Full Transcript
Dr. Rand:
Dr James Martin, it’s my pleasure to have you here all the way from Northern Islands in Dubai Aidek conference To get started and jump straight into it. Tell me how you today.
Dr James:
I am absolutely flippin’ awesome. Thank you for asking, rand, and it’s a real pleasure to be here in Dubai at the Aidek. This is really exciting for me. I love getting out and about and the city is so amazing. I just keep coming back. I think it’s such a cool place.
Dr. Rand:
Would you ever move here?
Dr James:
Potentially. I definitely think about it. Put it like that, I think it is cool.
Dr. Rand:
Everybody thinks about Dubai.
Dr James:
Yeah, it’s an awesome place. I love the weather In the UK. It’s so flippin’ cold right now. And then you come out here and it’s like you come off the plane and it’s like, oh, there’s blissful breeze I can’t get my words right Blissful breeze. That’s a tongue twister. And then, whenever you just get off the plane, like I say, it’s just this warmth that feels amazing.
Dr. Rand:
It just doesn’t come in summer.
Dr James:
Yeah, apparently it’s really hot in summer. Right, I have not experienced this. Is hot enough for me right now, and this is winter. This is like the peak. I wouldn’t want it to be any hotter, but what I do like is it’s a dry heat rather than a humid heat. Humid heat is a little sticky.
Dr. Rand:
Yeah, so tell us about your journey, how you got into dentistry, your experiences as a dentist and how now you’ve come about to dentist to invest.
Dr James:
Cool, thank you. So yeah, basically a little bit of a long story, but I’ll give you the highlight reel, so to speak. But pretty much what happened to me was, once upon a time, I started reading books on finance and cryptocurrency, and that came about through investing in Bitcoin and it not going so well. So I thought to myself okay, how can I actually get better at this? There’s obviously some sort of method or some sort of science to it, because somebody somewhere is making money on it. There’s got to be. That’s the whole point. Right, it’s not me, or it wasn’t me anyway at that time. So let me find out what I need to know in order to make that a success. So what happened was I started reading books on cryptocurrency and then, with time, when you read a little bit about crypto, you realize that actually, if you’re going to learn about crypto, you have to learn about how traditional finance works, as well as in stocks, as in bonds, as in what financial advisers would talk about, because crypto is an evolution of that market, right? So in order to understand that, you kind of need to come back down here a little bit. So I did things the wrong way around, but then what I learned was through my reading was basically how people invest, how financial advisers go about that process and how you can do it yourself, and what it means is that when you’re literate on it, when you’re educated on it, that you get to keep all of the profit rather than share it with a financial adviser, because that is their model, right? So it’s hugely lucrative for you to be someone who can do that effectively. And then, through reading about finance, I also got into the philosophy of money and how it works as well, and basically that information allowed me to think about okay, for each one of us, when we want to get to financial freedom, what is the path? How do we actually get there? And we can get into that in just a minute, because there’s little systems and processes that you can use to figure out how that looks for you, but most people never think about it. You know, it’s literally like it’s not even about the money, right? It’s genuinely not right. It’s about having freedom and it just so happens to be that money is the tool that gets you that. It’s essential, yeah, yeah, well, from well, let me rewind it’s essential for most people, right, because there are other ways that you can be financially free. If you reduce your outgoings to absolutely nothing, then you don’t need money. But what that also means is you have to, like, live off the land. You know you have to become some sort of farmer or a hermit or something like that. So most of us, the very second we get up, we put our clothes on, we switch the air con on okay, we eat something out of the fridge. We’re basically saying we need money to some degree, right, because we want those luxuries and comforts, right? So that’s the first way to be retired. By the way, we’re going on a little bit of a tangent here, but this is relevant, right? yeah, this and this is true, right, and this is one of the models that we talked about, right, and it’s basically how to be retired. There’s three ways to be retired. Number one reduce your outgoings to absolutely nothing, okay which is kind of impossible which is kind of impossible, right? yeah, just as we were saying the second, you eat something out of the fridge. You’ve already accepted that you need some money for something. Okay, that’s true. You’ve already said, okay, I’m buying into the capitalist system, right, just by using any creature comforts, right? So there’s that, okay. The second way okay, the second way is whenever you basically earn so much money, okay, that you don’t need, you don’t need to think about, you know, generating it anymore, so you have so much wealth that you can live off your assets. Are you with me? Yeah, so that’s your traditional financial freedom path. That’s what investing does. That’s why.
Dr. Rand:
I also getting to that. It’s quite a bit of a journey and it’s not an easy one exactly, and this is it, and it typically takes decades.
Dr James:
Right, because if you think about it, when you’re retired, what it means is you have to. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t want to do anymore. Okay, that’s financial freedom. So for most people, they don’t like their job. Are you with me? Yes, but they do it as a means to an end to get to that point that we just talked about, where you have so much assets that the income from the assets sustains your outgoings. Are you with me? Let me pause for two seconds. You still following? Is that clear?
Dr. Rand:
yeah, yes, and then here’s the third way.
Dr James:
This is a little abstract. Okay, what if you just love what you do? What if you just flipping, love it so much that you’re actually not working, you’re just playing, you’re having fun, okay, and it just so happens that you get some money when you’re doing the thing that you love. Then, in a way, you’re kind of retired, aren’t you, you know?
Dr. Rand:
that’s true and I think we touched on it, and that’s like your journey, to be opening this platform for you. You know, from dentistry to would you say you’re retired dentist what I would say is I love what I do.
Dr James:
Yeah, I would say that 1000%. There’s still things that I’d prefer not to do at this point that are part of that process. Be with me. So I still spend some of my time doing things that I’d rather delegate to someone else, like like, let me see, I think there’s some repetitive tasks that come along with growing the group I would, which which are good, you know, I can see. I’m willing to do it because I can see that it’s got a good effect on the community, maybe with me. But what I’d ideally do is bring in someone else to do that who can probably do it to a higher standard, right? So, like, creating, creating content is fun. What I would prefer to do is do what we’re doing right now turn up and shoot the stuff right and then have someone else edit it because they’ll be better at it than me, and then what it means is it’s not me spending time doing something repetitive that someone else will be better at anyway. So, with time, what I’ll do is I’ll outsource all of that stuff. There’s. There’s more things, yes. However, at the very start of anything, you have to accept a little bit of that until you become, until you make a business, until you make a system, you kind of extract yourself from it. Are you with me? But put it like this right in dentistry, dentistry was a job for me, right straight up. Okay, that was work. Okay, 100% work. Okay, this is like 20% work, so it’s much better. Yeah, with me, so the ratio is more favorable. Yeah, I realized by the way that we kind of got sidetracked then and I didn’t actually tell my story, so I’m gonna roll back slightly to that, okay. So basically, what happened was this was this learning about finance and cryptocurrency was going on in the backgrounds, okay, of my life, as was, you know, as I was being a dentist and as I was working alongside that? So those two things were occurring in tandem. Yeah, and, by the way, I had not put two and two together at this point that anybody would find this information useful apart from me. He was me. This was, for me, the the whole reason. Yeah, we’ll talk about it, you know, but did I educate people on it as such? No, that wasn’t something that I’d even really thought about ever at any stage. Yeah, so what happened was one day, about three years into that process, when I was reading about finance, I was also reading a lot about dentistry as well, so really liked dentistry, you know, and actually it was a one-to-one ratio one book on finance, one book on dentistry.
Dr. Rand:
That was my rule, okay, and then I think that’s what differentiates some dentists because every dentist I genuinely believe wants to be a good dentist. Yeah, and a lot of dentists purely focus on the skills part of things. But you kind of took a different approach. You’re like, okay, I need skills, I need a bit of financial knowledge, and that’s what we touched on a bit earlier. Dental schools they teach us how to become good dentists, how to become good with our hands, but there’s zero financial classes, there’s zero lessons about you know, in a field that is heavily private. It’s a private sector. The patient pays for the treatment. There’s no government that covers the treatment. But we’re not exploring how to do with that. As dentists, we’re just thrown into the deep end.
Dr James:
But you chose to read a bit about both, I guess well, this is it right, and there’s actually a name for being too focused on dentistry a bit of a name that I’ve coined and it’s called teeth tunnel vision. Okay and it’s when you’re yeah, it’s good, right, it works right and it’s where you’re like this. It’s almost like you’ve got some blinkers on this millimeter on right and yeah, exactly, it’s like this. There’s a, there’s a J on this margin. This margin is 1.5 millimeter and it should be 1.2. All of that stuff how do I get it better? Right, and because dentistry is such a debt, a hugely, hugely deep subject, there’s always more to learn right, and I feel like it’s so easy to just be purely, so purely focused on that. But there’s these other things. There are satellites that surround it which are actually very valuable to you. Okay, can really help you in your life, can actually make you more effective and efficient at at work, at generating freedom for yourself. Okay, but you won’t know it if we’ve only focusing on teeth. You’re probably, here’s the thing you’ll probably do well, you’re probably, in fact, you’ll definitely do very well, right, because dentistry is a job that’s remunerated well, which is cool, right, and that’s why I feel that that sucks you in even more, because you’re like, oh, this is going well, I’m doing this and this is happening, I’m doing this and this is happening, right. But my whole point is that actually there’s other stuff that are right here that you could do, and they’ll you like to go like this, and finance is one of them, right?
Dr. Rand:
I keep getting sidetracked.
Dr James:
I keep getting sidetracked, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll wrap my story up.
Dr. Rand:
Okay, let’s do it.
Dr James:
Yeah, I’ll wrap that up. And then what that means is we can all move on with our lives, right? Yeah, we can get on what we’re supposed to talk about, right, but yeah, so anyway, I was playing football one night. As this was happening, as this knowledge was growing and accumulating and I was teaching myself these things, I was playing football one night and I got this horrendous knee injury. Okay, I tore my ACL. And if anybody listening to this has torn their ACL, have you torn your ACL? No, no, okay, you haven’t. You’ve not torn it, right? No, oh, my goodness, it’s no fun whatsoever. It’s really painful, really painful. And anyway, to cut a long story short, I needed to have surgery on that, which I learned the next day, and I had no idea. I just thought they healed these things. I didn’t have a clue, you know, and then that, for me, was a shock. I was like what, seriously, yeah. I had a surgery. And then, anyway, I had the surgery and it was just after coronavirus. Okay, I had the surgery on my knee, yeah, when the world was opening up again.
Dr. Rand:
And you had to be in lockdown.
Dr James:
Well, this is it so I had. We just came out of lockdown for like two weeks. I was back at work for two weeks in this dental practice and then I had the surgery and then the surgeon said, okay, you need at least four to six weeks off your feet, right? So I thought to myself that I would heal faster. I don’t know why. I just had this like full heartiness and I was like, yeah, okay, well, I’ll probably be like two weeks. I reckon he said two weeks was the minimum, the very, very, very minimum, right. So I went back to work after two weeks and this just wasn’t happening. You know, my knee was swelling up. It was really sore. Plus, as well as, at the practice that I was in, I really don’t feel like they were actually valuing the fact that I was there, definitely putting them first in the practice, you know, my health second. And I just had this realization. I was just like James, what are you doing? You know you’re not actually being appreciated for this. Plus, you’re actually sacrificing your health, okay, because if you mess this up, your knee is going to be messed up for life, right?
Dr. Rand:
That’s not worth it, that’s not worth it Clearly, could replace you.
Dr James:
But you could not replace you. Well, there’s a nice way of putting it. So, yeah, perhaps that was their perspective, I don’t know. Anyway, so things weren’t really working out. So basically, I left that practice and then I went back to the surgeon and I said okay, hey, so this has happened, the knee is even worse. Now what should I do? And he was like okay, you need to not take four to six weeks off, you need to take 12 weeks off. Wow, right, you need to stop messing around, okay? And then at that point he actually got through to me and I was like okay, maybe I’ll actually listen to him this time. Seems sensible, you know.
Dr. Rand:
But it’s hard because, as a dentist, we’re trying to like go, go, go.
Dr James:
Well, this is it.
Dr. Rand:
Our schedule is crazy.
Dr James:
You know what a type A personality is. Yeah, yeah, big time right.
Dr. Rand:
And being told no, you have to chill, it’s hot.
Dr James:
Yeah, it’s like the worst thing you can say to someone who’s like a flippant type A personality. You know what I mean? Well, here’s the thing I feel like type A personality has a bit of a negative connotation. It just means you’re driven. You know you can harness that energy in a positive way. I love that. Yeah. Yeah, just like anything. Right, you know you can take an emotion which others deem to be not positive or negative. Right, like anger. All right, you take it and put it in it’s yeah, say you’re frustrated. You can go to the gym, there you go. Or you can take that energy and you can say I’m frustrated at this system. My internal reality doesn’t match my external reality. We’re getting philosophical now. Right, therefore, I’m going to change it, and that might be helping somebody out that might be creating a charity, that might be building a hospital wherever in the world. Right, because you believe that that’s not right. But what that means is that you’re upset, but you take the emotion, which is not a positive emotion, and you use it in a positive way and you can literally choose that for anything. You can literally choose that for anything. So, anyway, back to what happened to me. I had this time on my hands now, right, and I thought, well, I’m kind of annoyed that this is the situation is, but it’s not really actually going to improve anything. Just stewing in that, are you with me? So I thought, okay, let me start a Facebook group, we’ll just have some fun. Yeah, a Facebook group about finance for dentists? Yeah, so I started that. And then I started making content for it, just because I always wanted to do it, and I thought, well, I’ve got three months now.
Dr. Rand:
Now is the time, this is the perfect time.
Dr James:
Now is the time literally right.
Dr. Rand:
And I was one of them dentists that joined you actually.
Dr James:
That’s so cool, Isn’t that awesome? And that’s the whole reason why we’re shooting this thing right now. And just to give context to everybody listening Rand and I we met at the egg deck and Rand was like oh, I’ve seen your stuff, I’ve seen your content and for me that’s amazing. You know, yes, I was talking to this guy from Saudi.
Dr. Rand:
Arabia, it reached Australia.
Dr James:
Yeah, that’s nice, and for me it’s just so cool.
Dr. Rand:
That’s the amazing thing about social media it truly does connect everybody. Like you get to explore cool people all around the world. Yeah, there’s no limit.
Dr James:
It’s so awesome, I wanted to have these conversations. And like this is this for me right, this, right now. This is work. You know a bit, isn’t it? Oh, I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Inverted comments inverted comments, and what I mean by that is if I was like, oh, it’s work. But I’m like it’s work. What I mean is it’s awesome.
Dr. Rand:
It’s fun.
Dr James:
It’s good, yeah, so it’s cool, and I was yeah with the content. I genuinely feel that when you put positive energy out into the world, it comes back to you. It’s like hold your reality is like a flipping mirror, effectively, because if you’re not so positive, then what will happen is positive. People will be a little like, oh, standoffish, because they almost don’t want that energy, you know. But people who are maybe feel similar to you will be attracted to you because they’re like, oh, this person thinks like me. You know, basically, you get out what you put. You get back what you put out, in my opinion, yeah, and it’s a compounding thing as well, just like in fairness, yeah.
Dr. Rand:
Even the energy.
Dr James:
Even the energy, yeah.
Dr. Rand:
I was just talking about. You know how everything starts small, and then that exponential curve.
Dr James:
True yeah.
Dr. Rand:
I guess that’s why someone who’s got a negative mindset would constantly be like oh, I’m just this. All bad things just always happened to me. I’m just. This is just my life, it’s just yeah. I am.
Dr James:
I think it becomes a self-fulfilling thing past a certain point. What I mean by that is if you have, if you’re in a situation, okay, and there’s two people in the situation and something happens, right. One person called like if it rains, okay. One person if a farmer if it rains for a farmer and they want their crops to do well, okay, they’re happy. Right, there’s someone at the beach and there’s someone holding these and it rains, they’re not so happy. Are you with me? Yeah, so it’s literally just mindset. This is the same reality. You can just choose what definition you associate with it. And if you have this mindset where you think that all these bad things happened to me, all these negative things happened to me, you’re just going to look for things that prove you’re right, because that’s what our brains do.
Dr. Rand:
Okay, it’s the yellow car concept when you’re afraid things of the yellow car. You usually wouldn’t see a yellow car on the road.
Dr James:
Right.
Dr. Rand:
But when you think of it, it’s just. You start seeing yellow cars everywhere.
Dr James:
There you go, exactly the same thing.
Dr. Rand:
We’re off a tangent again.
Dr James:
We are.
Dr. Rand:
Take us back to your three months. You started this Facebook group, yes, and you started to get a bit more attraction and you posting content and how was it. Did you go back to dentistry or you said to yourself no.
Dr James:
So what happened was basically the group started taking off and the people started joining it because I was making content and then someone shared it on a dental forum and it got like an extra 500,000 members Like overnight was so fast. It was like that and I was like, whoa, we’re on to something here. And for me I was just putting the content out, just simple stuff. It was like about mindset and money and how it works and stuff like that, like things that I’d learned ages ago and people had never heard this stuff before who were dentists, and they were like what Money’s fake, it’s not even real, it’s printed. And I’m like, yeah, that’s how it works. I thought that everybody knew this stuff, because that was my reality, because I’d been reading these books and I’d learned it ages ago, and you tend to forget what you’ve learned. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, you forget the process that you went through to actually obtain that knowledge.
Dr. Rand:
That’s true as it becomes second nature.
Dr James:
Yeah, yeah, big time. So that was me 100%. When I started sharing this stuff. Then I learned I was like I learned that I’d learned something. I realized that Be with me, yeah. So anyway, I was putting this content out and then people started joining the group and then what happened was within about, I think after about three months, it had like 4,000 members. So it really really really grew fast for a Facebook group, do you know what I mean? And then I went back to Dentistry for about six months after that, but my heart just wasn’t in it anymore because I was having so much fun doing the side gig stuff. It’s like Dentistry was the main gig. This is how it started out. That was the side gig, okay, and the side gig became the main gig and the main gig became the side gig, right, yeah. And for me it’s like we were talking about a compound. And just a second ago, you take all of your effort and put it into one thing, you’ll get faster results and also the sooner those results will scale. And I just thought to myself well, not everyone gets these opportunities. I always swore to myself if I got a really good opportunity, that I would flip and triple down on it, because not everybody gets that stuff. That’s true. And you know what really upsets me? I mean, I don’t know, like professional footballers right, like they have a gift, right, and they’ve don’t get me wrong, they’ve grafted hard for it. They have a gift as well, and I’m picking on this one example. There’s thousands of examples like this, but this is a specific one that I always can not connected with, but I always, I always thought to myself, or I always imagined this, right, and I always thought to myself right, these people, they have this amazing skill. Okay, they could change the world, they could make so many people happy, right, but some of them squander it, right, they like drink and party and do all this stuff, right, and I always thought to myself, if I had that, I would never do that, because I’d realized that I have this opportunity to help so many people and Change the world and have so much impact. Yeah, so I was like, if I squandered that, I’d feel terrible. Right, and this is maybe it’s not quite on the same level as professional footballer, but it’s a really cool opportunity, you know but it’s something that you’ve created for yourself, because yeah, I might say, you know just opportunities, never knock on my door.
Dr. Rand:
But you have turned your kind of like negative situation which I’m sorry for, your surgery.
Dr James:
It’s better now somewhat, but yeah.
Dr. Rand:
You’ve turned it into a good thing. You’ve created your opportunity. You’ve created that door for yourself that you know. When things went back to normal, you’re like, no, I’m going to have that, no more. Or is it teeth?
Dr James:
Teeth tunnel vision. Yeah, no more teeth tunnel vision.
Dr. Rand:
Oh.
Dr James:
Yeah, that is what happened, yeah so let’s tunnel into it.
Dr. Rand:
I guess how did you like? What did you learn about Business and finance? That dentists are no no more right?
Dr James:
okay, today like so let me quickly Explain something that will help everybody understand a completely different angle or perspective on money and finance, and this is a really cool lesson. Okay, so we talked about how there’s three ways that you can be retired right earlier. Okay, there’s also three relationships that all of us have with money. Right, each and every one of us. Okay, so the three relationships are number one. You don’t think about it and you’re like a headmist and you go out. You maybe, well, you maybe maybe party, maybe you don’t party, whatever, yeah, and party is fine. What I mean is too much, okay, to the point that you’re never really Acknowledging reality. You know you’re using. It is like escapism, isn’t it? You know? So those people, they’re the people that don’t really have a relationship with money in so far as they don’t think about the future. Okay, so there, if you think about it, if you want to get from point a to point B, right, you’re on a journey and you need a vehicle but they don’t even have the vehicle or they don’t think about the destination. Exactly so for them type one this, is it right? So they’re standing still, so they’re not, or they’re not really going anywhere. They’re never gonna reach the destination. Because they haven’t, they don’t care. Yeah, pretty much right. So then the second person okay, they are on the bus to the destination. However, it takes a long time for them to get there, the destination being financial freedom. Right, because they’re doing it like this. Yeah yeah, now, here’s the thing it’s better to be on the bus then going there and not on the bus, that’s true? Yeah, are you with me? So what does the bus mean? What does taking the bus to your financial freedom mean?
Dr. Rand:
right, doesn’t mean your job pretty much yeah.
Dr James:
So if you talk to yeah 95. So if you talk to Joe blogs, who’s walking down the street and you say, hey, joe, what do you expect to be retired? Right, 65, and you literally took the words out of my mouth. Right, because that’s what people will say it’s cultural, right? Yeah?
Dr. Rand:
we are trained that way.
Dr James:
Yes, but why Right?
Dr. Rand:
Why are we trained that way?
Dr James:
Why? Exactly? Because here’s the thing, and that’s not me asking you, by the way. I’m just getting everybody to ask themselves the question right, where do we get 65 from? You know, when God made the world, he didn’t say you’re all gonna retire at 65, right?
Dr. Rand:
I think it’s a man-made.
Dr James:
It’s, of course it is.
Dr. Rand:
Yeah, exactly right but man made concept.
Dr James:
We don’t think about it, right, but here’s the thing it’s. It is man-made, totally. Where did that cultural phenomenon come from? Are you with me? So here’s where it’s come. It’s come from, okay, when you grow your money via the stock market or via bonds, which is what an advisor, a financial advisor, will do from you on the back end, or what your pension is doing for you on autopilot. Right, it takes like 30 years to get there, because you basically need so much money that you can live off your money, right, yeah, that’s, remember, the third, this second way to be retired is where you have your assets. They’re huge, right, the stock market will do that for you, but it takes a huge amount of time. It literally takes 30 years. That’s why 65 is the age that we often quote, right? Ah, exactly right, and people don’t know that. They’re just like, oh, 65, maybe people don’t even think about it. Wait with me, yeah, so that’s why, also, as well as that, if you think about it, your money grows like this and then you’re gonna be living off it and it does this, right, you don’t want to live too long. Yeah, you’re gonna, you’re gonna outlive your money, right, so you have to wait, okay, until 65. How grim is that. Isn’t that really sad? So it actually doesn’t matter, you can have this much, or you can have this much. You still have to wait until that age. Ish, doesn’t have to be precisely 65, it can be 55. Be with me, but my whole point is you have to spend most of your life doing that, to wait to that point, doing something you might even like be with me, and then you’re on the bus Right, and for me that’s really sad, okay.
Dr. Rand:
It’s the long. It’s the long way to get to where you want to get.
Dr James:
Here’s, here’s the rate. Yes, it is. And here’s the thing, right, you know, everybody acts like when someone says, oh yeah, we’re gonna hit this retirement age and it’s 55 and 65 and all of this stuff, right, well, everybody acts like they’re definitely gonna make it to that Actually always happen so what’s the third way? Exactly. So now we’re talking right. There is another way, okay. So if you want to get from point A to point B, okay, we’re not what’s the fast car? It’s a little bit. That’s literally it and this is the sports car. This is what I say to people right, you’re, right, you’re, either you’re, either you’re either walking. You’re probably not gonna get there, which is the first person. Right, you’re on the bus, you will get there is gonna take ages, yeah, or you take the sports car.
Dr. Rand:
Right, how do I ride a sports car?
Dr James:
exactly. This is the exciting part, right? So, basically, you’re in the sports car, sports cars really fast, but it’s a little too fast and it might crash. They with me. Here’s the thing. You might have to pick yourself up again another sports car they with me. But when the sports car works, it’ll get you from here to here. So what is the sports car? This sports car is having a business. This sports car is figuring out how you can get way more output of each unit of time. Okay, you can get way more output for every unit of input. So you have leverage, okay. So what does that mean? A business is an example, right? So let’s say, let’s say, you have a huge business like Elon Musk, right. He can say change this and change this words. Just have to leave his mouth right and other people go and do it for him. Are you with me? You know, on, he has a ton of cash as well. Plus, he has, like, other stuff that’s leveraged to, right? So that’s the fast way to get to freedom right now. Obviously, that’s a huge subject. Business is a massive subject, and there’s there’s three fundamental ways that you can get more leverage out of your time. Okay, and this is where things can get really abstract. Okay, and probably we’ll talk for a way longer than 30 minutes on this, yeah, so we can maybe quickly touch on them. Yeah, we can quickly touch on them. So, basically, if you want to take the sports car, you need to think about if you’re going to spend one hour doing something. How can you get more output than most people? Are you with me? Yeah, so, for example. So the three ways that you can do that, number one is, if you have a ton of money, okay, then you can invest it right, and then what that means is, well, it can grow very fast and you don’t have to work for it. Are you with me? But you need a ton of money in the first place to do that. Okay, so you actually need to have the money to get there, right, so, once you do get there, you can use it. But how do we actually get there? Okay, so for most people, they spend 30 years of their life doing that, right, you still follow me, because this is going to get a little abstract at this point. Yeah, this is interesting and we probably need to. This stuff is a little bit like learning language. You know what I mean. You know when you go to French class, right, and you learn Jumepelle Jim’s, jumepelle Rand. Yeah, they leave the poetry for a little while, right? Yeah, this now we’re getting into poetry.
Dr. Rand:
Yeah, now we’re getting into poetry territory.
Dr James:
Take us there, and this is the stuff I think about all the time right, and this can really help people, right? Anyway, three ways to leverage. Number one is when you have a ton of money. You can invest it. It grows fast, right, yes? Number two is when you have other people who help you or work for you. Right, because if you go out to your garden you start digging a hole. Okay, in the garden, you’re going to dig the hole at the rate of one person, whatever, whatever, whatever. Unit we want to measure that? With volume, I suppose, of soil displaced, it’ll be one hour in one hour out, right? If you have 10 people, it’s one hour in 10 hours out of effort. Be with me, yeah, so you can get other people to help you, but of course, you have to pay them, right? Yeah, so that? So those two forms of leverage need money. They pretty much need money, are?
Dr. Rand:
you with me. That’s the third one.
Dr James:
Third one is really cool, okay, and basically the third one is kind of two that are meshed together, but they both kind of work in the same way. It’s basically to use automations, okay, to get more out of your time, right? So think about it like this right, if you’ve got a huge following, that is, in effect, an automation. If you think about it, it’s a machine that’s created, that okay.
Dr. Rand:
Like e-commerce, for example.
Dr James:
Yeah, yeah, well, exactly, yeah. So let’s say you have a huge following on Instagram. Let’s say you have 100,000 followers, right, versus somebody who has two followers, right, it takes the same amount of effort to make a post for 100,000 followers as it does for two, but you get way more output, don’t you? No, no, if that’s a sales post, okay, if 100,000 people see your wares versus two, there is 100, there’s let’s do the math on that one, 50,000, more likely that someone’s going to buy whatever that thing is. So you have leverage, right, but of course, you have to get the following in the first place, right? Or if you make a computer program, like, let’s say, you make a computer program that can well, like you said, e-commerce two seconds ago, right? So, basically, if you have a computer program that’s basically doing the work of a human, okay, to show them around the shop, virtually, obviously, and have them buy stuff. Well, AI.
Dr. Rand:
Now it’s taking off Chat.
Dr James:
GPT. Have you guys seen Chat GPT Flipping crazy I’m already using it. Yeah.
Dr. Rand:
I’m using it. It’s writing my emails. It’s like my second hand.
Dr James:
No way.
Dr. Rand:
At some things.
Dr James:
No way.
Dr. Rand:
I do believe that some things you can’t replace. Yeah, but there are things that technology knows better than us. But I wonder how Chat GPT would affect the dental world.
Dr James:
Interestingly, I actually saw a podcast on this like a week and a half ago, on this exact thing.
Dr. Rand:
You can have a summary.
Dr James:
Yeah and yeah. Basically, you can virtually have it. Do anything that you need for your practice in terms of marketing. Think about it emails, copy emails. Are you with me? You could say like, okay, this is all right. So, with chat, chat, gpt, just to add to the leverage thing, though, before we move on. That was basically all I wanted to say in the leverage thing. Are you with me? So, three ways to get, three ways to be retired, three ways to get to be financially free Okay, the third one offer the ways to be financially free. You need leverage, the sports car Right, and anybody in the face of the earth who has ever got rich or not got rich has one of those three relationships with money, and you just have to decide which one is best for you, because if you’re going through life spending 30 years doing something you flipping hit, that is no life. That is true. That is seriously crap. Okay, you?
Dr. Rand:
have one life.
Dr James:
It scares the hell out of me. Right, one of my friends right, his friend one of his best friends his dad died when he got to retirement age and he thought he was being smart because he worked so hard. Right, he worked like 80 hours a week, got to 57. Okay, four weeks later he was dead. Right, you find out he had found out he had cancer in. Two weeks later after that, you find out, two weeks in his retirement he had cancer. Two weeks after that he was dead. Right, where the hell was that in the flipping boss method? Right, where was that in the financial planning? That scares the hell out of me. So I’m like listen, whichever one you’re in, just be happy. That is literally my message. Right, you know, money is actually secondary Sacrifice and happiness for money, long term, to do something you don’t enjoy, that is so much. That is such a risky thing. People talk about risk. Right, that is the flippin’ riskiest thing of all that you’re gonna hear at your life. And then die, die too young, right, flip risk on its head, anyway.
Dr. Rand:
I guess that if that happens, you’re more like you have died, but you have not lived.
Dr James:
Wow, there we go, and that’s a perfect way to summarize it, isn’t it? But yeah, anyway, just to run that point off. That was pretty much everything, those three things about how to obtain wealth. If I could teach one thing to the world, I’d teach them that yeah, there’s more to it, but I do realize you asked me about chat GPT which we can go back to if you like. We keep going back and forth on that. It’s fine, we can edit this, I suppose, can’t we? But yeah, anyway, chat GPT, so, really crazy. So basically, this guy, he’d figured out a way to not hack it but just get more from it, Okay, and what he said was he was like okay, chat GPT, what I want you to do is assume the identity of a professional writing analyzer, right, and I didn’t even know you could do this and chat GPT, right, that’s crazy. And then chat GPT is like hi, okay, I will assume this identity for you, right, it talks back to you, right? Yes, and then he was like okay, now I want you to analyze this piece of text, okay, from that identity, from the perspective of someone who has that identity. And chat GPT is like okay, send me the text, send me the text, right, Then it gets back to you with this analysis. And it’s like your writing style is laconic, it’s fluid, you’re very descriptive, you have a very over-the-top style whenever it comes to adjectives. Are you with me? I’m just making these up, you know, I’m just pulling those out of the air, but that’s the sort of stuff it’ll get back to you with. Right, it describes your writing style. Are you with me yeah. So then he was like okay, can you turn my writing style into a prompt that you can understand? You know a series of texts, a series of letters and numbers that you can understand, right? So then chat GPT was like, yeah, sure. And then it was like zero, five, x, d, whatever, all this stuff, right. And then he took the prompt, okay, and he saved it on his computer, okay. And then what he did was he said he’s like hey, chat GPT, can you write a letter to this patient that they need to come back for their dental appointment, and can you do it using the style contained in this prompt? Right? And what had he just done? Right, he just taught chat GPT to write, like him.
Dr. Rand:
That’s crazy.
Dr James:
Isn’t that cool. That’s crazy. That’s cool right.
Dr. Rand:
That’s like because you know training staff member or training a team member or a person to work with your certain style, it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of investment. There’s a lot of money that goes into it, but time sometimes it’s the commodity that is limited. But now you can do that. I didn’t know that.
Dr James:
It’s nuts, it’s truly nuts. So yeah, feel free to listen to that podcast. He actually explains.
Dr. Rand:
What’s the name? We’ll link it.
Dr James:
It’s called oh hi chat GPT will change dentistry, I believe, and it’s on the Dentistry Invest podcast. So it’s like episode 100, whatever. The most recent one is that we did, or most recent two or three 113. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but no, it’s truly mind blowing, truly mind blowing, but yeah.
Dr. Rand:
Awesome. So you talked about investing as one way to you know, build that wealth other than having a business.
Dr James:
Correct.
Dr. Rand:
Things you know. The traditional investment was buying land, buying gold, buying something that you can have physically and waiting over a long period of time again going to the 30 year concept to make that return. What does investment, or smart investment, look like in 2023?
Dr James:
That’s a good question. So I always say this to people. I always say that whatever you invest in, it has to be a reflection of your identity to a degree, okay, and also, whenever you get into something, have an expectation or an understanding of how the outcome will look. So what do I mean by that right? So, if you’re pure and if the only thing that you invest in is like the stock market and you’re buying funds, which is what financial advisors do then what you’re basically saying is that you’re happy to be on the bus Are you with me? But do you actually want to be on the bus? Okay, have you actually thought that through? Because if you don’t like your job, then you have to accept that a little bit of the sports car philosophy has to be introduced to your life.
Dr. Rand:
But I’m sorry, I have to take you back. Even the sports car concept building a business takes time.
Dr James:
Yeah.
Dr. Rand:
Growing that. You know the world. I feel like time’s still there. So is there actually a way where it’s just-?
Dr James:
Quick money.
Dr. Rand:
Yeah, or it’s a sped through process.
Dr James:
Not that I know of.
Dr. Rand:
Not that I know of. So what’s the concept of the sports?
Dr James:
Sports car would be build a business. It’s still a lot of work, don’t get me wrong, but it is. If it works out, then it’s the quickest way, right, because you have leverage at that point. Are you with me? Yeah, so what I would say is I would just really really focus down on your identity as an individual. Do we want the sports car outcome, but do we have any actual sports car traits in our life, or do we do anything that actually aligns with that concept? You know what I mean, because most people put it like this right. Put it like this, if you ask most people when you’re walking down the street do you want to be rich fast?
Dr. Rand:
Yes.
Dr James:
Exactly.
Dr. Rand:
Yes, yes, yes. Nobody wants to be rich.
Dr James:
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Everyone says yes, right. So the only way to so, remember, let’s go back to our three relationships with wealth. We’re either walking, taking the bus to the sports car, right? So everybody says they want to be rich fast, but actually they’re either not even thinking about money, they’re just having a good time, which is not likely to yield that outcome, or they’re doing the bus method, which will get you there eventually, yeah, but it’s going to realistically take until about 55, 60, until you’re a millionaire. You know what I mean. So therefore, in a way, everyone calls the sports car stuff risky, like starting a business, you know, and getting into that stuff?
Dr. Rand:
Does the sports car for dentists look like opening their own day to practice?
Dr James:
I would say, yes, yes, it could be that. Yeah, that could be an example of someone adopting that philosophy. Or like say, for example, with me, with Dennis and Vest, that’s obviously a business in itself. So that’s my hat in the ring in the sports car philosophy, because I agree with that. Right, I think that the sooner that you get to the point where you’re financially free is the sooner that you can go and enjoy your life. Right, because that money is just the enabler to do that. Are you with me? Yeah, and here’s the thing right, when you build something like that, it doesn’t mean that you’re selfish, it doesn’t mean anything in a negative sense, right, which I feel is something that holds people back. When you get to that point, then you have the greatest thing that you can give everyone because you now have time. Right, you can actually be self less, more self less at that point.
Dr. Rand:
Ok, it’s just to you can give more of yourself.
Dr James:
All of a sudden you have carte blanche and you can earn the money and give it away, do whatever the hell you want, right, you know? But what it means is you actually have your life right and if we think about it, one, two, three right. If we don’t want to do that, then it’s only. It can only be one of those two other ones right, and it’s just whether or not we’re actually happy with that.
Dr. Rand:
What’s your advice for someone who’s on the bus and is thinking about the sports car?
Dr James:
Thinking of? Ok, good question. So first thing I would say is I would say and this applies to everyone, ok, bus, yes, in there as well, but also the person who’s not doing anything, and even the sports car person. This is the very first place for everybody, ok, to begin to understand how they can change that relationship right, whichever relationship they have, because the thing about it is the bus one. It’s easy to just flip and fall on the bus. Life will actually throw you in the bus If you think about it, because when you say yes to a pension and work, you’re riding it. You’re riding it, yeah, so you’re on the bus, right, but you might know how to get off the flipping bus right and move around. Or if you’re in the sports car, you can. Actually there is such a thing as being too much in the sports car as well. Ok, that’s where you have this business, but you have all your money tied up in the business. So if the business goes under, then you have nothing to protect you, right? So my philosophy is actually being both the bus and the sports car. Take the money from the sports car and invest it in something else, which is a plan B, ok, which is the bus method, but you’re doing it in tandem, are you with me? Yes, but anyway, to answer your question, if someone’s on the bus, first of all, I would say the very first question is are you happy? And if you’re happy, that’s fine. Maybe you love your job, you’re happy to be on the bus, totally cool, totally cool. If you want to get off the bus, maybe based on what you and I have been talking about just now, because you’re thinking, wow, there’s another way, then what I would say is learn how money works. Learn how it’s just a made up token, ok, that’s created by the government, yeah. And when you understand how money works, actually, it becomes easier to invest way easier.
Dr. Rand:
That’s the first lesson. What’s the myths that you think people believe about money?
Dr James:
People still think that it’s tied to gold. People still think that you can take a certain amount of money and go to the bank and exchange it for a fixed amount of gold. Right Money was a receipt, originally for gold. You know the pound, the British pound? Ok, you could take a pound and exchange it for a pound of silver. That was literally why it’s called a pound. It’s because you had a receipt. For the pound of silver, it had to be sterling silver, so it was like 97.5% purity. People still think you can do that In 2023, people still think that.
Dr. Rand:
What is money tied to these days?
Dr James:
Nothing. The government can just print more. If the government need more money, they just print a billion pounds. But the issue with that is, if there is this much gold, if there is this much of any resource and there is this much money, what happens when there is not this much money?
Dr. Rand:
That’s on the currency.
Dr James:
It’s half as valuable, isn’t it? That’s basically what inflation is. Even that in itself, it’s like wow, okay, now we’re starting to see how it works. I think a lot of people have been noticing inflation.
Dr. Rand:
We’re kind of that’s happening all around the world. We notice the same prices because everything is going 30%, 40%, but really the actual reason is the money, the concept that you just explored.
Dr James:
A combination of that, and then also, as well as that, the earth’s resources tend to dwindle. Every year as well, they tend to be going down. So a combination it’s supply and demand. There’s too much of one thing and less of another, then it’s going to go up in price.
Dr. Rand:
How does crypto?
Dr James:
come into the game.
Dr. Rand:
Because that’s how you started learning about money and finance.
Dr James:
How does crypto come to the game? Crypto comes to the game like this it’s an alternative way to be on the bus and go a little faster. Okay, but here’s the thing it’s not proven, so don’t put your house in Bitcoin.
Dr. Rand:
Maybe have some, especially recently, what happened with Bitcoin?
Dr James:
Yeah, I know. So this is the thing right. So here’s the thing. When it comes to stocks, people say invest, make five years your time frame. That’s what your advisor will say, and the reason for that is the longest that it ever took the stock market to recover was 2008 to 2013. That was literally the longest it ever took to recover. We all remember that. We all remember that. So when you go to your advisor, they’ll say, okay, minimum time frame is five years Because historically, it’s never taken more than five years for someone to achieve those returns To someone to make money. By the way, be careful with that. It doesn’t mean you can just buy anything, Okay, but what I mean is certain funds. What I mean is the methods that your advisor uses. Are you with me? So Bitcoin is like that. Bitcoin is actually four years Okay. So at the moment yeah, I get it right down here. If we extrapolate data back, if you have the mindset that you’re in this for at least four years, in Bitcoin, you will have always made money just by and hold Okay. Now will it continue? No one knows. I personally believe, yes, I have Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin is an awesome hedge Right. I think it’s really cool. Also, as well as that is your money. You put it on a USB stick and it’s yours, Right, it’s not a bank. The government can’t freeze your assets. Every regulated asset the government can freeze. If they don’t like you, okay, freeze your bank coin. Okay, you think you’re rich. Then one day you’re not. Who knows what the hell is going to happen in the future. That is true For me. We don’t put our house on it. I actually think it’s riskier to not own Bitcoin versus owning some Bitcoin. All these things about risk is all a little twaddle. Okay, you can flip most things on its head. Right, people are like stay on the bus, it’s the least risky thing to do. Actually, it’s so flipping risky that you’re going to spend 30 years of your life doing something you hit. Okay, what the hell? That makes no sense, right, you can this seriously, this bothers me. Right, that’s so unfair that that’s the narrative. Right, it’s only the narrative, because it suits someone else that you’re doing that because you’re on the bus fueling their sports car, Aren’t you? You know it’s crazy. And the thing is, how do we actually elevate ourselves above this? It’s through education. It’s through learning these things. I learned all this stuff from reading books, like all this wacky stuff, and I was like that can’t be true. That’s insane, you know. You know, and these are the things that I talk about on Dent soon fest, right, and for me the process is really arduous. I’d read like a book and I’d be like that book was trash. I didn’t learn anything, right. And then I’d read the next one and I was like whoa, that was a gold mine, right. The actual process of doing it is arduous. Not everybody wants to do that, not everybody has time, right. So the value in the community is take the cool bits, the best bits, right, give them a whole load of airtime so people learn, right. Just like literally just like what we’re doing right now.
Dr. Rand:
Yeah, and I guess, like with anything in life, it takes multiple tries and multiple books that you have to read to get the right knowledge that you get you know, but that’s what you’re doing you are taking all of that away from the you know the dentist and you are reading for them and providing, spending all that time so that other dentists don’t have to spend it, and just giving that knowledge away.
Dr James:
That’s cool, yeah, awesome. By the way, I’m actually 30 minutes late for something.
Dr. Rand:
I actually need the roll yeah so, just to end it, maybe give us some last minute. Or what would you advise? Financial advice for some dentists, if something, one thing that you want them to take away.
Dr James:
I would say, going back to what we were saying earlier, when you learn what money is, that is the biggest thing that’s going to flip everything that you think about, that you think you know about the world on its head. Just trust me on that Right. That is the first step, Because when you learn how that works, you’ll be so blown away and indignant that that is the system that we’re all subscribed to inadvertently. At that point everything else becomes easy.
Dr. Rand:
Thank you.
Dr James:
It’s cool. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Rand:
Thank you, thank you.