Naveed, 7s:

I'll keep it short and sweet. Hey there, guys, welcome to this ultra special episode with my very famous guest that I've got on. So for the first times, I will be interviewing the interviewer. I do have the man who runs Dentists Who Invest podcast, on with me today, Dr James Martin, who will actually give us a massive insight as to one of the most important things in my life, which is kind of the financials, and I know a lot of people steer away from this conversation. It's almost a taboo topic, but we're going to lay that bare for everybody to show that actually it's more or less a requirement for a happy lifestyle and also something that can actually help in a generational sense as well. So let's really get into this. Start with a quick introduction Doc, over to you, tell us a little bit more about yourself and then let's just dive into it 100%.

James, 56s:

Well, first and foremost, thank you for that introduction today. That was very kind and listen, I can assure you that from my side, I am so grateful that you thought about me and to have me on the podcast. I'm humbled that you'd go out of your way to have me on here. So I just want to say that first of all, hopefully some of the listeners are potentially familiar with my content. If you're not, I run a platform called Dentists Who Invest podcast. My full name is Dr James Martin. I'm a dentist, like I'm sure the majority of the audience on this podcast are. However, I left dentistry about three and a half years ago. It's because of that platform that I just said and what that is. I'm sure we can get into it as the podcast progresses with regards to the philosophy of why it was created and what it does, and also a few of the things that I've learned along the way. Whenever it comes to money, we get that, get into that in just a second. But in essence, there's two things. There's only really two things that dentists need help with when it comes to the money. Number one boost their income. So it reflects it fairly reflects the value that you're given. Second side of things, understand a little bit more about what you can do with that income in terms of investing. Do you want to do it yourself? Do you want to do it through a professional? A little bit of both. Everything's on the table, and that's what dentistry invest is in a nutshell.

Naveed, 2m 7s:

Amazing stuff. I love the little summary there. First question I'm going to post to you right and this is, maybe you're looking at, almost philosophical, maybe it's a personal thing why is money so badly demonized in our society?

James, 2m 20s:

like, first and foremost, you know what, right, there is a saying that I love and, just for context, guys, everyone who's listening to this podcast, we have there's, there's, there's, no. Everything that comes out of our mouth right now is ad hoc, and something that just came into my head when you were talking just then is a saying that I love seek first to be under, seek first to understand and then be understood, and the the reason why I like that logic is knowing more about something can only ever help you decide on whether or not it's something that is useful for you or valid. And I think us, as human beings, we make decisions out of what we know or what we've heard so far. But how many of us can truly say we're informed on the things that we're speaking about? Right and listen? That's not to say I am, but what it is to say is it's a continuum right. It's not a binary thing I'm informed or not informed, it's. To what degree am I informed?

Naveed, 3m 18s:

Yeah, I'm liking that, I'm liking that.

James, 3m 21s:

And surely the further we can perpetuate ourselves along that journey is the more authority we can speak on that matter. And I feel like when it comes to the money side of things, things, the more we know about that world is the more we can decide. Actually, is that something we want to think about, and to what degree do we want to think about? It can only ever be a good thing, and that's the purpose of dentistry invest to share as much information as possible on that front. So when it comes to answering your question specifically, I feel like that would help. Yeah, I feel like one of the biggest belief shattering moments for me, which saw made me see things really differently, was when I figured out what money was. There's actually four different types of money. If we want to get really deep on this, oh, I like it. We'll keep a high level for today, because that's probably okay in and of itself. The money that we use today is effectively printed, created and made up by the bank of england or the federal reserve. So the second that you know that something is just printed and made up, how can anything that we believe or know about that area be anything but made up and subjective and constructive? I like it and this is the thing. And that's not to say that it's right or wrong. It just gets us to question what we think we know already, because this is the thing it. And that's not to say that it's right or wrong. It just gets us to question what we think we know already, because this is the thing it must have been. It must have been projected onto us at some stage. It must have been a belief we either formulated ourselves or was given to us by somebody else. And how do we know it's accurate? All I'm doing is I'm calling that into question, and that might be a little ethereal and nary fairy for a lot of people who are listening. Perhaps I don't know, and maybe once upon a time I saw it sat in that camp as well. But what I'm going to ask you to do is just go with me and just roll with us for the moment, for sure, a little further into that. Look up fiat money. Fiat, not the car, fiat money. Look that up, right, because that used to confuse me for a while back in the day. I was like what's fiat got to do with this? But anyway, nothing is the answer. Not fiat the car company, fiat money. Look that up and look up the story of the bank of england and tell me that that doesn't make you see things slightly differently, because it is crazy when you start digging into it. Got to be careful with this stuff because we definitely don't want to come across as conspiracy theorists running along those lines and I actually hate that mindset where people have where they just question everything that they hear, anything the government says, they immediately believe the opposite and think they're right.

Naveed, 5m 42s:

I might be one of those. I might be one of those.

James, 5m 43s:

I'm not going to lie to you.

Naveed, 5m 45s:

I think we've all slowly started losing trust in the government. I think things like fiat compared to backed currencies. You start getting into a very shady world. You start thinking right, the powers that be controlling everything. And maybe, maybe that is the reason why we deem money so evil. Right, because the roots of it, in the way that we see in the modern world, are actually quite evil in that sense. But really we can almost flip it on its head and use it for the right reasons, be that on a personal level, for our family, for our friends, our loved ones, for our local communities. For example, we look at philanthropists and what they're doing for society and they can turn this almost evil concept on its head and do so well with it. But obviously it's all about mindset, it's all about mentality and not seeing it as an evil concept, right? So how do we kind of break those shackles and see it as almost something that serves us rather than the other way around?

James, 6m 41s:

Sure. So, yeah, to build on what I was saying and to add in what you were saying, the very first thing to think all these beliefs and people, things that people say, the very first thing to figure out is, because of what I've just said, it just casts it into doubt are those objective, fact, or are they subjective? Yeah, well, we know that if it's something, if money is literally a construct, that's constructed right, a societal construct is made up by somebody else. That's the very second that we also know that our beliefs must be constructed as well, rather than the objective truth. That's the second right and the second. You know that it's kind of it's not black and white anymore, it's more of a gray area yeah, yeah and then we start to think to ourselves okay, cool, how? let's? Let's just introspect those, let's just think how valid are those? Are they necessarily true? Because it's very easy to parrot things that we heard once upon a time and never actually deconstruct how valid they are. And you make a really good point money, money is the root of all.

Naveed, 7m 31s:

I'm not saying it. You'll never quote me saying this because they're going to use that in the future, so I'm not saying it.

James, 7m 39s:

Good, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you, right. But I'm sure the audience out there some people might out there might have filled in the blanks on that one who the hell knows how they might have filled in the blanks. Might be something to do with what we just said, who knows, but anyway, uh, yeah, so money is the root of all evil is what a lot of people say, right, and I think it's like so easy to parrot that, right, and I think that if we think like that, it lives somewhere in our subconscious and we're averse to it. Right, yeah, and it's like constant. It determines our actions. But what we have to think to ourselves is actually just, literally, is what you were saying. If you, if you earn some more money let's say you earn I don't know, an extra ten thousand pounds a year and you give away 50 percent of charity, right, have you not actually done some net good there? Right, you've earned more, but you've also distributed more. So is that not a? Is that a net positive in the world? To me it is right. Yeah, so here's the thing. If we're saying that it's objectively only a negative thing, well, there's literal evidence right there that it actually can be a positive thing, and it's all about how you answer it. So, to me, to say that that is consistently and always true if you think about that for two seconds doesn't make sense, right? But if that lives inside our heads somewhere and we don't question it. It's determining our actions in subtle ways that we don't even realize our heads somewhere and we don't question it.

Naveed, 8m 51s:

It's determining our actions in subtle ways that we don't even realize. All to do with the mindset. This is all literally to do with how you perceive things, depending on what you've been told right. So influence is key here. I'm liking the way you're going with this, so I'll let you continue, because this is this is very interesting stuff.

James, 9m 5s:

That's good, that's that's good, man, it's awesome and it's all about. I guess what we're aiming for today in this podcast is not to say what's right or wrong. We're just circling back to what I was saying at the very start. The more info we can share about this stuff is the more we can get people questioning what they believe and know about it. What they believe they believe or you know, the things that we think we know.

Naveed, 9m 24s:

And listen.

James, 9m 25s:

That's true about every area of your life. And that's not to say you and I are experts. What it is to say is we've heard this other stuff. It made us think differently and we share that in the hope that it positively helps other people. That's all. That's all where we're coming from and that's the best way of looking at it. So yeah, I guess the next extension to think is if you think about that, if we just hone that in a little further and we're kind of going on a little bit of a journey here, the next thing to think to ourselves is okay cool. Then if we now acknowledge that actually it can be a positive thing. Why are we so damn scared to talk about?

Naveed, 9m 57s:

it. This is the thing, right. It's like it seems to just be a pigeonhole into this one evil entity and then that's it, like it's almost like don't ever believe that there's any good in this. And you've pretty much just, like you know, blown the lid off that and said, well, I mean, if it's almost like, don't ever believe that there's any good in this, and you've pretty much just, like you know, blown the lid off that and said, well, I mean, it's all dependent on your mindset and you can make it a good thing. So you know, okay, let's, let's go with that. So now, all of a sudden, we can see the positives in it and then it becomes something that we should almost put some focus into and some of our energy into right. But I think this is the area that we maybe slip up on and people just don't know whether income should be a case of a nine to five and that's it, or there's more facets to it. And this is kind of like. You know, this is what I would deem you, somebody who knows their stuff inside out with, and obviously you can impart quite a lot of knowledge when it comes to this, this topic. But you know, why do we then have you know. The next step is for most people to think is right, I just need a high paying job and work nine to five and that's it like.

James, 10m 55s:

Surely there's more to life than just that well, this is a really interesting thing about dentistry specifically, because there's things that we can talk about on this part, there's things that you can invest in when it comes to your abilities, that you can literally go in on monday, serve someone to a hashdown or do better in industry and then by default, as a side effect of that, almost make more remuneration, whereas if you think about most careers, like 95% of careers, it's a little bit like this Salary, I don't know 50K a year, 50k a year, promotion two years later 55K, 55k Three years later, promotion 60K. It's very, very. How can I say? this, it's very flat and then it takes these sudden jumps, whereas dentistry is, is not like that, it's not, it's not linear in that sense. It can vastly expand overnight. You know what I mean, and I think that there is sort of two ways we can look at that really. The first way is to think to ourselves wow, what a momentous career that we're in, that there is scope to do that. And then the second side of things is just think to ourselves right, okay, well, you know, we just gotta, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta ensure that whatever we're giving to these people, that wherever, however, we're serving the patient in terms of treatment well, it actually is fair and deserving of that value that we're generating as well. It all starts with giving more, and there's a really simple analogy here If I give someone a Lamborghini, then that's obviously worth way more than a Fiat Pinto. Let's say that. To go back, Back to the. Fiat yeah, that's back to Fiat. So if I said to somebody, hey, do you know what? I charge you 20 000 pounds for this lambo, probably people would take me up on that, because the car is like a quarter of a million and I'm I don't know like a great deal about cars, but I do know that right. Whereas if someone said to me, hey, do you want to buy this fiat punto for 20 000? Well that's a completely different conversation and maybe they're fiat pintos that are worth 20 000, but by and large that's not a good deal, right? So my point is the price is exactly the same, right, the investment is exactly the same. It's more about what the person got in return that determined whether or not that was a good deal. So if you can make your dentistry, the lambo dentistry, the audit dentistry, work really hard on it, well then you have scope to be able to generate more remuneration. And actually, if you think about it, to take that one level deeper, people pay for quality all the time man people that people buy lambos, right? So you know that those people exist and now you're just positioning yourself so you can be that dentist, or you can be that person and then be deserving of that remuneration. Let me pause there. I've got a little tiny bit more to add to that. Does that make sense so far?

Naveed, 13m 21s:

Yeah, so far, this is literally bang on. I'm loving it.

James, 13m 24s:

Boom right, and it's kind of simple when you deconstruct it, but I guess we just don't really get the opportunity to think about it in like 95, do you know what I mean? Because we're so busy just doing things, you know. So anyway, I love that mindset right, and actually you can might argue that we've actually helped that person even more because we've given them something of higher quality. So I think that's the first thing to do. And then the second thing to realize about dentistry is I feel like we are conditioned to believe that we have to wait until we're 55 or 60, until we're retired, to be happy, right.

Naveed, 13m 56s:

Do you know, what scares me about that mindset is that that would only give me about 10 to 15 years worth of work and that's why, like I think I'm, I'm fortunate that I've come in at the age that I have with dentistry to see it differently, because I'm forced to see it differently. Otherwise this doesn't make sense. But I 110% agree with what you're saying. It's such a natural mindset for, like dental students, newly qualified dentists, to just think right, I want to work for the next, you know, 35, 40 years of my life plus and retire. I just don't get it. I just absolutely do not understand the concept. But you are going to deconstruct that further. So I'm going to let you carry on with it, because this is this is the part where I'm kind of just like come on, guys, this should be obvious, right? So I'll let you continue.

James, 14m 45s:

No well, it's cool. But here's the thing, Right, it's actually one of. We all have psychological biases as human beings, right? And one big psychological bias we all suffer from to a greater or lesser degree is we futurize our success. And we said to ourselves when I hit this point, when I have this, I will be happy.

Naveed, 15m 6s:

Oh, I do that a lot.

James, 15m 8s:

We all listen. I do that. I do that, at least to all listen. I'm, I'm, I do that, I do that. I at least I'm to to to diminish it, to work on it. You got to be aware it's happening.

Naveed, 15m 18s:

Right.

James, 15m 19s:

Right, right. And it doesn't mean that I have got rid of that. I still totally. I do that every day, but at least I know that it is doing that and I need to. I'm working on it. Let's just say, yeah, we're all working on it, right? Yeah, everybody's on that tangent, it's a continuum, just like we were saying before. It's not we have it, we don't. It was a little bit suspicious. When you see these people online and they're like I'm just so happy in the moment, everything's great, and I feel like that's where social media is a bit like man, yeah, absolutely. I think when you see stuff like that, there's two real mindsets. You can either be like, yeah, fuck it, that's not impossible pardon my french, by the way but yeah, that's not impossible. Or you can say, right, okay, if they are there, I'm happy for them. How can I get closer and improve myself? And I feel like the second one is a healthier mindset, even though it's super easy to be cynical about this stuff. But anyway, we're going on a little bit of a tangent just to pull this back. It's, it's a bias and 99% of humans suffer from it. Right, right, I feel that, uh, when it comes to the finance side of things that actually plays to that, because we say, right, well, when I'm 55, it's like the promised land, isn't it? You know, yeah, oh god, you have to go to work and make some money, but I'll be retired in 50 years and then we'll, everything will be great sort of thing and it will don't get me wrong, maybe it will be right, but my point is that there's no guarantee that we're actually gonna make it there and that as well as that, who's to say that we can't be happy in here and now, an engineer like who made? Dentists made that rule up? Yeah, that's it. Yep, who made that the hell up? Now, it just so happened. Whilst the first thing to do is accept that that's possible, and then the second thing is to think to yourselves right, how can I facilitate that in the here and now? Yeah, now, chances are that if you're working seven days a week, well, you probably wouldn't do that through complete freedom of choice. Right, most people would not choose to do that. But what someone might choose to do is like three days a week or four days a week, and you have to just figure out how that looks for you. Or maybe you do zero days a week in dentistry and you do something else I don't know, but the point is that we've got to figure out what is our version of and that sounds simple it's really hard to do.

Naveed, 17m 38s:

It's so hard to do because what, what do you do you bring see? This is the thing that I always kind of like converse people about. I I'm a firm believer in keeping your standards high, and that almost then makes you feel as though do I have to bring my standards down, to allow myself to only have a three-day working week. But then surely there's a way, right and this is again kind kind of where all of your expertise comes into this Surely there's a way to make your money sweat more. Surely there's a way to be smarter with what you do with your money, to have maybe a passive income or do more with the hours that you do apply yourself in during that working week. You know, yes, it's a mindset shift, but how do we ensure that our standards aren't dropping but we are finding more time in the day to actually do the stuff that we love, rather than, like you might have mentioned, a seven-day week or an eight-day week in some cases, where people are working crazy hours just to to kind of achieve those standards? And then let's kind of almost hone in a little bit on dentistry as well. How does dentistry allow for that kind of enjoying your life with the high standards, doing maybe fewer hours compared to your average and still being a well-rounded career that you're not just burning yourself out in. How does dentistry tick that box?

James, 18m 56s:

Well, the cool thing about dentistry is you have, there's, a few things you can move around in order to make that happen, which we'll circle back to in two secs. So here's the thing to what you just said. If you think about, think about it like this, right? So let's say, for most people, they've got their ideal balance. Yeah, and balance is a word that gets thrown around the load on instagram and all this stuff. Yeah, and I want everybody to remove those airy fairy, wishy-washy connotations just for a moment and we can just keep it real with the word balance, right? How does that look? Maybe it's like let's, let's just pull something out of the air, and it won't look like this for most people, or, well, sorry, it won't look like this for some people. It might even look like this for most people, but it might look like this for some people is what we're getting at, right? So let's say that that word balance is three days a week and okay, now, it could be zero, it could be seven, I don't know for the person. Some people love dynasty so much they want to do seven, right, but my point is let's talk about three, because that's something that some people aspire to. Yeah, yeah, um, and then the other four days is how can we say, uh, you are doing, you've got your time machine, you can do whatever the heck you want. Yeah, so most people don't have three days, they're only four days and five days. So my, I would pause it. I would pause it. Not everybody will feel like this, but I would pause it, that a lot of them would. If you ask those people, hey, what is holding you back from going from if you would love to do three, but you're currently doing four, five, six, what is holding you back from where you are to where you'd like to go, like going to to your principal, and saying, hey, can I drop a day, two days, three days, something along those lines? Yeah, and there's a thing that 99% of people say back to me when I ask them that question and I'm curious if you can get, I'm curious if you can guess what it is it's a, it's a gimme. If this was on, if this was what's that show called Family fortunes? yeah, okay, this would be like the only answer and they would have like 99 people replied no way, I know I can't do.

Naveed, 20m 46s:

You know what. You're asking the wrong person, because right now I'm just like I wish I had that what he's talking about, like if you, if you, if I could have the three day a week thing, yeah I would, I would take it and I would have no excuses to make that happen. Anything that would hold me back, I don't know. Um, I guess dropping income would that.

James, 21m 2s:

There you go, yeah yeah, yeah, it's the I word, right, because everybody's like, oh well, I'll have a drop a day, I'll lose this much, right, yeah, and that's true, yeah, and but again, can you see, just to pull this back to what we were saying at the very start, if we have this inherent belief, that's bad to talk about money, but it's also the single biggest thing that's actually going to let us live that life exactly.

Naveed, 21m 28s:

It makes no sense it's a paradox.

James, 21m 31s:

It's like pulling us two completely different ways. Yeah, and I'm not saying it's wrong or right. I'm just pointing out that there is a slight, there is a tug of war of energy. Yeah, yeah, all I'm saying, yeah, and it's very important that we proceed in this podcast in that spirit. No right or wrong, just interesting lines of thought and schools of thought.

Naveed, 21m 54s:

Perfect with me so far with you so far, but now I'm intrigued as to how do we make that three day a week working week work, because I want that right. That's, that's, that's what I'm aspiring to have. So please enlighten us, or at least enlighten me, because you know I'm all in for this.

James, 22m 13s:

You know what I love, right, we didn't actually plan this podcast in any way and we kind of went on this. It's almost like we're telling a story sort of thing. We can see it like building as time, right, and you know what it's interesting here, what I would say right, so we know it's the I word, right. So if you actually, if you go one layer deeper and you deconstruct where income comes from, it can only come it is, it can categorically, comprehensively only come from one of two places it's either going to be your dentistry or it's going to be your assets, like your investments. It can only be one of the two. So then the question then becomes how can I engineer both of those things so that it gives me the eye number that I want, so that I can do the number of days a week that I want to do and live the life that I want in the here and now, not put it off until 60, but also have some additional profit and cash left over so that I can invest that in assets, and then, when it means that I can't do my two, three days a week anymore, when I am 55, 60, whatever, that I have a significant enough portfolio that will generate me enough income to sustain me entirely.

Naveed, 23m 28s:

Bingo, I want to make you spill some secret sauce in a minute and give some, if it's okay with you, model ideas as to what might work in your experience, what you've seen that does and doesn't work, and what you would recommend and suggest. Right, but just before we get there, just for any of the maybe younger listeners or listeners that haven't really gotten into investing per se, because a lot of people might have just been living at home uh, you know, straight into uni, finish that don't really have that kind of income. This might be their first job, for example, and they may have no idea as to the difference between assets, liabilities, the difference between assets and maybe accessories. Uh, you know what is a good buy, what's. You know all of the, the bad things, the red flags to look out. So is there like a almost a summary version that you can probably provide anybody? So they're up to date with the jargon.

James, 24m 19s:

Before we get into the next bit, but this is probably brilliant, right, because this is actually the hard part as well. Yeah, like this is literally the hard part. You know all the stuff that we talked about so far. So far. It's how can we say this? Whenever you break it down in the right way, it's pretty objective. Do you know what I mean? There's to me, yeah, it's like it's either this or this, but then the devil, that's like high level, and then you get into the specifics. I'm trying to think of a good analogy. It's like, hey, we're going to do a root canal, yeah, but there's a billion ways to do a root canal, right, and there's the ways that are more conducive to success and the ways that are not so conducive to success. Yeah, I basically made that analogy up on the fly I love it and it was dental related, so that's even better. I think it kind of works. Maybe we'll just not think about that too long because we'll probably find some ways that the analogy will break down. But anyway, you get what I'm saying. All right, cool. So anyway, uh, where were we? Um, so we know it's got to come from one or two places. It can literally either be your dentistry or it can be your assets. So you just got to figure out what combination will give you the balance in here and now. And remember, you're still actually doing some time in the clinic at this stage, so it's very possible that some of that can come from your dentistry and then you can start contributing more of it over to the investing side of things. Um, so how does that look? I suppose really is the next natural question. So, to answer your question, I have a partner in Denison Invest and we do a lot of stuff together and his name is Luke Curley so shout out that guy and he knows loads about finance and I always remember when we get to know each other a few years ago, he showed me this thing and he was like James, if you think about assets, like if you think about your assets, only actually four, fundamentally four types of assets, which I thought would be really cool, because my brain just works like that. It's like okay is it? This is this is it?

Naveed, 26m 3s:

feel free to use the board behind you.

James, 26m 5s:

By the way, I don't know if it's mirrored I was thinking that, right, what, how much time we got today, do you know? Because here's the thing, here's the only thing about this explainer it takes like 20, 30 minutes and that's the only thing. And I was thinking and there was like a little bit of a turmoil in my head there do we do this, do we not do this? Here's what I would say, here's what I would say right, I actually released a podcast on this really recently and it's episode 300.

Naveed, 26m 29s:

Okay, I'll link it. I'll link it to the to this video so everybody wants to check it out.

James, 26m 33s:

They can totally worth it. And that podcast, uh, in and of itself, I think that's 40 minutes off the top of my head, okay, so, to do it justice, and, by the way, that's the solo podcast, so it's me like, like that, are you with me? So? So what I mean is that's not even any back and forth between me and somebody else, that's right, chunky, explaining, explaining it's like a pure it's. Yeah, it's 100 that and it takes out a lot of time. Um, so that's what I would say, but what I would say high level, what I would say is this I would say first of all, figure out the combination. Is it from the dentistry or from your assets? It's going to be both. Now, we just got to figure out what proportion is, which I feel like sometimes people put too much onus on the assets and investing side of things, as in they think that it's going to make them money overnight Right, and it can make you wealthy with time Right. But put it like this you know, like a pension or an ISA, the whole point is you're supposed to let them compound for as long as possible. Yeah, so you're supposed to not touch your money. You're not supposed to sell it off and take money out, which precludes the fact that you're going to be able to take income from it for like 10, 20 years, 30 years. So if you want that and you want to have more balance in here and now, definitely think about that strategy, but maybe just get a really good idea of how accommodating that's going to be to you doing less time in clinic, and it's actually. Actually. If you ask me there's better ways, personally, yeah, um, like, for example, potential. I'm not saying this is the way, but potentially, if you think about property, you know the thing about property in the uk is it's taxed into oblivion, but at least you're going to get some cash flow from it. Right, because you get. Yeah, but don get me wrong, I don't want everybody to go and rush off and buy a buy-to-let after this. You have to know what you're doing. The people who I've seen who are most successful in property are so dedicated to it Like it's all they do, yeah, whereas people who maybe kind of pick up a battle that here and there, yeah, it'll make some money, but they could probably be doing a lot better. If, then you like, the more you know about something, the better you are investing things, no, right. So whilst I'm saying it's important to do the investment side of things, maybe just think about how you can get your dentistry to a stage where it gives you the income that you want as well, and usually that is the biggest, the most belief shifting side of things, because people are not necessarily aware of how well they could be doing whenever it comes to the remuneration on that side of things and actually, in my opinion, they could, generally speaking, be doing a little bit better. But anyway, listen here, here's the thing. I am definitely not the be all and end all whenever it comes to this stuff. I am simply sharing what I've seen, what I've observed that seem that definitely worked for me, I've definitely seen it work for others, and even if it's not 100% the solution for somebody, even if we have like 60, 70, 80% of a solution for somebody or something that's going to help, we've, we've, we've done a good job on today's podcast. We've done a good job on today's podcast and even just, I always find, if you have a little framework through which to make decisions, which is basically what we've just talked about today, that helps so much.

Naveed, 29m 45s:

I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm liking that. I think that's kind of what we do need to take away from this, at least during the discussion. That's definitely helpful. It kind of puts things into perspective, and we definitely need that perspective rather than just dive in. And I think one major point that you mentioned as well I think it's always bounded around, isn't it, that just buy a property, you'd be fine. But not every property works like it does. It's not. It's not as simple as that, and and and quite rightly so actually putting all your money into a property that might turn over a little bit extra, you could actually be investing that in yourself, maybe doing more with your dentistry, maybe investing in a different facet entirely. So actually understanding what you're putting your money into is very important. So speaking to people like yourself is quite helpful, I think, winding it back a little bit. There's kind of, like you know, almost an amount that dentists should invest in themselves as well. Right, because you want to upskill to a certain level. But then we can get quite easily lost in, maybe, the dimension of how we are upskilling. Sometimes we, you know, draw ourselves too thin and we're doing too much of everything, or we're kind of or should I say too little of everything. Or sometimes we're doing too much of one thing and then just like narrowing ourselves down completely. What's kind of a sweet spot that you would say is a good way for dentists to kind of maybe again, this is completely your opinion, right? So I'm not, I'm not saying that, you know, this is the be all and end all, but it's nice to get advice from somebody who's been there and done that. What would you say? If you're advising me, let's say so I'm coming out, I should be graduated when I'm 40 and probably starting work when I'm 41, with a couple of months in between, right? So for somebody who's catching up on on lost time, he wants to earn as quick as possible, make a name for himself and then potentially go into practice ownership, because that's kind of how I see it, right? What would you say would be the quickest way to streamline that? So we use me as an example, because I know it's quite hard to sort of just say this is a pill for everybody, right? So let's, let's use my case study and and you advise me. Uh, for, for the listeners, cool, okay.

James, 31m 46s:

So two things which will pre-frame what I'm about to say. So, first of all, the first thing to accept is that they're just as what you were saying. There's no one size fits all easy solution like there just isn't. There's too many variables in there. Yeah and uh, sometimes I feel where the whole financial advice world falls down a little bit is it's too prescriptive. It's like, if yes, then do this. And I'm like, bro, there's so many options, right, you just kind of make it really binary. You know, and don't get me wrong, there's a time and a place for it. But, like I say, if you know all these things, you can make the best decision for numero uno, number one, right? So that's the first thing to say. And then the second thing to say is this, and this is this is a very extreme opinion, and I don't. This opinion doesn't necessarily represent me, but it's interesting to know that this is a school of thought or a logical process that has yielded success for people who are, who espouse it or perpetuate it, right? So, anyway, you know, have you heard of alex hermosi? Of what? Sorry, alex hermosi? No, I haven't. No, sorry. So no, no, it's fine.

Naveed, 32m 47s:

So he's a bit like, um you know, gary v heard of him, I'm so out of touch with anything which is worthy to know, because I'm just a dental student with my head down trying to get through uni in slovakia. So don't ask me names, don't ask me people, don't ask me concepts. I'm here to learn from people like yourself. That's why I've got you on today. So for me you are.

James, 33m 8s:

You are my big fish oh, wow, well, I'm, I'm flattered. You make me blush over here. Uh, you know what, right, but chris williamson, you've heard of him. No, yeah, there we go. Actually, I've got a better one diary of a ceo, right, steve bartlett, right, everybody knows him, everybody knows him. Yeah, brilliant, okay. So those would be like I would say, alex hermosi and gary v. You're kind of like american versions of those guys is the best way I would describe them, and actually you should check out alex hermosi. He has this one, I can't remember he's got. No, he released like three podcasts a week, but there was one podcast that he released and he was like um, talking about the s and me, the s and p 500, yep, but he was also talking about the s and me 500 all right I really like that little distinction that he made, because it was clever, I thought, anyway. So he was in his philosophy and I'm not saying I agree with this, but this is what he said in the podcast and I do think there's some logic to this. He was like, yeah, you've got the s&p, which is going to give you like 10 returns every year, and definitely we should have some capital than that. Because, remember, that is not financial advice. Everybody is listening right, definitely not financial advice. Definitely definitely not right. But, um, if you look at the annualized returns, it's what? Like 9.6 percent, since it's pretty good. It's pretty good, yeah. And he's like okay, cool, you can basically get that no-brainer. Remember, guys, not financial advice for the right person in the right time frame and he actually didn't say.

Naveed, 34m 33s:

He said it.

James, 34m 34s:

Yeah, I'm quoting him, guys, I'm just quoting him. But you know what? He should have put some disclaimers in that podcast, I thought. But anyway, um, where were we? Where were we? So you can get s and me, s and me, the. S and me is the alternative. And if we've got 10 versus something that can boost our cash flow by 20 in a year, that's literally twice as much. Imagine stacking that year on year. Yeah, that's another way of looking at it. But here's the thing the problem with with the SME 500 is it comes so much down to the individual and their execution. Do you know what I mean? Like there's a lot more variables in there. Yeah, like you can hear something really cool. Actually, is someone actually going to apply it? That's two different things, so I've made it sound really simple, but anyway, it's just a cool way of thinking about it. So, anyway, 100%.

Naveed, 35m 22s:

So far 100%. I'm just hoping the listeners are on board, but more than likely they're smarter than I am, so they're doing well smart enough smarter than us both.

James, 35m 30s:

Hopefully they're following. Uh, but yeah, s&p, s&me. I really I thought that was really cool. Um, so my personal philosophy is maybe not 100% S&ME, but definitely prioritizing the S&ME. And what is what does that look like? It looks like becoming a high value dentist. It looks like being and being two separate skills. Becoming a high-value dentist, being able to be remunerated really well for that. Achieve the balance that you want in the here and now. Enjoy your life today and then also make provisions for the future as well. However that look and that's when it comes into that little quadrant that I was talking about before the four different types of assets. Understand those, pick the one with the best characteristics related to your goals and then harness that effectively. It's it's. It's not an overnight thing. There's a fair few things to understand within that, but that is a really beautiful that. See that little distillation that I shared just now. That was like two, three years before I could even articulate it that clearly and it made that much sense in my head. So this is the but this is the point of listening to podcasts, right, it's like we can share that. Hopefully that will have accelerated someone's journey back two, three years.

Naveed, 36m 39s:

But one thing that you said there, which which you know I agree with massively right, like you know, obscure yourself to a point where you almost are demanding a higher income for the work that you're putting in. But I think one thing that people fall down on is almost communicating and negotiating that bit. They might have the skill set, but they'll struggle to actually push that across and say, look, this is what I actually want for what I'm doing and I deserve it and they're justified in doing so. But that communication aspect and negotiating that just isn't present, right. So how do we and again this comes back right to point number one we perceive money as evil. So discussing anything to do with money is almost like a taboo and it's like oh, I don't want to say it because I want to come across as like a money hungry, so-and-so. How do we overcome that in today's market? I think it was easier back in the day because it was kind of like well, yeah, you did a good job and I'll pay you for it. Nowadays it's like, oh, you're being greedy and we're attacking it from different angles. So how do people who have upskilled put the time in, put five, six years into dentistry as an undergrad and done all of the work to get where they are. Then translate that into hey guys, come on, I've done this, this job, for you and you know I, I want to get paid accordingly for it. How do they manage that aspect of it, which is almost a soft skill, right?

James, 37m 58s:

well, listen, you've hit the nail on the head it is. There's building the skill of our clinical dentistry, and then there is building our ability to articulate that to somebody, and that I did not back in the day, I did not pay homage to that in terms of how valuable it is. I just thought, hey, I can explain this pretty well. But I think the first thing is to recognize that that's a skill to develop, which is what you were saying, which I did not appreciate at one stage. How does one start that journey or get better at it? First thing to acknowledge is, again, we could probably shoot about 10 podcasts on that, and actually I have episodes which talk just purely about one little facet of this. I think the very do you know what I actually think the best? First of all, the thing is to understand that there's a lot to it. Yeah, the very first thing to get in place is the belief side of things right, right right so this is, this is controlling your imposter syndrome right

Naveed, 38m 58s:

yeah well, it's just, it's just to fix yourself.

James, 39m 0s:

I mean it's if you can get your beliefs aligned with what you're doing, that then at least you believe what you're saying and your subconscious is aligned with your conscious. You know what I mean, whereas if you think it's bad to talk about it, you can talk about all the technical know-how of how that's done specifically, but you'll never fully embrace it until you understand number one how it will help you but also help other people as well. So I think it comes back to this is why more money help. It's this is why knowing more about money helps. Yes, right, because there's a lot of things that, in my opinion, that we all do and say about money on a daily basis which are just. If, if we were more informed about it, I really feel like we would question those things. That's, that's all.

Naveed, 39m 41s:

That's all I'm saying, that's what I'm getting at yeah, I think this kind of again goes right back to the point number one that you made right at the beginning, which is you know, learn, learn the thing, whatever the thing is, understand that concept first, and then you'll actually be able to make a more informed decision. So I do like that. I think that you know there's, you know even even myself like sometimes I'll go into clinics now and we're quite new to patient interactions right in In fourth year in Slovakia we're not kind of, we know the theory, but now we're actually applying it and sometimes I'll be sitting there and you know our professors are saying you know who wants to do X, y and Z? And all of us are just cacking it because we're like, we've studied it? We don't. And it's that understanding. The more that you understand the concept and drill it and do it, the more natural it becomes. So it's very much a case of whatever you want to apply this to, whether it's the concept of money, the concept of dentistry, the concept of investing. Definitely do need to understand that and that's a point that you made right at the beginning. I love that, I can really resonate with that and I'm genuinely hoping that that's what we've all picked up from it because really and truly that's the thing that's going to take us from where we are to that next level and beyond right well.

James, 40m 50s:

Well, here's the thing. You know what you were just saying. I I've devoted some time to thinking about this over the years and now you can actually see, bird's eye, the logic, the depth of the logic that I was getting at in that very first part of the podcast. This is like the layers to it, and I've been on this dude, I've thought these thoughts to myself and I've went like, oh okay, it's kind of like this. Oh wait, now I have to think about this, oh wait, and this is another layer. And then you have to make this decision and then I'm like, ah, it actually all links back to this, which is and that's hilarious right, because we did not even script this at all. It's been completely ad hoc and it's actually circled back to the point that we made at the very start. It's closed the loop, hasn't?

Naveed, 41m 30s:

it. I love it, I love it. I don't. I don't want to like uh mar, this uh podcast with any more blab, so I'm just going to wrap it up there because I think that was so perfect. Like, genuinely, I think we've, we've, we've covered everything that I had wanted covered, and I think if we just take away from that to just understand concepts a bit better, apply yourself, believe in yourself a bit more as well, I think this is one of the major issues that students especially have maybe qualified dentists, maybe dentists, across their whole careers have. They don't really believe in themselves enough to demand the justified response, be that in an income sense, a day's work sense, whatever that might be. We need to really start coming to terms with basically what we're worth and applying that in the real world and not be afraid that money is. You know, as you've said at the beginning, it's a social construct, right, don't be afraid of it, take control of it, understand it, see how it benefits you and those around you and make good out of that. And I think that's that's. These are amazing points. I'm going to go back myself and listen to this from start to finish again and again a few times, because I think I picked up so much. I'm genuinely hoping that anybody listening has too, and before we kind of like end it, I just want to hand it back over to you. Let you have your mic drop moment.

James, 42m 43s:

Anything else you'd like to tell us or leave us with before we we close this one off oh, wow, this is like when eminem steps up on the stage and and he has to deliver, yeah, to deliver, hopefully, hopefully I can, let's go, let's, hopefully I can come through. Uh, what I what I would say is this do you know what? We talked about episode 300 earlier, um, and we talked about beliefs and we talked about how the more you know what we talked about episode 300 earlier, um, and we talked about beliefs and we talked about how the more you know helps you. Just really re-evaluate your beliefs around money. And there's actually another episode called some things you should know about money on the dennison's best podcast and that is about the history of the bank of england by way of mic drop, uh, let, well, let's see, let's see what we got here. I'm going to do my best. I would say, guys, whatever it is, money is not the be all and end all. I really don't. I want to just emphasize that on today's podcast. But what I'd also like to emphasize by the same token that if it's going to help us for whatever reason in some shape or fashion in our life, that we should absolutely be able to talk about it. And the more you know about it is, the more educated choices you can make, and I really hope that everybody has listened to this today in that spirit and genuinely from the bottom of my heart. It enhances their life in some way.

Naveed, 43m 56s:

Amazing stuff. Look, I could not have said it better myself. That is amazing stuff, doc. Absolute pleasure for you coming on. And'm I'm calling it now. This is the first of many because, like we didn't even scratch the surface today, so this, this has to happen again and I'm sure everybody will want you back on. So, everybody listening, thank you so much for joining us. Uh, mind blown, enjoy it, play it back, take notes and and we'll do another one very soon. So thank you all for tuning in. We'll see you on the next one.

James, 44m 26s:

I'm down for that. Thank you so much. Peace and love, lots of love. Take it easy Bye.