Unlocking Financial Wellness: Strategies for Success. (#106) — Transcript
Updated: Oct 26
THE PICTURE OF WEALTH · EPISODE 106
Dustin Serviss opens a seven-part financial wellness miniseries with a discussion of personal priorities, corporate planning and making more deliberate decisions about money.
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This transcript was generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. It may contain transcription or speaker-attribution errors. Refer to the recording for exact wording.
Chapters
[00:00:03] Introducing the financial wellness miniseries
[00:01:19] Spending beliefs and spinning your wheels
[00:02:34] Dustin’s incorporation story
[00:03:46] Leaving the firm and valuing time
[00:05:00] The price of an hour with Dad
[00:06:10] The Life Clarity Summit
[00:07:17] Mapping finances and risk
[00:08:23] Accumulating more than investments
[00:09:28] Health and the later-career plan
[00:10:35] Reviewing the checklist
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Transcript
[00:00:03] Dustin Serviss: The next seven episodes of The Picture of Wealth will be part of a seven part miniseries. Welcome to episode one, unlocking financial wellness, strategies for success. Thank you all. And I would like to know, just out of curiosity, I'm, my office is in Kelowna, British Columbia, but I'm actually located... My house is in Salmon Arm, so I commute to Kelowna. But, I'm in Salmon Arm today in my home office. But where are you guys? And and, ladies, where are you? I'd love to, I'd love to see you in the chat just some places just to see. Here we go. Vancouver, Ontario, Coquitlam, Halifax, Calgary, Thornbury. Awesome. Florida.
[00:00:43] Dustin Serviss: Florida just snuck in there. Red Deer, Calgary, PEI. Great. We're all across the country. We're even into the south of the US. So that's very cool, and I thank you guys for, participating in the chat. This is this is, again, a topic that, that, is near and dear to me. I've been in practice for eighteen years. I've experimented with many things which you learn about, and I'm happy to, to share all those ideas, the good, the bad, the ugly, and what has worked. Bernadette mentioned three strategies. I'm gonna I'm gonna up it and make it, a little bit more value add and get seven in today because I just think that there...
[00:01:19] Dustin Serviss: There's some quick strategies, and then there's some longer ones we're gonna talk about. And, you know, again, what what are we doing here? Have you ever felt like you're trying to get somewhere, trying to get somewhere in your financial life, personal life, your career, and you are spinning your wheels? And, you know, maybe not getting where you you want to be, and you ever considered, you know, I I wanna spend on this, but maybe I shouldn't. You know? And have you ever explored why you think that you shouldn't spend that money? And, again, we're talking corporations today, but, ultimately, we're talking about your wellness.
[00:01:54] Dustin Serviss: And, again, I see, you know, it's, I wrote it down. Fifty nine percent of you are incorporated. Twenty seven percent of you are thinking of incorporating, and some of you are not sure, but I'm sure at the end of this conversation, you are gonna be much more in control of that decision. You're gonna maybe know when to incorporate. You know, maybe if it's not now, I'm gonna give you some some markers to look for and to know when to. So if you're considering a law corp, if you already have one in place, or, you're near retirement and you're thinking about an exit, I definitely, will be speaking to all those things.
[00:02:34] Dustin Serviss: I'm gonna back up, for a sec or for a minute. I've got, a little story where, you know, my incorporation started, eight years ago. And, again, it wasn't, it wasn't a very fun time. We had some serious fertility issues. We're building a home. I, I just had my partners tell me that, I wouldn't get my name on the sign. And, I was at this coffee shop, and, again, there's, five of us or five other gentlemen that are part of what we call a mastermind. And we meet once a month, and, two are... Own a collision repair shop, one owns a tech company, and one's an accountant. And we were talking, and I was saying, you know, I think I might
[00:03:12] Dustin Serviss: leave my loft... My... I don't know. Might leave my financial partners or my... The practice that I was in. And, you know, we're brainstorming on the idea and then, you know, the... All the things that could happen. And it it was... Again, his name is Steve. He would be what we consider the most conservative person of the group. And, you know, he looked at me and he just said, you know, based on what you've said, I think you gotta leave. And so that was literally a moment where I walked, you know, two blocks over. I leased a place, that I've been watching, and I just thought I gotta do it.
[00:03:46] Dustin Serviss: And I learned a lot, and I I decided to leave the firm. And what a what a scary experience, yet extremely rewarding. And after having sort of eight, nine years of being incorporated, I spent a lot of money. I've learned a lot. I've studied a lot. I've met a lot of good people that have helped along the way, but they have helped me build some of these tools that you're gonna hear today. Second story I have is about a small boy in, in his house and, you know, the dad come home from work and, you know, he comes in the house and he... The boy says to him, dad, can I borrow fifty dollars? And he says no.
[00:04:25] Dustin Serviss: And the son, you know, kinda goes about his business. He comes back and he says, hey, dad. How much do you make an hour? And the dad, you know, kind of annoyed is like, that... That's none of your business. And so the little boy, you know, waits, and he goes, no. Well, like, how how much is it? And so the dad says to him, you know, okay. I I make a hundred dollars an hour. And so the kid goes, you know, away, and he comes back and he says, okay, dad. Can I really borrow that fifty dollars again? And and and the dad gets mad this time and says, no. You know, now you know how much I make, and now you're trying to, you know, take my money and...
[00:05:00] Dustin Serviss: No. And the boy goes to his room, you know, kinda upset. And so the dad's sitting there thinking, I wonder what he wants. So later in the night, he goes back into, you know, the boy's room, and he... He's got fifty... The dad has fifty dollars. And so he says, hey, son. You know, maybe I was a little bit harsh. Like, here's the fifty dollars. What do you need it for? And the son lifts up his pillow, and he's got some other money crumpled up there, and he he adds the fifty dollars to it. He looks at it, and he says, okay. Great. I've got a hundred dollars now. Can I buy an hour of your time?
[00:05:33] Dustin Serviss: And, obviously, there's there's a punch line to that story of when we're entrepreneurs and when we're busy professionals going about our business, it is easy to sort of get focused on the things that you maybe thought were important at some point in your life, but maybe you haven't recalibrated, you know, your own goals. So that's what we're talking about. I took that risk eight years ago. And for any of you who are already incorporated or are retired, what we're talking about today is getting more life. And that video couldn't be more, you know, more pressing. I didn't see that video before, and I commend the Lawyers Financial team for
[00:06:10] Dustin Serviss: putting that, about practice... Practicing living. And that's what we are really talking about today. So the first the first thing I'm gonna talk about is something called a life clarity summit. Now what is the life clarity summit? This is a tool that we use to... At the... You know, before we're even talking about corporations, because we need a we need a mindset. We need a foundation that we can work from to then implement some of the things I'm gonna talk to you about. The Life Clarity Summit is... I'm just gonna make this bigger so you're not gonna see me for a sec. But the Life Clarity Summit is a really simple way to check-in
[00:06:45] Dustin Serviss: once a year and say, how am I doing and what do I need to focus on? So at the bottom of the pyramid is your financial plan. And the financial plan could be as simple as us having this conversation right now. You're talking to a professional. You're brainstorming. You wanna know three things. Where am I going? So what are my goals? You wanna know your BAM, which I'm gonna talk about in a minute, which is your bare ass minimum expenses. And then you're gonna wanna know about your financial dashboard, which is a really simple... On a piece of paper, write down your life insurance...
[00:07:17] Dustin Serviss: Write down your insurance, your investments, your real estate, your loans. And those are your, basically, your financial... That's your that's your speedometer. That's your financial picture. So if you get all that in one page, you're ahead of basically forty percent of most Canadians. So that makes up the financial plan. You need to know where you wanna go. You need to be talking about it. The next layer up is your risk management, and this is where, you know, if you look at the goals or where you wanna go and something gets in the way, let's take care of that right now. So this is what happens if you pass away.
[00:07:49] Dustin Serviss: What if you got disabled, critically ill? Do you have a will, health insurance disability? And the one that's in bold in the middle is personal health, leisure spending, and solid relationships. Now this often isn't talked about by financial planners, and it is something that's, you know, I think extremely important because if you've sacrificed everything and you don't, you know, take care of those things because you're so focused on your your your practice and your work and you don't look for efficiencies to free up time to keep up with the hobbies you have, you've got a ticking time bomb for when you turn sixty.
[00:08:23] Dustin Serviss: And I'm gonna talk a little bit about that later. Now moving up from risk management. So we've got a plan, we're managing our risk, and then we're gonna move up to accumulation. This is where we're gonna start building things. This is where we're gonna start saving for retirement, buying real estate, paying down debt. Maybe, you know, saving for the children's education if that's applicable, and building up an emergency savings. And the one piece that's in there that's also bold, that is a massive cavity... And, again, I've... You know, I have over eleven hundred lawyer clients, and then I've been in practice for eighteen years.
[00:08:53] Dustin Serviss: I've definitely seen people do it right and people do it wrong, and people who are extremely, I'll call it rich in money, have extremely bad mindset when they're retired. And what that... What that's from is a long sort of life of not being aware or not being intentional what you put in your mind. Again, I'm not gonna get into the sort of the the politics of... But if you're constantly taking in negativity, if you're constantly around negativity... Think of a person who works in a in a factory, constantly around noise all the time. Why do they wear earplugs? Because they have hearing problems when they're older.
[00:09:28] Dustin Serviss: So thinking about not just your physical health, but also your mental health when you're younger affects how it's gonna be when you're older, and your outlooks and your values and your decisions and just your overall perception of how things are going in your life. So this is where we're gonna queue... Accumulate things like, again, knowledge, courses, relationships. The final is, you know you know, for lawyer, if you are near the end of your career and thinking about selling your practice, this is the this is the preservation zone. This is... We're gonna try and keep the value of your practice as high as possible.
[00:10:03] Dustin Serviss: And then you're going to talk about estate planning, you know, at the top of the pyramid. That is estate planning can mean a lot of things too. It doesn't necessarily for, you know, estate planning lawyer listening, you know, you thinking documents. And and the good ones, I know there's there's a number of you out there. The the estate planning is passing on your knowledge, the knowledge of how you live and how you, you know, become successful, passing that knowledge on to the next generation. And that's the Life Clarity Summit. And when you look at in a year, I do this every September.
[00:10:35] Dustin Serviss: I just simply put check marks by the things that I've already got taken care of. Yeah. I've got a will check. Got life insurance check. And what that does is it makes it easier for me to see what I need to focus on in the next year. I put question marks or exclamation marks on things that maybe have changed, but you're trying to get a fifteen out of fifteen. And for most lawyers who aren't near retirement, you're trying to get a thirteen out of thirteen. You You know, how is my mental health? Well, how do you know if you get a check mark? Just ask yourself. Ask ask your partner or your spouse. How do you think my mental health is?
[00:11:07] Dustin Serviss: And, you know, are you intentional about what you put in your mind?