EP 326: The Money Mistake That Keeps Dentists Financially Fragile

(upbeat music) - Jump, jump, stop with Jeff. - All right, I am here today with one of my good friends, Michael G. Isom, who has been in my life, Galilee, since probably at least 2017, 2018, and we're gonna have a really good candid conversation today. One of the things that I wanna talk about with Michael and I'll share a little bit more about him is we're gonna talk about tennis that are really high income earners and how, but still even being high income earners, so most of them are pretty financially fragile. They can produce like monsters, but one bad injury or something goes wrong and the whole thing starts to wobble. I had just a really good friend that just literally severed a tendon in his, and nerve in his finger this last week. He's gonna be out like three months, and so we're having a conversation around how can he look at stepping away from the chair? So these are realistic things that we deal with. And today's guest, Michael, he's gonna have an opportunity to look at what are some of the biggest mistakes that high earners make, and I think one of those things could be sometimes like trusting banks. There's a lot of factors involved here, but we're gonna talk about systems. He teaches a concept called Being Your Own Bank, and he definitely did not learn it from a textbook. He learned a lot of it from almost losing everything. So we're gonna get an opportunity to dive into Michael's story today. Michael is the founder of Vault AIS. He's also co-authored a great book, which I would highly recommend called, "What Would The Rock Fellers Do?" So Michael, welcome to Dentistry on Fire. - Jeff, thank you so much. Excited to be here. - Man, I can't wait to dive in, and before we get really tactical, I wanna set some expectations. This episode's definitely not about hype, and it's not about control. In one sentence, it's the biggest, I would say the money lie, high income, what is, excuse me, what is the biggest money lie that high income earners still potentially believe in? No, so as we start to look at that, I wanna go into there, but before we do that, I wanna really dive into, you listen, your story for sure did not start with success. It started with loss, and you've talked openly about losing millions, your marriage unravelling, substance abuse, and a moment where you weren't sure that you really wanted to be here on the planet anymore. And do us a favor, just take us there, let's start there. Let's start with really your origin story. So our listeners can get an idea about you, who you are, and really what you had to overcome, and where you came from. Okay, Jeff, thank you. Man, you started talking about that. I took myself back to, well, I'll call my deepest, darkest pit, and I felt it just like starting to well up in my throat right here, as you were saying that. So you can't see it completely, but on the other side of this Christmas tree is a little motorcycle. Let me turn the camera here for our motorcycle enthusiasts. - There you go. - That's a little bit like dirt bike. I have that in my office because I grew up in the dirt bike industry. Seventh grade, my first job, Jeff, I was sweeping floors, washing bikes, empty in trash, in seventh grade for $2.25 an hour. But back then, that's how I know it. - That was a lot of money back then. - I'm 54 years old, so that puts it in context. That's how I paid for clothes for school, and dating girls, of course, and parts for dirt bikes. When I got into college, I started to sell cell phones. And this is when my entrepreneurial career really took up. But I didn't know it was going to be that. I thought, "Hey, great part time job while I'm going to college." And my first 30 days in 1993, I made $20,000 selling cell phones. - Wow. Remember the big motor roll of brick phones? - Yes, absolutely. - Yeah, yeah. So I'm selling those, I'm going to college. I meet my beautiful wife Wendy. We have our two kids, Kennedy and Kaden. And man, I'm making this cash every single month from 93 through 99. And the inflation ratio of that's around 80 grand a month now. I was 22 years old when I started making that kind of money. And that's 10 times when I was making it at the motorcycle shop. - Sure. - So that got me involved in investing and money. And I didn't know anything about money. So I got into the financial services industry. And that's when I met Ray, Lesson Garrett. - Okay. - And one day, Lesson came to me, years into the business and he said, "Hey, I've got this investment opportunity "with investor guy, I think you may want to take a look at it." I trust Less, of course. And he's like a brother to me. And I meet with investor guy. I do my due diligence. It looks pretty good. Investor guy promises to pay me five percent a month on my cash. He was doing a hard money lending in real estate. - Join the limitless 90 day intensive to get 25 plus years of proven real life results. All distilled into an unmatched experience that helps you create limitless power in 12 weeks or less. So you can ultimately take your practice, marriage, and life beyond the next level quickly. Save yourself decades of desk work and painful mistakes. Apply now at www.LimitlessDennisDecademy.com. So I give him $50,000, $50,000, $5,000, that's $2,500 a month checks that were coming into my life on this 50 grand. So I'm thinking, I'm gonna give him another 250 grand. Now I've got 300 grand with him that checks kept coming. So then I give him another 500 grand on top of that. Now I've got 800 grand with investor guy, hard money real estate lending, 5% a month on my cash. Then I'm thinking to myself, I wonder if my client Joe, Bill, Kathy, maybe they'd want to get involved in this. - Sure. - Next thing I know, we have $10 million with investor guy and the checks kept coming every month until August of 2007, no checks. September, no checks. And I'm freaking the fuck out. - Yes. - I'm calling investor guy. He's not taking my calls anymore. I empty my own bank accounts over the next four months just to make minimum interest payments to my clients. - Oh man. - But during that time, Jeff, I get a phone call. Answer it. Hello. This is special agent Mark Jones from the FBI. Yeah, that's the throat feeling that I got a few minutes ago when you start talking about it. That was part of it. I meet with the FBI. Next thing you know, I'm signing a deal with the feds. They're taping a wire to my chest. I'm sweating profusely in this interview, but it's too late. It's too late because the cash is completely gone. Over $10 million of my clients cash completely gone. Over $4.8 million, Jeff, of my family's life savings. - Oh my God. - I didn't come from my name. My father was a truck driver. I worked in the motorcycle shop selling cell phones, got into the financial services industry. Well, needless to say, that started my biggest, deepest, darkest pit because I couldn't keep the company together. I was on anti-depressants. I was drinking excessively. I was taking narcotic lords, have pain pills, buy them off of the street doing everything I could to numb myself out from the reality of what had happened in my life. Keep the company together, shut the company down. This was 2008, 2009. And the fall of 2010, almost three years, three years into this, money being gone. There's a knock at our front door. And it's like, I don't know, it was six o'clock in the morning. I opened it up and it's my wife's family sitting there. Father, mother, uncle, brother, another brother, sister-in-law. And I saw two big U-Haul trucks back up into the driveway of our home. And they said, we're here for Wendy and the kids. They're moving out. Oh my. You know, I'm drinking excessively. I'm a complete asshole to everyone around me, more so to my family. And I knew I wasn't healthy. I knew that in my core, even though I didn't want to accept that reality. But 12 hours later, I'm alone in this home that we had on the bathroom floor. And I'm pleading to God. Why God? Why? And I, I load a bullet in the chamber of a Ruger P89 pistol. And I press it up, bullet in the chamber, press it up against the roof of my mouth. I'm ready to end my life over money. And Jeff, thank God to this day I can still feel this. I feel the rush come over my body that I've never felt before. I carefully set the gun down. And I promised a God and I promised to myself that I would extract the lessons that led to that point on the bathroom floor. Apply those lessons in my life and teach them to as many people as I possibly can. Hence the books being on this podcast with you. I met you in Wake Up Warrior, one of the training programs that's assisted me. to exchange. those lessons are mentor, common mentor, Garrett White. And now today, I'm happy to report, not only by earned back all that cash that I lost, Jeff, that I'm going to be sharing in this podcast that I've shared with you and Kami, and many other clients across the nation, but 45 days later after my wife leaving me, I completely sobered up and I moved back in with my wife and kids just before Christmas, like right now in 2010. And I went to work, I went to work to extract those lessons. Thank God I learned the framework of extracting lessons of life, of life situations in my life, and you and I both utilize that in our individual lives. We teach that to other people. I teach with people in money, you teach it with dentistry and in life in general, and being a dentist and the overwhelm and everything that can come from that. But there's three main lessons that I learned from and that we'll touch on through this podcast, which is number one asset, number one investment, number one strategy. - Yes, I'm super, super excited to dive into that. And Michael, listen, thank you for going back to that place and taking yourself back to there. And I know that there is somebody out there right now who's feeling that same type of pain, who's feeling that same type of hopelessness and is contemplating, do I want to stay here? Do I want to stay here on this planet? Or is this planet better off without me? And what I want you to know is is that you're here for a reason, there's no accidents. God put you here on this planet for a reason. And your birth is your worth, for sure. And just as Michael luckily did putting down the gun, after he felt the rush come through him, in 45 days he turned his life around because he decided to put in the work and he decided to follow what he was being told to do. And that's what's so amazing about this. And Michael, I appreciate you sharing that with us in such a beautiful way, because it's not easy. And the reality is is that we all have darkness and we all have dark times and we all have our own pit to work through. And I just want you to know, if you're listening to this right now, you are not alone. And that's one of the biggest things that, if I can just expose anything is the fact that, as we go through tough things, a lot of us tend to draw back or to isolate. And that's the time where we actually have the best opportunity to lean into people, whether it be friends, family, anybody that you can actually lean into in your world, I would highly encourage you to do so. Please do that. - No problem. - So, Michael, thank you for going there. You know, one of the things that I think we definitely need to discuss is this pressure, money can create a huge amount of pressure on people, right? And what did that pressure expose about your identity as a provider even? - Yeah, yeah, let's go there. That's, I mentioned number one asset, number one investment, number one strategy, I call it the AIS triangle, the number one lesson, the first lesson of the top three for me was number one asset. And you mentioned the book, "What Would The Rock Fellers Do?" We're gonna talk about that, we're gonna talk about the banking and why and how we can utilize that. But I also wrote a book called, "What Were Worth?" - Yes. - That'll make both books available to your audience for free. That book, "What Were Worth" is all around number one asset. We all, if we're in business, if we're business owner, we're a dentist, we're running a practice, we're may have multiple locations. We're very familiar with a financial balance sheet. Financial balance sheets have assets and liabilities on their assets minus liabilities equal the equity in our financial balance sheet. We have a $3 million practice, but we have a million dollar loan against the practice, we have $2 million in equity in our practice, and we can do it personal and business. That's a financial balance sheet. I had my personal identity wrapped up in my financial balance sheet. So when I lost-- - Most people do. - Most people do. - You do, don't we? - Yeah, for sure. I did, I didn't come from money, my value from seventh grade all up through school, being able to pay for clothes, date girls, by things that I wanted in my life, came from my ability to produce in exchange, and those dollars, my identity was wrapped up in that. And then I started selling cell phones in my God and making 20 grand a month as a 22 year old in 1993. - That's huge. - My friends are starving, going to college, eating Tom Brahm and noodles, and I'm buying rental real estate and doing all this investment stuff, right? So when my financial balance sheet went to a negative, 4.8 million, and I had rental properties in real estate, we all know what happened in 2008. The crash, I was upside down, all this stuff happened, it was this perfect storm in my life. Because my self worth was tied up in my financial balance sheet, and it went to zero, it actually went to a negative, I felt worthless. - Yeah. - And how many times, Jeff, have you felt this, or have you experienced other dentists that you coach, that have felt this when things are going well in the practice, they feel great if there are retails and counts, going great, you know what I mean, life's amazing, then something happens, or they sever attended in their hand, and they're three months off, and they feel what? - They feel, here they feel this lack of control, first of all, second, you made a super great point that I wanna come back to is that when your identity is tied into something that can be taken from you, it is a very dangerous place to live and to be. I mean, I see it not only from, with what you just shared, but also we see it in dentistry all the time, with like, listen, they've something did happen in my hands, and I wasn't able to produce, and my whole identity is wrapped up in being a dentist, and if suddenly that's taken away, I'm gonna spiral down real quick. - Especially with an advanced degree of DDS after your name, we're not just talking an associate's degree. - Right. - We're not even talking a bachelor's degree. We're talking about this advanced degree, and all these years of education to get to that point. - And Michael, we see this too, even in older docs who are getting ready to retire from doing dentistry anymore, they've taken all these years to build up this practice, and it's almost like they're baby, right? They mean they've given birth to this, they've built it from nothing, from scratch, and then to leave dentistry and to pass that along, and there is such a great loss in their identity with that aspect too, I see that a lot. As I get older, I get to hear that more and more from colleagues, and it's something that I want to be able to recognize. The same is true, like if your biggest identity is wrapped up in being a husband or a father, God forbid something happened to your family, but if that gets taken away from you, again, you lose that identity, and it's such a big part of it and it's such a good point. - Yeah, yeah. So because of that experience for me, and me seeking the solution, the lesson from that, I then identified another balance sheet that every one of us has. I have it, Jeff, you have it, everybody listening to this. Everybody in the world has this adjoining balance sheet. So we have the property value balance sheet that has assets and liabilities, but we have this other balance sheet that has assets and liabilities on it also. And that's what I speak about in this book, What We're Worth, is about this other balance sheet and it's called our human life value balance sheet, HLV, human life value. - I love it. - Some of those assets on our human life value balance sheet are our knowledge, our experiences, DDS next to our name, advanced degrees, our education, it's who we are, it's a person, our morals, our values, relationships with other individuals, family members, our family, our spouse, our kids, our grandkids. Those are assets on our human life value balance sheet. Now, there could be some liabilities. There could be some limiting mindsets, limiting beliefs and things of that nature on our human life value balance sheet. But the correlation that I want to make here, Jeff, and then we can go into more depth on it, however you'd like. Human life value, if you think about it, Jeff, everything in your life as far as who you are as a person, your human life value, your mental capital, everything that makes up Dr. Jeff Busky, that is the source and creator of all of your property value. - 100%. - So it's a simple formula. If we want to create more property value, if we want to be of more value in our practice, not only running our practice and managing it and building and growing as an entrepreneur and dentistry, but also communicating with patients, it starts with us the individual. So number one asset and the clarity around that is, I now look at both balance sheets, but I look at my human life value, life value balance sheet first knowing that it's the source and creator of property value. And it's those intrinsic self worth items in life that can never be taken away from me. Unless I choose to let someone take that away from me. But it's who I am as a person. And that's where my true value comes from. Absolutely. I couldn't well said, very well said, and it's so significant because it's so easy to get wrapped up in, hey, what is the practice producing and what are we collecting and and everything in that essence, which you do need the money and you do need to focus on the numbers and you do need to watch everything and have a good idea of exactly where you're at. I'm not saying numbers aren't important. Numbers don't lie and they help us get a gauge on where we're at. However, the other half of the equation is looking at our identity, which ties into our mindset, which then feeds into that whole aspect that Michael was just talking about. And if we don't have a great self worth or self value, or let's even break it down further, if we're experiencing a problem or a disengagement inside of our marriage, it is 100% going to affect how we show up in our practice. Like, I know that if I get up and and I have a fight with my wife, Cammy, and that morning, I'm going to go to work that day and I'm going to kind of suck. I'll still be able to do my dentistry and everything, but I'm not going to be able to give those individual patients that I'm seeing that day, or my team 100% of what I could, I know that I could do. And that's just the truth. And we tend to think because we're intelligent individuals that we can just leave it at the door and that's bullshit. There's just, you don't get to leave it at the door. It's still occupying space, the six inches between your ears. But when you have an amazing identity as a leader and you develop a very, very strong mindset and you take that human life value and you build that capital. Now you start to create this capacity where you do become immovable or unshakable to where now you can handle more and you can show up very powerfully as a leader. 100%. And Jeff, when we slow the noise, when someone works with you, they're able to slow things down and come to that reality. Every single person wants that in their life. They just don't know how to get it because of all the noise and everything that's going going on in their mind. I've expressed this with you. I've had conversations with you where you've helped me slow things down. And when I slow things down, I get to the clarity of what I truly want in my life, which I am identifying my version of that is that I'm identifying my human life value assets and my liabilities. And I know that's where the opportunity is and then leveraging that in my business life. Absolutely. And it is so imperative and I love that. I love looking at that human life value, how then you've got the two balance sheets and they play hand in hand. It's just it's not one or the other. It's both and and that's so important for us to see. So thank you Michael for sharing that first aspect. Yeah, you're welcome. Jeff, before we move on from that, though, I want to ask you this because when you're talking, I thought about it, have you and how many of the dentists that you coach and work with ever gotten bored in their dental practice? We have we ever gotten bored in our dental practices that we asked. Yes. Yeah, it happens all the time because dentists at least in my experience have forever since the beginning of time always been chasing like the shiny object or the shiny shit that's coming out next. Like what's the new laser? What's the new CAD cam? What's the new milling? You know, what's the new printer? And it's so easy to get distracted. Technology is important. I mean, our office has been built on it. You know, we are known to be high tech and high touch. And that's one of the things that we're very proud of. But in the essence, it's easy to get caught up in that because if you're bored, then you just want to, you know, think about why you buy things. We buy things typically to feel better. You know, that's that's the truth. And so when you start to look at what are the purchases that you're making, not only in your practice, but in your life, then you ask yourself, why am I truly buying this? Is it out of boredom? Is it because I'm missing something or is it because I really think that this, excuse me, is going to take me to where I need to be. Because to answer your question, yes, I think a lot of dentists get to a point of where they feel bored. It could be because they're just doing the same thing over and over again too. Yeah. Yeah. You're not expanding. You're not growing. You know, Gali, doing dentistry now 28 years, I still love what I get to do. And I look at it like I get to when I look at it like when you're bored, you look at it like you have to. I look at it like I get to, I get to have this opportunity to transform somebody's life, especially with dental implants and creating an opportunity to give somebody back a big part of their life. I love that. I get, obviously I get paid well for it, but I get the emotional paychecks that just means so much to myself and my team. And it's so fun to be a part of that journey that that's like to me, that gets addictive. You know, I love that aspect of it. But it's easy for if you're doing things that are just mundane to get very bored. Absolutely. 100% Michael. So let's put that into perspective a little bit deeper because I got bored. Right? I've got millions of millions of dollars making me 5% a month in cash flow. I started getting bored in my business. So I took my eye off of my business. Yes. And when dentists get bored, they take their eye off of their practice. Absolutely. And if we add bored in our marriage, we take our eye off of our spouse. Yes. And I know, I know that, just like you're saying before I've experienced this myself and the impact of our life, I've, I've rescheduled a full day before of appointments because I've been off with Wendy. Yeah. Let's see the impact on that. But I also see the investment in that and the opportunity with that. So that leads us into number one investment. So we have number one asset and those two balance sheets. You are the number one asset. People are assets. Things are not human life values. The source and creator of all property value. Number one investment has two main characteristics. Control and human life value. Okay. What you control, what everybody controls, what dentist control. And I have the most human life value knowledge, experience, expertise, purpose, and passion in. Is their ability, Jeff, is your ability to produce in your area of expertise at the highest level? Correct. That's what's put the most amount of cash in your pocket, isn't it? Your ability to produce is a dentist. Yes. Run your practice. Yes. Absolutely. 100%. The mixture of art and science and being able to utilize that and take the professional skill sets that we've developed and that we continue to accelerate in. That's what allows us to produce at a high level. And so when we get bored in our business and we take our eye off of our practice, our business, we start looking for the solution outside of our control and outside of our knowledge, experience, and expertise, purpose, and passion. Same with our marriage. We get bored in our marriage. We start looking for the solution. Yes. Side of our spouse. Correct. But when it comes to money when it comes to our practice, number one, investment, the area to invest, to truly invest, to take risk in for a higher reward is in an area where we have control and knowledge and experience and expertise, purpose, and passion, human life value. And that's the business of dentistry. 100%. It's what has and will continue to put the most amount of money in your pocket. Totally agreed. But we get bored. We take our attention away from that and then the business declines and then we're trying to play catch up. So I know you've taught me this. It's a big blinking red light. When you meet with a dentist, if they're getting bored in their practice, that's like error if they get bored in their marriage. That's one of the first areas to work on because it has the biggest opportunity. Absolutely it does. For sure. Yeah. For sure. So number one, investment, is your business practice. It could be real estate too, right? There's some dentists that are just great entrepreneurs and they have multiple locations and they buy the building, they now to get a practice up from the ground up and do systems processes, procedures. That could be a great investment for them. But the characteristics is control. Number one, what you control. Number two, what you have the most human life value and knowledge, experience, expertise, purpose, and passion. I mentioned purpose and passion because we can grind, we get out of school, we get into practice, we're grinding, we're creating, it's exciting, it's fun, it's new. We may start to not, we may start to get a little bored and complacent when we take our eye off of them. that, that's when things start to decline. And so that big blinking red light is, what can we do to reignite our purpose and passion? Because we can do something short term and grind it out. But in order for it to last 28 years plus, like for your own career and many dances that you work with, and our friends with, we've got to have that purpose and passion to go along with that. So what is it going to take? And I know that's what you coach on is how to reignite that purpose and passion, not only in their dentistry, but in their personal life also. Absolutely. It has to be there. You have to have, like, I think of it from this perspective too, that listen, we have to have a vision and a vision that's bigger than ourself. And I think one of the most dangerous people on the planet is a man without a vision because you end up either bored or angry. And if you're angry, you're going to burn shit down because we're, we like to build and we like to create. So you will either out of anger or boredom typically burn something down so you can either rebuild it or try to recreate it in a different way. So when you have a vision and you tie that into purpose, now you are become, now you become dialed in. And it's like, it's like the racehorse with the blinders on you just now you're focused. And now you can start to accelerate down the track because you know the direction that you're headed. And when it is something that's bigger than you, it's so much easier to take and enroll your team in that too because they see the vision, they see it and they can put their eye on the prize. And it helps keep them from getting bored and allows you to step in and lead very powerfully. 100% and Jeff, your ability to assist someone was slowing that noise to come to that clarity. When they get that clarity, everybody wants that. Every client that I work with wants it with their money, every client that you work with wants it in their practice and then their personal life. They want it. But there's just so much noise going on out there. It takes the ability to have someone like yourself or myself coach them in this area of their life to be able to slow that noise and to have that clarity. Yeah, there is so much, so many things coming in a barrage. Listen, you just open up your phone and you're hit with a barrage of noise every single moment of the day. It doesn't matter what time of day. And we're being bombarded with information. It's not the fact that we need more information. I think you just summed it up really well. A lot of it is about putting the bumpers up so that we can stay in our lane and that so we can lessen the noise and the distraction out here and so that we can actually really focus on what God has called us to do with our purpose. Yeah, that's exactly right. So number one asset is you. Number one investment is what you have control knowledge experience and expertise in for 90 plus percent of our listeners. That's their practice. Yes. Number one asset. Number one investment. Number one strategy. AIS. Number one strategy. When we have money coming to our life, we want to invest it back into ourself, back into our business systems processes because that's our number one investment. That's the best place to take risk. We want to truly invest not gamble. We don't want to gamble. Gambling is taking money and relinquishing control of it and taking risk on it in an area where we don't have knowledge, experience or expertise or human life value. So we want to invest. When we're going to relinquish control of money, this is number one strategy. And this one we're going to talk about coming your own banker and that whole concept and why it fits with number one strategy. Be sure to reach out and send me a direct message on Instagram at drjfbuski.gr.jfbusk. Look forward to chatting with you. So next time.