I think his final season he played at the Arizona Cardinals.

Matt Mulcock: It wouldn’t be a PDA event if we didn’t have the vacuum guy and we didn’t have us rushing to finish a podcast before everyone comes out to lunch and we’re not going to do it in time.  So let’s get to it. today we want to talk about, this is something we’ve had themes of this, the interwoven between shows over the course of our careers.

Matt Mulcock: We even did a podcast relatively recent around the 10 questions. You should ask a financial advisor. We want to do a different spin on this and talk about. What should you expect from your financial advisor? So maybe you’re out there looking for an advisor. Maybe you’re out there engaging with an advisor, from wherever we wanted to talk about, like, what should you, what’s a reasonable expectation you should have for your advisor you’re working

Ryan Isaac: So let’s begin with why do people have misguided expectations about our industry in the first place? What’s that

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. I think the biggest problem to start off is just the title financial advisor. It’s a problem.

Matt Mulcock: Many different things. Before we had technical difficulties, and we had to re record this, we were comparing this to dentistry. You go to a dentist, or someone says they’re a dentist, although there’s varying degrees of quality, and obviously doesn’t mean that there can’t be really bad dentists out there, there’s obviously a lot of great dentists out there. Like, within the sphere of dentistry, the category of dentist, there’s obviously a spectrum. But, there is a baseline barrier to entry. To call yourself a

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, if you’re gonna go down the It’s pretty extensive, you know what it is. If I go to the dentist here in Frisco, Texas. With a toothache. Christine Ewen,

Matt Mulcock: Christine Uhen, we love you.

Ryan Isaac: We like shouting out when she walks by.

Ryan Isaac: Christine always listens to every episode.

Ryan Isaac: She’s a huge fan. So we love

Matt Mulcock: We give her shoutouts

Ryan Isaac: if I go, yeah, if I go down the street with a toothache here in Frisco, Texas, I’m going to have a reasonable expectation of what I’m going to encounter as if I was home in Orange County, California, going to the dentist. I’m going to get this, you know, I might have some pictures, some x rays, the hygienist might come in and might get a little gum scrapey.

Matt Mulcock: The scrapey gum procedure.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Ryan Isaac: Guys know what I’m talking about. you know, some cleaning, some poking, some prodding, some, like I know what’s going to happen. I know where these people were trained. They had to go to school for a very long time. they have to always upkeep CE.

Ryan Isaac: They have equipment. Like it’s a relatively uniform baseline experience. Every dentist has their own

Matt Mulcock: There’s obviously different techniques. There’s different styles. Some are better than others. Different skill. Some dentists do bread and butter dentistry, and they refer out everything else. Some other dentists do everything in house. Like, you’re gonna see that those things vary. Compare that to financial advisors. So if you compare this to the title financial advisor and the space of financial

Ryan Isaac: You can’t have the same expectation that will from one to the other. You’re going to have a relatively baseline, similar

Matt Mulcock: The barrier to entry of becoming a financial advisor to call yourself a financial advisor is literally a high school diploma and a test that I think a lot of people could get done in a couple of

Ryan Isaac: Is it even a high school diploma? Realistically? Really?

Ryan Isaac: Like, what if I didn’t graduate high school and I got an insurance company to hire me and I sold permanent life insurance and they printed financial advisor on my semantics, but I’m wondering, like, it’s very low

Matt Mulcock: Probably could still call yourself an advisor. No one’s gonna really call

Ryan Isaac: No one’s going to call you

Matt Mulcock: . You could just be a salesman, selling insurance.

Matt Mulcock: So this is the problem, right? you could have 10 people lined up. They all call themselves financial advisors and all 10 of them do something

Ryan Isaac: Wildly different. Last night we were at dinner with somebody whose business is a private investment fund in like the commodity business,

Matt Mulcock: Like an alternative

Ryan Isaac: Alternative investment fund. And the title for a lot of their people internally is wealth

Matt Mulcock: Wealth advisor. Yep.

Ryan Isaac: I would call myself a wealth advisor for dentists in those are wildly different experiences.

Ryan Isaac: Not because like one’s better. They’re just very, very different, but the title is the same. So that’s super confusing. No wonder people are like, what are you going to do for me? What do you got? Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Remnants of this mindset of like stockbrokers. It began. The 1980s, you know, Wolf of Wall Street type stuff.

Ryan Isaac: It was the only way to actually access financial products. So that’s how it

Matt Mulcock: I think most people still engage us and be like, Oh, you’re going to help me with some magical.

Matt Mulcock: So we were just talking about this, right? I was telling you the story. I was at a family

Ryan Isaac: Oh yeah. Oh Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Ago and my uncle, who’s not a dentist, but he knows the work that I do. And he’s like, Oh, tell me about work. And we’re just chatting. And then he says, all right, Matt, he’s retired. I think he’s done quite well.

Matt Mulcock: And he’s, he’s retired now. He’s like, all right, man, if I brought you a hundred thousand dollars, What could you do for me? And I was like, Hey, that’s not really how this works, you know? And I had to, first of all, I got out of that by saying, I only work with dentists.

Matt Mulcock: Sorry.

Ryan Isaac: And then he wanted it more. He’s like, fine. I’ll give

Matt Mulcock: Wait, we’ll have a two 50. Yeah. But no, what I had to explain to him as I was like, listen, the days of an advisor, at least a quality advisor, differentiating themselves with some fancy Investment strategy of like, hey, listen, I’m going to find you. I’m going to get you better returns than the next

Ryan Isaac: I’m going to pick the stuff that no one knows how to pick and I’m going to get the returns that are way above average

Ryan Isaac: That no one else can get.

Matt Mulcock: This is a very like 1980s, 1990s approach that we still see today. Because, because Pete, it’s so easy to sell that story.

Ryan Isaac: Well, it’s still like one of the, it’s got to be still the top marketing of any financial firm is just say you have an investment strategy that’s unique. It’s hidden. No one knows about it except for you. And then your returns are stellar. They’re guaranteed. They’re tax free, blah, blah,

Ryan Isaac: Then, that’s marketing is still the

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, you even better. You start a some type of mastermind group. You start ripping on the stock market saying how it’s a total scam. You start selling these shyster private investments that are so vague and opaque that you can’t really, even understand how these investments work.

Matt Mulcock: And you start throwing out random numbers that are like double, triple the stock market returns. And you start building up this group that ends up being a total

Ryan Isaac: You know, the SEC’s raiding everybody and everyone’s losing their money and

Matt Mulcock: Sadly, we see this.

Ryan Isaac: Sadly, this is currently happening all over the place. Yeah, you have a point. That’s where the industry began, was like, you know, stock picking, doing things that no one else could do, getting returns that were way above average.

Ryan Isaac: And secondly, I guess there still are companies that do that. You could go to a hedge fund or a private equity fund and be like, what you got for me, pitch me something. And that would be a fair expectation. But. For a financial planner, a wealth advisor, wealth manager, a consultant, that’s just not going to be, that’s just, it’s such a, that’s such a narrow scope on what they can actually help you with.

Ryan Isaac: So, yeah, but that’s on our industry. That’s why there’s so much confusion. There is no uniformity. There’s no uniform educational path or background. And that the title can just be thrown around by whoever without a regulatory body. I mean, what are the actual titles that are even regulated?

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Fee only. so there are some terms that are actually regulated. Unless you’re licensed. Yeah, okay. Okay.

Matt Mulcock: So, if you take nothing else away from this, take this away. If you want to shut off the podcast at this point, which a lot of times people do, it’s okay.

Matt Mulcock: So I think if you take nothing else away from this, it’s to understand this.

Matt Mulcock: There’s really only three ways advisors are paid. There’s real meaning. There’s only really three broad. Incentive structures of an advisor, right? So the core majority of what we’re saying, these advisors who call themselves advisors, But they’re really just product salesman is falls under a commission based advisor commission

Ryan Isaac: Do you know what percentage that is of the industry

Matt Mulcock: So here’s what I do.

Matt Mulcock: Here’s what I do know that 15 percent ish of the space of the advisor space is what we’d call fee only so not selling products Yes, it’s around

Ryan Isaac: And not a hybrid

Matt Mulcock: No, so so the other 85 percent is in this commission based or the second category, which is what you’re alluding to Which is this hybrid

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, what do they call that again,

Matt Mulcock: They call it dually

Ryan Isaac: Dually registered. Yeah,

Matt Mulcock: So let’s just say, so commission based advisor, this is a insurance salesman. This is someone who’s pitching. The only way they are paid is if they have you buy a product.

Matt Mulcock: So what are they going to do? they’re a hammer. Everything looks like a

Ryan Isaac: Well, and from the inside, Matt, you’ve been in the industry. I am familiar with how it works a little bit too, but you go to company meetings weekly or monthly and management brings you the highest margin products to push to your people. And they base your retirement comp, your bonus plans, your, promotion eligibility based on like what products if you’re the salesperson who can go push the highest margin products.

Ryan Isaac: So if you’re a client of this environment and you call your person, you’re like, what should we do? You have to know that your person on the other end of the line just went to a meeting sometime recently where management said, Hey, this month, these are the highest margin funds that we need in your client’s accounts.

Ryan Isaac: And the sales people with the most amount of funds or the highest dollars of these funds wins the contest, gets the bonus, goes on the trip, you know, gets promoted, whatever. Like, that’s what’s happening behind the scenes. Like, it’s not like, what’s best for you. It’s like what’s the highest product highest margin product I can sell to you right now.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, and here’s my thing. So you go to a car salesman You’re gonna get sold a car right but which is not a problem in and of itself is

Ryan Isaac: You know, you know the

Matt Mulcock: The key is like You just need to know what you’re getting if you go to an inch we use insurance partners, too We don’t sell insurance ourselves We don’t get paid commissions

Ryan Isaac: Consult on it

Matt Mulcock: But we use partners to sell insurance because guess what?

Matt Mulcock: You still need

Ryan Isaac: You still need

Matt Mulcock: So the biggest problem we have We’re not saying these commission based people are bad people. We’re saying the incentive structure and the expectations that they put on people is the problem because If I’m a car salesman I come to you and I say hey, I’m selling cars and you’re I need a car cool I’m gonna get paid a commission for that car sale.

Matt Mulcock: You say cool. Everything is on the table. You know exactly what you’re getting The biggest issue we have with this is when these insurance salesmen, these product salesmen try to pull the wool over your eyes and pretend like there’s something that they’re not. so you think you’re getting an advisor, but you’re really getting a product sold to you.

Matt Mulcock: And that’s where we struggle.

Ryan Isaac: And it’s not the product that’s best for you in your

Matt Mulcock: Exactly.

Ryan Isaac: Highest paying one to the salesperson.

Matt Mulcock: And here’s the other really quick thing on this is you got to realize that these people in this incentive structure. All of their training, everything that they’re practicing and all of their strategy is around how to pitch you this product. So they get really good at it.

Matt Mulcock: They get really good

Ryan Isaac: They’re really good.

Matt Mulcock: Their job is to sell you on this product. So we understand it’s tricky. It’s hard. It’s difficult to, because it sounds great there, but that’s all they’re doing in these meetings entirely is focused on how do we sell this product? they know all the objections.

Matt Mulcock: They know all the way, all how to overcome, you know, how to use psychology against you. So just keep that in mind that that’s all they’re doing is practicing how to sell you this product.

Ryan Isaac: To go back to what you said, that is still 85 percent of the industry,

Matt Mulcock: Percent of the industry now I will say that is that numbers dropping and the number of so I don’t know exactly to this day 2024 Where we’re at, but the last date I saw was about 15 percent Of the space financial advising space is fee only so let’s get to that really quick. So we’ve got commission based We’ve got a duly registered and duly registered just means they can sell you products and they can also charge you a fee for planning or investment management

Ryan Isaac: Can you start real positive right there when you seek a dentist who come to us for the first time and they have a portfolio, a mix of stuff on their balance sheet and they’ve worked with, duly registered person. Normally we’ll see like, Oh, there’s a low cost globally diversified portfolio. And then there’s the whole life insurance.

Ryan Isaac: There’s the annuity. Like there’s always like something rational on the balance sheet. That’s, that comes from their duly registered fee side. But then, Oh, there’s the kicker. You know, like always,

Matt Mulcock: Cause that’s how they’re making their money.

Ryan Isaac: yeah. Investing your a hundred thousand dollar IRA didn’t pay as much. Not even remotely as the whole life or the annuity or yeah,

Matt Mulcock: I actually think that the middle group is what they call This is where it gets tricky. The duly registered group to me is the scariest they call themselves fee based and people get

Matt Mulcock: Confused by this And

Ryan Isaac: They’re also fiduciary.

Matt Mulcock: So that, that’s the other term that is technically regulated, but it has become so watered down because of how the regulating bodies have like interpreted how to use that term.

Matt Mulcock: So again, I worked in this industry, I worked for Fidelity for five years. Great company, by the way, love, good company, good people. it really is a good company, but we were duly registered. So all I had to do was, A really quick and slick verbal disclosure

Ryan Isaac: Yeah for compliance

Matt Mulcock: Compliance. As I was bouncing from product salesman to advisor selling, like manage money, let’s say, and I can’t remember exactly what I’d say, but you had to kind of give a verbal disclosure of like, now I am going to able to sell you product.

Matt Mulcock: Oh yeah.

Ryan Isaac: Cause they’re all recorded and then you’re like,

Matt Mulcock: Right in the

Ryan Isaac: Me to court. Here we go.

Matt Mulcock: Exactly. so those are the scariest because they cannot call themselves fee only. Right. You cannot, if you sell products, you cannot put on your website. Or tell a client we are fee only advisors, but what they can say is fee based

Ryan Isaac: Even a pretty informed person sees fee based fiduciary on a website. How are they not going to think that’s in their best interest? I would, that seems as legit as you possibly can, but that’s like you said, scary because a fee based fiduciary can still load your balance sheet full of annuities and whole life

Matt Mulcock: And they can technically accept kickbacks from banks from insurance people from product salesmen. They can load this one of the most egregious of Times they do this or context they do. This is in your 401k So they’re they’re they set up a 401k for you. They’re in bed with let’s say i’m going to name a company american funds

Matt Mulcock: They have a relationship with American funds or some of these mutual fund companies, and they’re accepting kickbacks from those companies.

Matt Mulcock: Again, we’re not saying these are bad people. We’re saying these are bad incentive structures that are not aligned and upfront with what

Ryan Isaac: It’s not

Matt Mulcock: are. Exactly. So understand, I think, again, take nothing away from this other than or if you do, I think you’re going to take a ton away from this incredible value.

Matt Mulcock: If you don’t, if you only take one thing, let’s say you, only want to take one concept away from a podcast. Great. This is it. Understand the fee structure and incentive structure of advisors. Cause there’s only three ways to do it. And remember fee based and fee only two different

Ryan Isaac: So just ask someone, do you get any commissions for anything whatsoever? A and B does any, any company at all kick back money behind the scenes? And if the answer is yes to either of both of those, then just go find someone

Matt Mulcock: Understand their incentive structure And as Charlie Munger said incentives are the most powerful thing in the world That they could be a great person and talk about their values and whatever but if they’re paid to sell you a product They’re gonna sell you a product.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, and that’s really the key of the industry, though, too. There are a lot of, like, really smart, well intentioned people who have good motives, but it’s, you know, when you work for a business model that will force you to do something different, it’s bad business models.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, it’s like you’re paid. You got to take care of your family You got it’s like you’re trying to grow your wealth like meaning the advisor. So it’s like I don’t necessarily even blame them

Ryan Isaac: Make five grand this year by talking to this person about their IRA and just managing it in a, in a portfolio or I can make 50 grand one time by selling an

Matt Mulcock: And by never having to

Ryan Isaac: And never talk to you ever again, except for to try to sell you more insurance.

Matt Mulcock: I think thinking about, again, this incentive structure. Not only the commission based part of it, but also think about, is this person incentivized to continue working with me?

Matt Mulcock: Even if they say they’re, this is what drives me the most crazy with advisors who say, Oh, we’ll do financial planning for free. We’ll throw it in. But what does that mean? they’re going to treat it like a throw in

Matt Mulcock: How they’re actually paid. Let’s say it’s a commission based thing.

Matt Mulcock: They’re going to sell you a commission based product. They’re going to get paid up front. And there’s zero incentive for them to keep you as a client after a certain period of time. They don’t really care.

Ryan Isaac: Many hours of work are you willing to throw in for something? Hey, listener dentist, how many hours of free dentistry are you willing to throw in for

Ryan Isaac: Some anything? A throw in is not anything you want, by the way. A throw in are the things that we have at our table right now, like key chains and water bottles.

Ryan Isaac: Those are great throw

Matt Mulcock: Listen, we all are talking to a lot. We’re talking right now to a lot of business owning dentists, right? We all know the concept I would imagine of like a loss leader, right? I think of let Costco with their chicken.

Matt Mulcock: Their rotisserie

Ryan Isaac: You do some whitening in

Matt Mulcock: make it. Yeah. So it’s like, you’re trying to get them.

Matt Mulcock: You’re trying to like, check that

Ryan Isaac: But you’re not gonna spend the required like if it’s a real thing It would normally take like let’s say 10 to 20 hours a year. That’s not a throw in That’s not that’s

Matt Mulcock: But again, so if they’re saying it’s a throw in, like, yeah, we’ll do that for free. It’s nothing. It’s exactly right.

Matt Mulcock: Okay. So again, we talked about the problem with the financial advising space, the title financial advisor, the incentive structures and cost structures of an advisor. I think the last point here as we jump into the kind of like the final piece of this, which is what, what you

Matt Mulcock: Should expect from an advisor is like talking about really quick our belief, obviously, or I’m going to say, because we are advisors, but the value of having a quality advisor, I think it’s goes without saying people ask us all the time, like, do you believe everybody needs an advisor?

Ryan Isaac: No, I Yeah,

Matt Mulcock: I agree.

Ryan Isaac: I don’t just like I don’t believe that everyone needs a personal trainer And there’s varying degrees of help that lots of people need so some people need one on one constant attention Some people need a template to follow on their own with occasional check ins And then some people are like fine doing some things completely on their own.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah

Matt Mulcock: I totally agree. But I think this will help when we go through like what to expect from an advisor. For people out there thinking, do I qualify for someone who would need help from an advisor? Because I do, I agree with you completely that not everyone needs one just like a personal trainer. But I do think there are more people out there not using an advisor that should be.

Ryan Isaac: Uh huh. Oh, yeah, well, that, that does tend, I mean, you look at a lot of the data. We’ll use Vanguard they publish studies all the time. the title of their study is called the Advisor Alpha.

Ryan Isaac: I don’t know how often it gets updated, every couple

Matt Mulcock: Every couple of years.

Ryan Isaac: But I mean, their data will point to, the effectiveness of an advisor just purely in the return data of what people get an experience versus not having an advisor, according to Vanguard. it’s multiple percentage points of people who have higher returns.

Ryan Isaac: Now that’s just returns in an investment account. When you think about a dentist life and all of the decisions they have to constantly make all of the moving pieces on their balance sheet. Running a business needing, like, who can I talk to when I have to run questions about who’s not going to sell me something, how do I not freak out?

Ryan Isaac: How do I, you know, it’s like, that’s just returns being kind of quantified in, in how much it helps. So I think according to like Vanguard’s data, more people would probably benefit by having help. It’s just like saying, would more. General American population. Would more people benefit by having some like handholding and some health and wellness and nutrition and

Matt Mulcock: Or a business coach.

Ryan Isaac: Of course the smartest, most successful people we all know have multiple coaches in their corner at all times. So

Matt Mulcock: can speak to this firsthand. I’ve been involved either as a hobby level or a professional level in the fitness industry at many different places. In my life, stop, probably my main side, hobby, passion, whatever you want to call it has been in the fitness space.

Matt Mulcock: Again, I’ve actually done this professionally before this industry, before I got into this and I can speak to this firsthand of when I am doing it on my own versus I’ve used a coach and, or a nutritionist or

Matt Mulcock: Whatever. It’s night and

Ryan Isaac: and and you are extremely experienced you know what is going on, you, you know what to do and you’re highly interested in it and willing to spend lots of time in it and you are still way better off having a coach around you than doing it by

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. Well, we’ve alluded to this study and I can’t remember exactly where it came from. So it’s it’s I don’t have it in front of me, but we did. We’ve done this before talking about the data that’s shown when you have a goal

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Oh

Matt Mulcock: All right. where it’s like, you know, the different levels of it of like, you say you have a goal versus you write it down. Right. And then it gets all the way down to, you have an accountability partner to set, exactly. Someone that you know that you’re going to let down or that you’re going to have that feeling of like, I got to talk to this person, 95 percent likelihood that you’re going to complete that goal.

Matt Mulcock: So there’s no question that we think more people than not. Certainly more people out there that don’t have an advisor or someone like, you know, a consult, whatever, someone in their corner, that’s an objective, third party, a processing system, a person, we believe that more people than not would benefit from that in some point of their life. so with that said, we say we can jump into, okay, . Let’s say I do need an advisor. What should I actually, and they’re out there saying this one person listening, is saying, Okay, you’ve addressed the problem, you’ve addressed the incentive structures, you’ve addressed the fact that there’s a value in me maybe hiring someone.

Matt Mulcock: What should I expect?

Ryan Isaac: Yep.

Matt Mulcock: Give me the answer, just give me the answer,

Matt Mulcock: So, we’re gonna go through kind of a list of what we think, and throw them out as you, as things come, we do like to deviate as you can tell. Number one thing that I put, and this is in no necessarily particular order.

Matt Mulcock: This is just kind of, we were just kind of throwing things out. But, number one thing that I said, as a baseline is knowledge.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. Now specifically industry knowledge.

Matt Mulcock: So, this is why I’m glad you went here. Is, I think, A couple of different things. So as a baseline, when we talk about, again, we started this with the problem being financial advisor, it’s really difficult to know, okay, are you the person who just like got into this, you know, with a high school diploma, passed a basic test and like, you know, nothing really,

Matt Mulcock: right. or are you a certified financial planner? Who’s got five, 10 years of experience and even more so, do you have knowledge of my,

Matt Mulcock: Situation in my industry, you know my people, my kind.

Ryan Isaac: Being dentists. different crew of people. The dentists.

Matt Mulcock: And the best

Ryan Isaac: The best, the best out there. Yeah, I love that. knowledge is what you said?

Matt Mulcock: Yes. And there’s, there’s levels

Matt Mulcock: So knowledge of your own industry, like meaning it does this advisor. Yeah. does this advisor. have the knowledge and experience to be able to help me with the things that I need help with, but also next level,

Matt Mulcock: Do you know my level? My career

Ryan Isaac: Unique struggles my unique challenges like I’m not just a highly paid w 2

Ryan Isaac: Person being a dentist means that my insurance is totally different. My taxes are filled my spending my loans Everything is cash flow my responsibilities my stresses where my time goes My shortcomings, what I might or might not know about, like, it’s totally different.

Ryan Isaac: Even against someone who has the exact same amount of pay, but they’re just a highly paid W 2 for some company. It’s completely different. Do you know about that? we talk about this all the time. go hire a dental specific CPA. Hire a dental specific attorney. The dental specific knowledge is not going to change your life completely in one day or one year to the next.

Ryan Isaac: But little pieces over time over years and years will no question make a huge difference and in our surveys when we get Matt You probably have the data of how many people reach out to us per week. Do you know how many that is late like?

Matt Mulcock: We could break this down. as far as how many, like you’re saying like

Matt Mulcock: consults? Yeah. So, we average for the year, we can back into this, but for the year, we’re about 450 a

Ryan Isaac: Okay, so it’s just more than I thought actually so shout out to the marketing team

Ryan Isaac: But, out of the feedback that we get from those people, I think it’s the top, or maybe it’s one of the top two is why do you want to talk to us?

Ryan Isaac: And it’s because you work with dentists. That’s like the number one besides, I think, what’s the other one because we’re fiduciary.

Matt Mulcock: some version of like, you’re not selling

Ryan Isaac: The number one thing people are saying, 450 plus people every year that are reaching out, are like, you know dentistry, so I want to talk to you. And I think that’s a fantastic place to begin when looking for someone, like, do you know your stuff?

Ryan Isaac: And do you know my stuff?

Matt Mulcock: Well, and think about this too. This is the most underrated part, I think, of this, because we know internally, and when we talk to dentists, we know the greatest value for us as a company to the dentist in our space is the fact that we are dental specific. And so if you really think about why that is the case, because if you come to someone that is dental specific, let’s take us out of it.

Matt Mulcock: You just go to a dental specific advisor that works with five to 600 dentists across the country, right? What you are getting from them is the collective knowledge and experience of all their advisor and team and all of their client stories and experiences, mistakes, things that they’re doing that you are now, it’s all funneling to you versus you go to insert generic company.

Matt Mulcock: I’m not going to name one, but insert generic company that might work with some dentists.

Matt Mulcock: They might work with some lawyers. They might work with some MDs, whatever you, don’t get that,

Ryan Isaac: No well, it’s like Matt if someone comes to you with a specific question and You don’t know the answer You know someone who does like you probably know like two dozen people who have been in the exact same situation that are actual personal clients Let alone vendors spot like other partners in the

Matt Mulcock: Do you know how often I’m reaching out to many partners that are actually here, including PDA, where I’m like, Hey, Christine, you and can you just like hop on with me for 15 minutes. And like, walk me through this Chris sands profile, 2020 shout out. I’ve reached out to him multiple times. Other CPA partners are

Ryan Isaac: it’s the network of like people that you get to know. You’re like, if I don’t have an answer, I know someone will. And that’s so incredibly powerful versus like a very generic kind of approach where like, I don’t know, man, never heard of that before.

Ryan Isaac: Maybe just, uh, I don’t know. Try

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, give that a try. so this is a great example. Like we don’t, we don’t put ourselves out there to be like practice management consultants. We’re never going to compete with a group like PDA that does such an incredible job. We partner with PDA. However, because we are dental specific and we’ve done this for so many years with so many dentists.

Matt Mulcock: There’s not a lot that has been brought to us that we don’t either a don’t know at least where to start with an answer or B we don’t know somebody that can directly help

Matt Mulcock: with that

Ryan Isaac: That’s never the case. There’s always an answer to find somewhere in our network. Easily.

Matt Mulcock: One of the problems here that we found is like, how do you quantify that?

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: It’s hard. it’s hard. to quantify that.

Matt Mulcock: . So knowledge, not only from their side of like, do they have knowledge in their industry to be able to help you and add value, but also do they know knowledge about your industry and your expertise or your life?

Matt Mulcock: Right? The other thing I said was a comprehensive approach.

Ryan Isaac: what do you mean by that? When you hear that, what do you mean?

Matt Mulcock: I think this comes back to what we were saying earlier of like, okay, you say you’re a financial advisor. What does that mean? You say you’re comprehensive. What does that mean? To me, The way we explain this to people when they call us and they’re like, okay, what does this mean for you?

Matt Mulcock: For us, it’s. We want to be the general contractor of your financial life. So again, we’re not the plumber. We’re not the electrician you still need a consultant possibly. You still need attorneys, you still need a CPA, but we are someone who’s going to connect all those dots for you.

Matt Mulcock: There shouldn’t be anything in your financial life that you don’t come to us first

Ryan Isaac: Uh huh. And, I would assume a really good general contractor, even though that person doesn’t actually do the electrical wiring, they know what it is, and they know when it’s working well and when it’s not working well, and then they obviously know who to call that’s an expert in electrical wiring.

Ryan Isaac: Same thing, like, Matt, we don’t file taxes, but how often do you have your nose in someone’s tax returns?

Matt Mulcock: My nose is always directly in those returns.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, I look at tax returns and P& Ls more often than I look at investment account statements.

Ryan Isaac: Way

Matt Mulcock: By the way, you should, as a dentist,

Ryan Isaac: You should be doing that.

Matt Mulcock: P& L specifically, you should be looking at your P& L at a rate of four to five times more frequently than your investment

Ryan Isaac: And it is not only the, opposite, but it’s

Ryan Isaac: like 20 to 1 to the opposite. you don’t have to be the expert at taxes, Matt, but you know a dentist balance sheet and P& L, like So well, I mean, you can look at profitability. You can see holes in the practice. You can see where we’re bleeding money, where we’re losing profitability and then help get a CPA or a consultant involved to help fix the,

Matt Mulcock: Someone to analyze your insurances

Ryan Isaac: yeah. Like you’re not an insurance agent, but you know, when disability insurance looks good or bad, or when the life insurance is adequate or not. And then you can get an agent to help fix it. Fulfill or implement something. But you know what you’re looking at as the general contractor of someone’s finances, financial general contractor

Matt Mulcock: is. That’s what we are. So

Matt Mulcock: if we’re getting specific here of like a comprehensive approach, your advisor should, you know, insurance planning is part of it. Tax planning is part of it. Retirement planning is part of it.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Management should be part of it. Cashflow, reviewing your balance sheet on a regular basis, reviewing your spending.

Matt Mulcock: There there’s estate planning. There shouldn’t be anything that advisor

Matt Mulcock: can’t direct. Or start you on a path to helping you solve your problems in all of those

Ryan Isaac: They don’t have to be the transacting person. They don’t have to do it for a living, but they have to know about it. And it’s really common when people come to us from other firms that are not comprehensive and they’re not dental specific where they get advice on like their 401k, but they get like really wildly bad advice on other areas.

Ryan Isaac: because the people just don’t know they, they, they’re not trained in those other areas, which again, it goes back to the whole. You know, in our industry, people call themselves wealth managers, but really they just set up 401ks or they sell life insurance, you know, just call it what it is, man.

Matt Mulcock: by the way, a lot of those things for one case, we do insurance planning and review and advice or guidance. We do. We don’t sell those. We don’t sell insurance, But that’s table stakes. Like to get actual value of an advisor relationship is okay. Great. Generic advisor does X, Y, Z thing too. What else do you do?

Matt Mulcock: That’s where we say we have leaned into and completely dove Into the dental space.

Ryan Isaac: But you couldn’t have done that if you were a general financial advisor. There’s

Ryan Isaac: You could understand what insurance coverage means to the general population out there. There’s just, or what a good P& L looks like, or cash flow, or any, or what’s a normal tax range?

Ryan Isaac: Do you pay too much or too little? I have no idea because I work with everyone and everyone’s all over the place. But working with dentists, you know that if someone’s like, I paid this percentage in taxes of overall my total gross income, you’ll know right off the bat Where they are benchmarked in your head compared to like hundreds of other clients.

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, or just like you said looking at a P& L. It’s like, something’s going on with your cash flow. Let’s go to the P& L and figure out what’s happening and track year to year to year. What’s happening here? We know benchmarks of your staffing costs just jumped by 10%. What’s happening? Hey, your dental supplies are up 11%.

Matt Mulcock: What’s your, what are you doing for procurement right now?

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, or do you think how often do you have the I was just having this conversation it is common for you I’m sure where someone buys a bunch of equipment And you know, hey, let’s have a discussion with your accounting team. Are we going to do 179 for this year? Are we going to spread it out?

Ryan Isaac: What are your other purchases look like in your business? What else is coming up? Do you need some cashflow for something else where a small tax bill would be helpful? Like just as little kind of specific to dentistry tidbits if you will,

Matt Mulcock: So, we apologize if this is loud. We’re just gonna keep talking. So, if you can hear the people, at least, you know that we’re not lying, that we’re at the PDA, uh, 20th anniversary, show. It’s amazing. So, next one. we’ve talked about knowledge. You’ve talked about a comprehensive approach, to their planning process. how about proactive communication?

Ryan Isaac: Yeah, pro. Okay. So that has to be one of the biggest complaints you hear people make about service providers in general. They’ll say nothing happens until I make them do something now as a service provider for a long time. I can say that that’s hard to do perfectly all the time. I’m probably guilty of someone saying like Ryan didn’t do this until I told him to, that probably happens.

Ryan Isaac: However, if you do not operate in a business or a system that has some kind of Proactive work that’s happening outside of meetings with you. That’s going to be a problem for your average dentist and all the dentists know this. The more successful you become in your career as you achieve the financial milestones you’re trying to hit in your business, you will have less and less time on your hands to just sit in meetings with your financial advisor.

Ryan Isaac: We see this play out the early years, the associate years, they’re like, we’re meeting once a month, we’re meeting twice a month. As they start becoming successful, they got partners, associates, multi practices, they’re seven figure earners. Tracking people down like once a year can be a problem sometimes.

Ryan Isaac: It’s just very busy as you get successful. So if there is not something that’s operating outside of that meeting schedule for a dentist, things are going to get dropped. You’re not going to hear about decisions and money spends and problems. You’re not going to be able to have a chance to bring up red flags in the data.

Ryan Isaac: To see like, Oh, this isn’t trending, right? You’re not saving enough money. You’re spending too much. You know, you’re, you’re not insured the right way. Especially think about like a lot of these things are boring subjects too.

Matt Mulcock: All of them are everything we do is a boring

Ryan Isaac: it’s boring subject, but I mean, the fun, the quote, fun ones, the sexy ones are P and L and cashflow issues and investment issues, everything outside of those, like no one really wants to talk about, and if there’s not a system forcing you to bring those up on some kind of schedule.

Ryan Isaac: They’re going to get missed and that’s a huge problem as they compile. It’s like the patient who just never comes in for checkups and they don’t do their flossing and their brushing. Like those problems are going to build up until it’s a very expensive, painful emergency. The same thing happens in finances.

Ryan Isaac: So systems for me are, you know, they’re

Matt Mulcock: Huge. I totally agree with all of that. And we’ve talked about communication. Here is just to give you a little secret how the advising space works. It’s very driven on sales. And this is even in the fee only space, by the way, where the name of the game is gather as much as you can in assets. And then ideally never talk to your client

Ryan Isaac: That’s the margin.

Ryan Isaac: the most expensive thing is to pay a human being to talk to another human being. That’s the most expensive thing that a company has to pay for. So if you can just get all the revenue and then never have to have your human beings talk to other human beings, that’s what we call margin.

Matt Mulcock: what we call passive income. Dare I say there’s

Matt Mulcock: Out there that understand passive income

Matt Mulcock: Very well,

Matt Mulcock: Because they’re really good at sales. And then they

Matt Mulcock: Just gather that, ask those assets. They allow the client to assume something’s being done because they’re getting an investment report that’s required every quarter.

Matt Mulcock: And because the end client’s busy and they all of a sudden they’re like, like we’ve said this before, three years in a dentist’s life can feel like six months.

Ryan Isaac: We feel that

Ryan Isaac: Big time. A dentist would be like, didn’t we just talk? And we’re like, it’s been eight

Matt Mulcock: Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac: busy, the time just goes like

Matt Mulcock: Yes. So I think what this comes down to this proactive communication one, Comes back to what you should expect from a quality advisor is a process not a product

Matt Mulcock: There’s very different things.

Matt Mulcock: do you have a process of communication? Where you are the keyword being a proactive process to reach out to me?

Matt Mulcock: at least a couple times a

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: more like possibly three or four times a year or Or just are you reaching out to me and this goes into the next one being accountability Are you holding me accountable? Knowing that I’m a busy professional, knowing I’ve got a lot of crap going on and six months feels like a week to me.

Ryan Isaac: Like a weekend. I might need some reminders.

Matt Mulcock: I’ve had people tell me this a lot. Like, I need you to push me. I need you. And then we do, it’s like, I’m going to reach out to you and I’m going to keep reaching out to you till we can get on the calendar at least a couple of times a year to me.

Matt Mulcock: And by the way, notice, we’re not sitting here saying like, so we can talk about your investment returns.

Matt Mulcock: It’s. So we can talk about, are you doing the things you need to be doing that you can control to build your wealth?

Ryan Isaac: Yes.

Matt Mulcock: You said, how’s the P& L look?

Matt Mulcock: Is your spending in check? are you sitting on too much cash?

Matt Mulcock: Are you actually doing the things you’re trying to implement in your practice to build your wealth? The greatest wealth building tool over the course of your life, which is the practice.

Matt Mulcock: How about this completely side from all of the balance sheet stuff is, Hey, to start the year off, we had a goal setting meeting and you told me you wanted to take three vacations this year with your family

Matt Mulcock: You’ve got, it’s September. You’ve not done one vacation. What are we doing?

Ryan Isaac: Don’t burn out. Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: I think, brushed under the rug of like your advisor, in my opinion, in our opinion, the way we set our business up should be talking about. All of your life, money, most money conversations have nothing to do with

Matt Mulcock: Money. money’s a reflection of what’s going on in your life. So Is that advisor courageous and confident enough to have that belief and say, Hey, we’re going to talk about the vacations. You told me you wanted to take, why haven’t you taken any, tell me

Ryan Isaac: You said you wanted to do these. These were important to you. Are they no longer important to you or you just haven’t done

Matt Mulcock: And then you’re going to sit there and tell me, Oh, practice got busy. This, this, and this, Hey, you sat there with your wife, got emotional with me.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Take enough time for your family.

Matt Mulcock: I’m going to bring this back to you.

Ryan Isaac: I’m going to bring this back to you cause you will

Matt Mulcock: You’re going to burn

Ryan Isaac: And then the best asset that you, that you have. You have control over this practice, you’re going to burn out in this thing and you’ll, you’ll ruin that.

Matt Mulcock: I do have to just call myself out really quick.

Matt Mulcock: Uh, Justin literally came to me last week in our, he and I meet a lot one on one and he said, Hey man, first agenda item. Can you take a break? And I was like, and he’s being dead serious. He’s like, can you like maybe take a couple of days off?

Matt Mulcock: I’m calling myself out. Like. I struggle. I struggle with this. Yes, he did. He was accountability partner for me.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Matt Mulcock: Bruce Baird, there he is. Hey

Matt Mulcock: Bruce, we’re just giving the shout outs,

Matt Mulcock: Founder of PDA right there. He’s the guy. proactive communication, we hit accountability.

Matt Mulcock: Anything else you want to say about accountability?

Ryan Isaac: Uh, no. No, that’s great.

Matt Mulcock: Here’s one. The other side of proactive communication would be the react apart, meaning availability.

Matt Mulcock: Can you get ahold of

Ryan Isaac: You get a hold of your person? Which is a shockingly low bar.

Ryan Isaac: But I hear, again, general complaint in general among service providers is just a lack of being able to get a hold of someone. And I mean, I don’t think the, unless I get a text that’s like, I’m sorry, but this is so urgent.

Ryan Isaac: Can you call me in the next few hours? Normally people are like, Hey, in two business days, if you can get back to me, that’s like a pretty good response time because I hear people say like, I haven’t heard from my person in two weeks, I hear people say, like, I sent them a message like three weeks ago and you

Matt Mulcock: Oh, it’s egregious.

Ryan Isaac: I think it is the number one reason why people leave service providers, financial voters specifically is around

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. So proactive communication, are you holding me accountable by pushing me

Matt Mulcock: Knowing I’m busy and also are you available? I think it’s big. We already had accountability. Here’s one funny enough, we’ve gone down this list. We’re just getting to investments. Um, I think a lot of times, and again, I think as you’re listening to this, be thinking, like, Are these the expectations I have for my advisor?

Matt Mulcock: So we talk about investments. I’m not going to even going to sit here and talk about returns or some fancy strategy. What we talk about with investments is does you should expect that advisor and that advisor team to have an investment philosophy. That’s repeatable, sustainable, and it can be explained simply

Matt Mulcock: But so they can explain it to you. And you can take it in about a couple of minute conversation and be like, I get it and I can understand why that’s a repeatable

Matt Mulcock: Strategy and philosophy and anyone can do

Ryan Isaac: Can do it. I love the topic of philosophy is I was going to say that earlier. I think you need to expect you should hold an advisor to the expectation that they have strong beliefs that you can’t push them through

Matt Mulcock: I had another one on here that goes along with this. Just a backbone.

Ryan Isaac: backbone. Like if your advisor has knowledge that the average dentist should save, let’s call it 20 percent of their income over a sustained period of time to have enough wealth one day to sustain their spending. You shouldn’t be able to push your advisor off of that number. Your advisor should be constantly reminding you like we need to hit these targets.

Ryan Isaac: And the same thing, like an investment philosophy, you, some flexibility is always admirable. You know, there should always be some curiosity left in you as an advisor to say like, I don’t know any everything. So I’m always open to learning more, always open to exploring. I’m always open to asking questions about things.

Ryan Isaac: But when things work. When you know things work, and they’re sustainable, and people can repeat them, anyone can do them, that you should have a strong conviction in that philosophy, strong enough to push back and to keep people on track. And if you can shove your advisor around by every, like, new idea that you heard on Reddit, you know, or in some Facebook mastermind, then you’re just gonna have an order taker that’s not gonna keep you steady on anything.

Matt Mulcock: There’s such a balance. I love that you just said that as far as I had on this list, like, and we’ll just kind of combined all these right because I think there’s a balance between conviction. Open mind,

Matt Mulcock: curious backbone. There’s a balance here, right? Because there’s there on the one end of the spectrum, there is being, pushed

Matt Mulcock: around on the one end of the spectrum is like, as the client, you can just bring whatever. And they’re an order

Matt Mulcock: taker, right? On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a dogmatic, rigid  approach. Yeah. Belligerent.

Ryan Isaac: Like I won’t budge.

Matt Mulcock: There’s somewhere in between. A perfect example of this is the crypto craze. that we just experienced from 2020 to 2022, three ish, 22.

Matt Mulcock: So there was a balance here, for us and we felt so much pressure from so many different angles and some anger from people being like,

Ryan Isaac: why

Matt Mulcock: you getting on board with

Ryan Isaac: Make it make this a core piece, like a very significant portion of your core philosophy.

Matt Mulcock: So our approach was And by the way, I am telling you right now, like sitting in meetings, the advisor team can tell you this sitting in meetings.

Matt Mulcock: I’m sitting here saying, guys, like, should we be doing more crypt? Like I was absolutely open and wondering this, right. Cause it was so much pressure, but we stuck to our convictions and said, listen, we’re going to get more knowledgeable on this and we will absolutely do our best to educate people based on what we’re seeing and reading and learning, but we’re going to stick with.

Matt Mulcock: No matter what, we’re not deviating from our core philosophy and approach that we are convicted

Matt Mulcock: in and we know works.

Matt Mulcock: So we’re going to try to build rules. If you want to, or guidelines, at least, Hey client, if you want to go do this and jump on this train, this is no different than any alternative thing you’re going to try to do outside of your core philosophy or core core approach to investments.

Ryan Isaac: high risk

Matt Mulcock: Let’s set some guidelines, right? So we How do we do it safely? So we stuck to our guns on that. I’m really glad that we did and didn’t get pushed around, but do it in a way that’s empathetic to our clients to say, we understand why you are so interested in this. Yeah. Being open minded, but also being like, no, we are actually convicted in our

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. I’m trying to just save you. Like this is going to work. You’re going to have money. You will be wealthy. Let’s just not break it while still maintaining some curiosity and exploring stuff a little bit

Matt Mulcock: Yeah.

Ryan Isaac: Yeah.

Ryan Isaac: I’m all on board

Matt Mulcock: Yeah. By the way, an advisor that can tell the truth, which is when it comes to investment success and building wealth. It is far more about your temperament than your tactics. you’ve got to be able to have, that’s why I love this word repeatable. You’ve got to have something that’s repeatable, sustainable, that basically just uses the power of time to your favor. Here’s the caveat to that. That means it’s a lot to do with your behavior and an advisor out there telling you, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t worry about your behavior. I got it

Matt Mulcock: An advisor that has the conviction and the courage to tell you client, Hey, no. Guess what? Your success in investing comes down to your ability to get your emotions in check, stick to a plan for long enough to see this actually bear out and grow for you. And that’s hard to do it’s  hard to  tell a client

Ryan Isaac: It’s the hardest thing. We always use this example because it’s so fitting, but the secret to like nutrition, fitness, health

Ryan Isaac: Is it never, it’s never the fads. It’s the stuff we’ve always known. You just have to do it for a long time. But why is it so hard? Cause it’s just hard to do something over and over and over and over and over

Matt Mulcock: And why does nobody, why is it hard for us to quote unquote sell this, right? Why is it hard to sell the truth? And why is it hard for people to listen to the truth? And here’s why

Ryan Isaac: Because the biggest problem is you.

Matt Mulcock: exactly. It always comes down to you having to change your behavior or stick to a behavior that’s boring. It’s like you finding meaning in the mundane or you finding, like delight in the boring process is the key to success and nobody wants to hear it, even

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. We all know it. We all know it. Yeah. we’re all doing the same

Matt Mulcock: Yep.

Matt Mulcock: Sorry. We got,

Matt Mulcock: we got like passionate

Matt Mulcock: , okay. I think we’ve covered a lot. there’s one more.

Matt Mulcock: Last thing I’d say, and I’ll throw it to you to see if you have anything else that you’d add here, but we kind of bringing it back to the beginning and advisor, what you should expect from your advisor, I believe is an incentive structure.

Matt Mulcock: That aligns with your motivations as the client and your goals as a

Ryan Isaac: Yeah,

Matt Mulcock: So it’s kind of going back to what we said earlier,

Matt Mulcock: That they’re open, they’re transparent with how they’re paid. and they’re not shy in telling you why it aligns with your best interests. Right. So I’ll tell Dentist advisors, we are fee only advisor.

Matt Mulcock: We are only paid from our clients for the services we provide between investments and planning and Everything we do, like we believe in the markets. We believe in building wealth in the markets. We are paid for that. And we are incentivized to tell clients, you know, you should be saving more because the end of the day, that’s going to be what builds you, your wealth outside of your business and real estate and everything else you’re doing.

Matt Mulcock: But we’re not shy about how we’re paid. You can call us

Ryan Isaac: Yeah. We’ll run

Matt Mulcock: Tomorrow. We’ll go through the whole

Matt Mulcock: thing. So someone who’s transparent and can easily articulate how their incentive structures is aligned with

Matt Mulcock: you as the

Ryan Isaac: I love this discussion. it’s always more helpful when we have like clear expectations. I think we’re going to do an episode on like what we expect

Matt Mulcock: Yes. We’re going to do a part

Ryan Isaac: a client I think would be really cool to do. But I’ll just piggyback on what you said. Uh, go to dentistadvisors.

Ryan Isaac: com and just schedule a chat with one of us and. I mean, all of us in a conversation will be like, no, you’re not a good fit for this. Go do this

Matt Mulcock: We do it all the time.

Ryan Isaac: This person instead of us. You know, go start here before you start with us. I mean, we’ll tell you, let’s just call, share a little bit about your story and your life.

Ryan Isaac: We’ll point you in the right direction. And you know, we’re happy to do it.

Matt Mulcock: Truly the advice and guidance for people who call us starts on that call. Meaning We’ll always tell you, Hey, this makes sense for you. And here’s how we’d engage with us or happens all the time where we say, you’re not ready.

Matt Mulcock: And here’s who you should go

Ryan Isaac: Give it a couple of years. go do these things first. Here’s some free advice, you know, follow along,

Matt Mulcock: Okay.

Matt Mulcock: I mean, so just recap, we talked about the problem with the term financial advisor and the space. We talked about the different ways advisors are paid and to really focus on that. Like how is your advisor? Or if you have an advisor, How are they paid? If you’re seeking an advisor, you got to understand how they’re paid and what their incentive structure is.

Matt Mulcock: We talked about the value of an advisor that most people we do believe would benefit from an advisor. And then really the core of it was just what to expect. Things like knowledge, a comprehensive approach, you know, someone who’s going to hold you accountable, communication, transparency in their approach.

Matt Mulcock: Hopefully this is helpful for people out there being like, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. You know, hopefully it level sets you saying like, all right, this is a realistic approach to how to engage an

Ryan Isaac: Yep. Love it. Thanks to PDA.

Matt Mulcock: Thank you,

Matt Mulcock: PDA. We’re going to go eat some lunch.

Matt Mulcock: As always, thank you so much for listening. Bye bye.

Keywords: financial advisor, expectations, partners, burnout, relationships

Advisors, Finance 101