How Mindset Impacts Financial Decision Making

Evon Mendrin: Almost every financial decision is sort of wrapped up in some emotion or feeling or value system or something. So your mindset impacts all financial decisions. So depending on the mindset, whether it’s good or bad, positive, negative, helpful or harmful, I mean it can really negatively impact the way you handle your finances.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I am Bethany Fishbein, CEO of The Power Practice and host of the Power Hour Optometry Podcast. Thank you so much for coming back and listening again. Today we’re talking money, and there’s so much financial advice out there. It’s kind of like practice management advice. I see it, somebody posts a question on a Facebook page. I’ve got this much money sitting in my bank account. What should I do with it? And immediately there’s 64 experts weighing in with their expert opinion. I know this is a podcast but trust me expert is in air quotes here, saying you should do this. You should do this. No, don’t do that. Do something different. And just like practice management advice. There are probably a lot of answers that are right for the people giving them but not necessarily right for the person receiving the information. I invited Evon Mendrin to be a guest on the show today. Evon is a Certified Financial Planner. He’s the Owner of Optometry Wealth Advisors, which is a firm that helps optometrists master their money. He’s the host of the Optometry Money Podcast, which I was on as a guest a couple of months ago. And we were talking about how mindset affects your practice’s success. And so I invited Evon back on to this podcast today to talk about how mindset impacts your financial success. So you on thank you so much for joining me.

Evon Mendrin: Bethany. Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to be on with you. I was thrilled to have you on my podcast back in August. And excited to be on with you.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Thanks. And I can’t believe that was August we were talking before we started about how fast time flies and I’m thinking in my head was up three weeks ago four weeks ago. it was two months ago so yea.  So we had, I thought a really good conversation then about mindset and how the mindset of a practice owner affects their decision-making and eventual success in the practice. So talk just a little bit about mindset when you say mindset, what do you mean?

Evon Mendrin: Mindset to me, it’s just a way of thinking about something or a belief system about something. Our conversation on my podcast was a belief system or a way of thinking about your practice and your ability to run your practice and the profession as a whole and so with money, it’s just a money mindset is just a way of thinking about money and the role of money in your life and your emotions that crop up when you think about money and what you want to do with it or how you feel it should be handled. It’s just your belief system around financial decisions around money. And just the way you think about it. That’s a mindset.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So I mean, where does that belief system come from? Because as you say that I’m thinking about myself and people who I work with and you’re right, like people are really different with like what money is to them. So is that like, ingrained? Where does it come from?

Evon Mendrin: I think it comes from a lot of different places. And I’m sure there’s research by people that study human psychology that can pinpoint this a little bit more, but from my thoughts the way I’ve seen it, I think part of it comes from childhood. I think we can have a whole episode about things we learned from our childhood that sticks with us into adulthood and it’s hard to shake and I think part of our mindsets around money comes from our experience in childhood and do our parents talk about money or not? How do they talk about money? Is it surrounded by stress? It’s surrounded by opportunity? What are our parents and family experiences in childhood around money? I think that tends to be a pretty big part of it. I think our own experiences too can influence the way we think about money whether we had really negative experiences about debt for example, or bad practice ownership experiences are bad investing experiences. I think those can deeply impact the way we think about money moving forward after those things happen. Thinking about those two, just those two topics like I remember in my prior firm of for cold starting this firm right now. Talking with clients whose parents, maybe even them themselves as young children, but definitely their parents going through the great depression, or at least the time immediately after the great depression. And just how that deeply impacted the way they handle their finances, extreme frugality, and making sure there’s nothing is wasted. I mean, you can see how that impacted the way they use their money, which passed on to what would have been our clients, their children, and the way they use their money. And you can see that working for and against them because on the one hand they with extreme frugality, and really good consistent habits like they built up a huge amount of wealth. So it served them well in some ways. But they didn’t spend any of it. Right. They didn’t use any of their wealth because the concern that’s ingrained in the brain is like I need to conserve my resources. Like I need to be prudent frugal, like I can’t overspend it, I can overdo it even if there’s absolutely no risk at all of running out. So absolutely. Childhood I think is a big part of it. Learning Experiences are a big part of it. I think we also absorb our mindsets from just content and people around us. Like I think our brains absorb everything we read and listen to and hear and the people we spend a lot of time around. I think we absorb their thoughts and energy in the way of looking at things. So I think that just what we surround ourselves with causes a lot of the way we think about a lot of different stuff, especially money. And I think part of its own personality, just how we’re naturally wired as humans and maybe even culture, culture can play a part of it, but a lot of it is from Hollywood and our own learning experiences and what we absorb.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I mean, I can see that as a parent just trying to think about the conversations that we’ve had with her kids and it’s not necessarily the conversations where you sit down and you say we’re going to talk about this, like, I know we’ve had those her daughter is 15 And she just got her paycheck from her first job recently. So like first paycheck, so that’s a formal conversation about spending and savings and taxes and all of that, but it’s what he said really stuck with me about even the manner in which it’s discussed of, Is it a stress topic? Is it an enjoyable topic? And this is like deep stuff here, right? And it really is ingrained.

Evon Mendrin: I think about that myself and just the way like what did I learn from my parents growing up and how now, am I gonna teach my kids around money? Like that’s our responsibility I’m realising is like how do I talk to my kids about money as they grow? How do I make sure they’re making intentional decisions? And it’s not something that’s just not thought about a lot or you know about entrepreneurship and business ownership? How do I help them to see opportunities in the world? So that’s, for me, you know, I think about that a lot, too, is now what is my responsibility as a parent because I see how big of a deal it is through the people I work with.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, and then I think as you grow up into the world and you start talking to other people, the thing I get from that is that it challenges maybe the things that you brought with you from childhood. I mean, talking to people as you grew up challenges everything you learned in childhood, right, but meeting somebody who feels totally differently or reading something and it’s like, okay, maybe there’s another way here. I remember a book that I read This is, probably, maybe the year we graduated from optometry school, and somebody had recommended the book, “The Wealthy Barber”. Did you ever read that?

Evon Mendrin: Naah

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I mean, this is a long time ago, but it’s about this barber, he works in a barber shop and manages to accumulate money. And it goes through a system and reading that wow, I totally like haven’t thought about this book and forever, but that was one of those formative books like transformational books that changed how I thought money was gonna work in my life. Like that was the first time I put that down. I was like, Okay, I’m gonna be wealthy. I just have to do this. It’s very interesting. So, you mentioned people coming out of the great depression feeling that extreme frugality. What are some of the other money mindsets that you say?

Evon Mendrin: Here are some different type of mindsets I’ve seen and some that I’ve learned from other resources. So some of them will have scientific sounding names, some of them not, but mindsets that I’ve seen and some that I’ve learned from other resources are number one is a Protector, which is kind of similar to what we just talked about is really conservative mindset around money, reluctant to spend especially on himself or herself, really risk averse. Always worried about having enough in the bank enough for the future. Just a really protective conservative mentality around money, which sometimes is good because it can lead to good habits, which sometimes is bad, like we talked about, it can keep you from spending money when you should or you absolutely can or enjoying the things that you have, or it can cause you to do things that are not really in your best interest financially like holding on to too much cash. hoarding cash, doing things like that, that are not really in your best interest financially but are comfortable. That’s the Protector type. Another one is the Giver. So someone who will give and help others or help or maybe as a better way to put it to Helper. Someone who’s willing to open up their pockets to help other people. At the expense of their own financial health. Right. And I think a natural Helper is a parent for the kids, especially older parents for an adult child. That’s something I’ve seen a good amount is where an older parent is really trying to help an adult child, but at the expense of their own financial health. And it could be anything could be organisations, it could be charities, it could just be other people in general, just people are willing to ask them for money and they’re more than willing to just pass it out and help because they want to. So a Helper is someone another way of looking at money on it for today is another one that’s just someone who is as a really short-term focus on their brain. They’re not really thinking about the future and they just want to enjoy the experiences today. Just enjoy the money they’re earning today. Not really thinking about what that does down the line that’s living in for today. Keeping Up with the Joneses is kind of what it sounds like. It’s just you’re living by comparison always trying to compare yourself to your peers or what you see on social media or on TV or whatever it is. You’re you’re just trying to keep up with those around. You get beat up with the Joneses. The Optimizer is someone who’s always looking for that, like every tiny bit of getting the most out of their money. Which is fun because they’re really math driven but can also be bad because you’re taking too much action, even when like the juice is just barely worth the squeeze. Now Optimizer can just take too much action, like always changing his bank accounts, credit cards, always just trying to move things around too much. And then there’s other things that are not really I think, financially specific, not really money mindset, but can impact the way that you think about money. So having an optimistic abundance mentality way of looking at the world or having a pessimistic scarcity mindset, having a certain way of looking at your profession or just the economy or just the world in general, risk tolerances. Those things are sort of naturally embedded in your personality. I feel like money is sort of a conduit for a lot of other emotional behaviour, things like whether you’re confident about yourself or not confident about yourself whether you’re optimistic about the world or pessimistic about the world abundance scarcity mindset. I feel like a lot of that is not really directly financially related, but you’ll see it go through your money like you’ll see it come out in the way you use your money.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: This is fascinating to me. I mean, it’s you’re talking about these types. There are people that jumped into mind immediately when you start describing it. Some of them living in my house, my brain, employees clients, like as you’re saying it. It’s kind of like oh yeah, that makes sense. And it’s like understanding someone’s love language or understanding someone. Anything else about somebody, once you put it in a framework. It just kind of explains like, oh, that’s why they’re like that. And I can see too as you’re talking some of the ways that that manifests in practice management decision making. We see people who are you described as givers or helpers that will pay staff that expense of their own profitability. We see people who are squeezing every less sense. What did you call those? It wasn’t Squeezers?

Evon Mendrin: Optimizer.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Optimizer, Thank you. That sounds much better. Right? Switching vendors every day to save a couple of dollars and looking for opportunities that way but I mean, the thing is like, all of this doesn’t really change that with most financial things. There’s a correct mathematical answer. Is that true?

Evon Mendrin: Yes. So they’re with finance with money, stuff like there tends to be something that the math will tell you. Like if you have a few options. The math will usually tell you one way is likely to turn out better than another. That’s usually the case. It’s not always certain with longer term decisions, like you’re kind of needing to assume something and you’re projecting out many years but yeah, a lot of times you’re making a $1 decision. And math is going to tell you that one way is going to work out a certain way versus the other direction.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: You shifted the wording there. And I think that that’s relevant, right? Because I said, well, the math tell you what’s right. You shifted and you said, well, the math will certainly tell you things, and they’ll tell you how the outcome is likely to be one way or another. I think the idea is that the math can tell you like, Okay, if you do it this way, you’re likely to have more money than if you do it this way. There’s other way right? But not necessarily. That that’s right for the individual making a decision, because to somebody who’s saving, but you know, is prioritising that extreme, frugal mentality. Having that cash in hand might have more value than potentially having more in 10 years. To somebody else. It’s all about what you’re gonna have in 10 years and they’re willing to take bigger risks than they are today. That’s interesting. 

Evon Mendrin: Yeah, I mean, there definitely is a balance there between what math tells you and what your feelings and values and family history will tell you is the right decision. I think every financial decision is wrapped up and is influenced by the way you think about money and your mentality, your value system, family history around money. Every financial decision is going to be wrapped up in all of those things we talked about, right? So you kind of have to look at a balance between what does the math says, and what does your value say. And from the math perspective, I mean, a lot of times it is about what’s likely to happen instead of like this is exactly what will happen but it depends on the situation. For example, if you’re looking at debts with a set schedule payment, you can arrange your debts in a way that the math is pretty certain. If you make X amount of dollars towards these certain debts, like you pretty much know what’s going to happen. There’s not much ambiguity there unless like you can’t make payments. But if anytime you’re projecting out something really long term, there’s a whole lot of assumptions that go into that. So it’s hard to really pin down exact match, you’re really thinking in terms of what is likely to happen. And how do you feel about that? Is that something what you’re comfortable with? There’s on the one hand, what math will tell you, on the other hand, is, I think we have to be careful about allowing our feelings to in emotions to drive decisions. I think that’s a bad way to start. Because feelings can change. Emotions can change depending on the scenario and the situation that you’re in. We see this a lot with investing. I’ll pick on investing a lot because it’s just a lot that happens often enough to where you can see how people react and make decisions around it. When investment markets are good people are pretty optimistic. About things when markets are not doing well. People are pretty pessimistic, and risk tolerance sort of changes with what’s going on. Right? There’s no real set. It’s not really set in stone. So we have to be careful about allowing our feelings to dictate decisions first or emotions to dictate decisions. First. I think what’s more important our values, values need to be clarified. So values are important feelings can betray you. So get clear around what your values are as an individual, as a family, like what’s important to you. What are you working towards? How do you feel around debt? How does your family history influenced that? What are important causes for you faith or community or whatever that is, like just get clear on what’s important to you in your life? And how does money fit into that? When it comes time to make decisions then you first look at math and say okay, here are my options. Here’s what math says. How does that fit within my value system and my risk tolerance and just how I feel about money? I would want to start with what does the math say what do the facts say? And then run that math through the lens of your values and kind of find that balance.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: That’s really smart. And I appreciate you making that distinction. And feelings versus values because I know for me, those blends sometimes. And something that you think is a value some days is a less important value than others and then that’s not really a value right? That’s how you’re feeling in the moment. It’s such an important distinction. So like, How does somebody start to figure this out? So you want to figure out how you feel about money, how your childhood experiences have impacted you. And these are not conversations really that I’ve had with too many people. How do you know? 

Evon Mendrin: Yeah, that’s a tough one. Well, I first want to go back to what you said about values like something that feels like valuable at the moment may not be in the future. That’s another reason why you kind of want to start with something else, but like feelings and values because your values change over your lifetime. Like they just will. What I think is valuable right now is going to be different 10 years from now, when my kids are older. What I thought was valuable before I had kids is totally different now that I have kids like you see things like people putting every dollar towards early financial independence like I need to be unchained for my work at 40 or my late 30s. Like I need to put every dollar and resource and time towards this financial independence goal. And you can see that that changes when they are if they decide to have kids like now all of a sudden this early financial independence is not important. Now what’s important is providing for children and spending time with them and having more time freedom to spend with the family like now priorities have shifted. I think you can see the same thing in practice when practice owners start to feel stress and burnout. And instead of maximising every dollar and profitability, like maybe they’re willing to give up some of the dollars and bring on an associate to give themselves time freedom. Like I think your values and priorities can change, but wouldn’t hang every financial decision on that only. You have to balance it out with what math will tell you and give yourself some flexibility in your life and your financial decisions and give yourself some grace to make changes along the way to adjust your thinking and to just be open to making changes. 

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: That’s what I’m curious about. And I’ve heard a little movement in the direction like on TikTok there’s a normalised talking about your salaries and there’s somebody who wears like a T-shirt that says how much do you make and goes around the streets asking salaries but I mean, you know in a lot of social situations, even professional situations, money is hush hush and sometimes there’s outward things that make you guess like you talked about keeping up with the Joneses. So you go to somebody’s house and you see their furniture and art and you think oh they must have a lot of money. But you never talk about it too much. Like how do you have those conversations? Or who do you have them with?

Evon Mendrin:  Yeah, I mean, that’s bony is such a touchy topic. Like, for me personally, it’s hard for me to share every little detail with other people just because my personality is private. So like, you know, it’s personality driven. It’s like values driven again, like some families just never talk about money. And whether that’s good or bad. You can debate either way. I think you first need to find someone that you trust, like who is a friend or a peer or a coach or mentor, all plugged good financial advisors that like know your situation and your life and what you’re working towards and your values and your family and someone who you can share these things with in confidence if you need and you trust to give you honest feedback, honest conversation, and to help you make the sorts of decisions honestly, like start with you don’t need to do this publicly. I don’t think you have to. I don’t always think you should just find someone, whether it’s a group leader, it’s the one person that you trust that you are willing to share this information with, that will be honest with you and can help you sort through these decisions. I think that’s the first place to start. Is just find that one person or that one group, that you’re willing to share these things with that you trust, to be honest with you. Going back to like this, sharing things in public like, I do think it’s important to talk about money issues, but the public is like up and down. Like you’ll get good information from the public bad information from the public. You’ll get positivity from the public, you’ll get negativity from the public. So I think it’s so important like if you want to head in a certain direction, in a positive direction in your life in any area, whether it’s practice management, whether it’s money, like you have to surround yourself with good trustworthy content with good trustworthy people, because the public opinion wavers and the quality of the response from the public is both really good and really bad. So that’s why I don’t necessarily think you need to share your information with everybody and get everyone’s feedback. I just think you need to find that group of person first and have that relationship.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah. I think that makes sense. Because, I mean, obviously there’s a lot of space in between not talking to anyone and talking about this publicly to the whole world. But having somebody who understands the mindset and understands your priorities. About money, and what you want from your money, like the role that it has in your life, which is probably different than the role it has in somebody else’s. You can’t assume that the same can then sort through and give advice that works for your money and your mindset. This is just like practice management. I say the same things about that, to talk about where a mindset can really hurt you in financial decision-making.

Evon Mendrin: You know what we talked about earlier, almost every financial decision is sort of wrapped up in some emotion or feeling or value system or something. So your mindset impacts all financial decisions. So depending on the mindset, whether it’s good or bad, positive, negative, helpful, harmful, I mean, it can really negatively impact the way you handle your finances. For example, if you are overly protective, and that’s the only thing that you’re basing your decisions on. Is this feeling around being super conservative with your money, low on risk tolerance. I need to conserve, conserve, conserve well, you’ll never enjoy things for today, which is important and there has to be a balance in the way you use your dollars. It can lead to you hoarding cash unreasonably because there is a place where having too much dollars set aside can be unreasonable. Doing things like hoarding cash unreasonably, making decisions that are going to impact you long term like not investing appropriately. Not being willing to take on maybe business ownership opportunities when you have the skill to do it, but maybe just not the belief or the risk tolerance to do it. So I think your mindset can absolutely impact your financial decisions depending on what it is, or really depending on if you’re relying on that on your own without talking with your peers or seeking out other information. I think it’s important to test your mindset against some other facts like test your mindset against something else. Test your mindset against what the math might say or test your mindset around cold starting a practice against other cold start experiences both positive and negative. So test your own way of thinking against something else so that you’re not relying on it completely. And again, like we talked about other mindsets the live for today like that’s if you only have a today mindset and you’re not thinking about the future. Well, that’s absolutely going to impact your future, Financial success, whether you’re ever able to be financially independent, the way that debt can rack up in those scenarios, like the way you think about money absolutely can impact both positively and negatively in a big way your financial success.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: You know that’s an interesting one that I see with practice owners sometimes and it’s always a little bit of a interesting challenge to navigate. I see guilt, I guess, for having too much. I’m thinking of people who I’ve worked with who maybe are first generation and their family to have the level of success that they have. And so there’s always this balance of, Do I really need to make more? Do I really need to charge more? Do I really need to save more? It’s not the desire to do anything else with it. It’s almost like just a negative feeling about having it. Do you see that with financial planning?

Evon Mendrin: I do. I see it. I’ve heard the same with Optometrist in really just other like helping professions where you’re going to school to learn how to be something that helps other people. The mission of your business is to provide care for other people in some way. I’ve seen that a lot. And there’s a lot wrapped up in that. On the one hand, it can be good because it is valuable to know what is enough for you and what you can be content with. On the other hand, it’s guilt, it’s sort of I should be helping people I should not be successful financially. So there’s a lot of psychology wrapped up in that and yeah, I don’t even know if I’m like really qualified to like dive into some of that because there’s so much that can go into that. Being more successful than parents is something I’ve seen. There’s guilt around that or being more successful than the people you serve or like there’s so many scenarios where that can come in. That’s for me one place where I think you should run that way of thinking against some other information tests it, test it with some facts. Okay. Do you deserve to be financially successful? Did you do anything yourself to put you in a position where you deserve to be financially successful? For example, an Optometrist? Absolutely. You put in the time commitment, you went through the schooling, you took a huge investment in time and cost to just get into the profession and then you are going through your continuing process of being a better and better practitioner for patients. So absolutely, you’re putting in the investment and the time, you should see the reward for that investment. You should see the reward for that hard work. It’s valuable to the public, it is good for the public. If you’re a practice owner, you put in the time and energy and sweat and tears and stresses into getting a practice successful to be successful. You should see a reward from that experience. And that risks that you’re taking in the time and energy you put into your work each and every day. You absolutely should. So should you for me, that’s just a scenario where you have to test the way you’re thinking should I be able to be successful. And a lot of times it’s we’re thinking about parents versus kids, like a lot of times, parents sacrifice so that their kids have the opportunity to do these things. And so the parents would want them to be more successful because that’s sort of the payoff for the parents like the parents put in that time and energy into giving the kid the opportunity to do that. So test the way of thinking, you know, for me, it’s an easy answer. Absolutely. Any helping professional, especially one who puts in the time and energy and cost into getting into the profession like an Optometrist and becoming such a great professional for your patients and building practices. You’ve done so much of that investment in time, energy and cost like you absolutely deserve to be successful.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: You’re into the psychology I get into it too. And I’m not qualified either. But it’s hard not to and you’re in this field and this is what you’re dealing with a shortage of questioning it or I guess in addition to questioning, testing compared to other people. Are there other ways that you found that help somebody challenge or change a mindset that they don’t feel is serving them?

Evon Mendrin: I know from what I’ve heard from people who have studied the brain it is possible to change your mindset in a way that I don’t understand enough to preach to the public, your brain records and builds into its neural pathways like the way you think, and it will just continue to cement that into your brain and it is possible to rewire the way you think it is literally physically possible to do that. So how do you do that? Well, that’s the big question. Everyone wants to know, if I had the golden answer, I’d be writing books about it. So I’m just trying to learn along with everyone else. I think part of it is self-awareness, like trying to become aware of like, okay, how do I make decisions? A question I like to ask is like when you think about money, like what word comes to mind what feeling comes to mind what emotion comes to mind first? Is it excitement? Is it opportunity? Is it stress? is it anxiety? Like, Does your heart starts to beat a little faster when you think about money? So trying to become a little bit more aware of just how you think about things and how you react? Or how you’ve reacted in the past? Self-awareness is really hard. I don’t know. Can people become that self-aware on their own? I don’t really know. So that’s why I think it’s so important to absorb new information to absorb content, podcasts and books, listening to things reading things that changes your way of thinking that contradicts your way of thinking. Surrounding yourself with peers that have a positive perspective on things, or at least a different perspective on things. Absorb more information into your brain that’s different from the way you already look at things. I think the what you surround yourself with and who you surround yourself with, is critical because you absorb the way that your peers look at your own profession and the way they look at money and the way they look at family and values and just other things because you absorb that into your own thought processes. So surround yourself with other people, again, with honest people who you trust peers mentors, coaches, consultants, financial advisors, who you can share honestly your own thinking and can challenge you. I mean, Bethany, we talked about it on your conversation on my podcast, like how do we change our thinking about our profession and our practices? You shared an experience early on in your career about how a consultant changed the way you thought about what was possible in practice success. So it’s sometimes you just need another person, another coach, whatever it is to challenge the way you’re thinking and show you other opportunities. Sometimes it’s just necessary because I think self-awareness is hard. Maybe it’s impossible. I don’t know. So just surround yourself with the people and mentors and coaches, whoever it is that will guide you in the direction you want to go.

There are tools out there. I think specifically with money mindsets, like one of them is called “Your Money Mind”. Like if you just google “Your Money Mind”. That’s a tool that you can answer some questions and it will help you sort of figure out like, here’s sort of what your money mindset as are we here’s what your mix of them are. It’s not overly scientific, right? It’s a pretty short thing, but that’s a tool that you can use. Short of that, like, that’s where I’d started. Just be mindful of who you’re surrounding yourself with. And a question I think comes up a lot is like how do I make decisions with money knowing that our mindset impacts. Like, how do we get successful with making good decisions, even though our own behavior and our emotions impact that? A really big way to do that is to try to build systems that will do thing behaviors, you want to do. It sort of takes it out of your decision making out of your control. Like one simple way is like automating savings like this sort of more like a reverse budgeting way of looking at money I think really makes sense. Like focus on getting your savings down first. Some people call it like pay yourself first, whatever it is like use your 401k is like an auto enrollment and let it automatically increase for you just take that out of your control. It’s just going to automatically happen each and every paycheck, automate savings into different accounts, investment accounts, savings accounts, if you have special goals, like start to get those things automated so that you’re not having to think about every month should I put money here should I put money there. So start to build as best as you can, like just processes decision rules, like decide ahead of time, hey, my next dollar is going to this and once I fill up that bucket, it’s gonna go to this next and once I’ve done that, it’s gonna go to this next so trying to make like decision rules for yourself about where your money goes to next. And that’s really, that’s much easier to do when you work with someone to do that. So decision rules like that so that when the moment comes, you’re not thinking about it. It’s just happening. It’s just taking it out of your control. Even when it comes to things like risk tolerance, like should I cold start a practice? Like, there’s a lot that goes into that for myself. I’m heavily a protector, conservative money mindset, like that’s heavy for me. So for me cold starting a business. There’s a lot that had to go into that for someone called starting a practice, if you want that opportunity, but are scared of the risk for whatever reason that may be. How do you hedge against that? So how can you hedge against your own behavior or emotions? One of the simple ways is just to build up more cash than you might usually need to just build a larger amount of liquidity in your life so that even if things happen, like you’re covered, so that’s a way where it’s a may not be mathematically optimal to hold a huge amount of cash, but it’s hedging against your emotion and it’s giving you the opportunity and the permission to go do something. It may seem risky, but long term will pay off and something you really want to do.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, I mean, all of this is comes down to knowing yourself. And knowing the math is the math, right? Except when it isn’t when you’re factoring in what you think could happen and reasonable risk and expectations but you kind of know what things could or should be and then learning yourself, finding relationship with someone who you can trust to challenge and question where the stuff that’s in your head is going to help where it’s going to hurt. And then like the situation you just gave, what are some things that you can do to build up for yourself the ability to make a decision that might otherwise feel uncomfortable? And so if you know you need that, how do you do that? I mean, I think the value of having somebody to help talk you through those things with knowledge, actual knowledge of the reality, right? Here’s what is statistically likely to happen. Here’s what the math is and gets to know you to combine that with your own personal goals and values and personality as well as what’s going on in the day to day because it does impact decision making. is really a great team to get as close as you can to guaranteeing that you’re going to get where you want to be. So if I if somebody wants you on a team, where do they find you?

Evon Mendrin: Yeah, you can check out my website optometrywealth.com. You can always shoot me an email evon@optometrywealth.com. You can follow my podcast, The Optometry Money Podcast, anywhere you get your podcasts or I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. So feel free to reach out.

Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Awesome and if a trusted business consultant is on that team for you as well. You can always reach out to us, Our website is www.powerpractice.com or email info@powerpractice.com for more information. Thank you so much for listening!