How I Launched My Physician Coaching Business with Bonnie Koo, MD

Originally planning to discuss financial planning with fellow Physician Coach Dr. Bonnie Koo of WealthyMomMD, our conversation had an unexpected and exciting turn, where she broke down how she launched her 6 figure coaching business!

Learn how she went from answering random finance questions on Facebook to launching her successful coaching biz, that allowed her to close her private practice! If you aspire to be a physician coach or consultant, you will want to learn the steps she took — this is a must listen for sure!

Dr. Bonnie Koo’s Physician Coaches Profile

https://www.physiciancoaches.com/coaching-category/bonnie-koo

Dr. Bonnie Koo’s Website

https://www.wealthymommd.com

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Transcript:

Mike Woo-Ming: So here joining us on the program today is Dr. Bonnie Koo. You best know her as Wealthy Mom MD. She’s a board certified dermatologist. She used to work for Morgan Stanley. She majored in Biochem at Barnard college. I’m curious how often you use biochemistry these days, but anyway, I’m so glad to finally get her on the show, Bonnie, how are you doing today?

Bonnie Koo: I’m doing so great. Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Mike Woo-Ming: You’re a powerhouse in terms of financing and especially when it comes to women physicians. I’m sure when you were in medical school you didn’t say and put down my 10-year goal is to design the Wealthy Mom MD program and empower many women physicians when it comes to finances.

So how did this all begin for you?

Bonnie Koo: That’s funny. It definitely was not in the plan at all. And I think when you’re in the entrepreneur world, it’s a lot of these things were never planned. You just, we started noticing a problem, noticed that we had a solution or that we could help people and that’s how it was born.

So that is my story. And it’s funny because my first job out of residency, it was a new dermatology department in New York. And so what that meant was I didn’t have a lot of patients, which meant I had a lot of free time, which meant I spent a lot of time on Facebook, specifically Facebook groups.

That was it was just starting to blow up Facebook. Yeah. And then I was finding all these physician specific groups. And I actually found myself in a few women physician specific groups, and there’s actually one for finances. It was just a community group. And like I said, a lot of free time. And so I started answering everyone’s calls.

And then people always ask how do you learn this stuff? And it’s not like I knew this stuff. Even though I worked at Morgan Stanley, I wasn’t in the banking side, so I didn’t learn it there. In fact, I was a hot mess when it came to money back then. I always ran out of money, every paycheck.

And so I started learning about money, just on my own, the last year of residency, I started reading books so I could invest. And then people started tagging me on posts. And the next thing you know, I started a blog, actually, a friend of mine suggested I started a blog and I remember thinking, why would I start a blog?

“The White Coat Investor has a blog already!” In my mind, someone else was already doing it. And he writes about everything. And I really had no desire to start a business. I was still thinking, I was just doing this kind of for fun. I really enjoyed answering people’s questions and educating them.

But as you probably know, Mike, people tend to ask the same questions over and over again. And so I thought, you know what, maybe I will start a block so that I can write a post about specific topics. And I pick the topics based on what people were asking on those groups. And then I would just post a link.

So it was easier instead of me typing this whole long thing at a Facebook post, I was able to just be like, “Hey, read this blog post. I wrote it.” And that was in 2017. And it was just a hobby, to be honest at that point.

Mike Woo-Ming: And then you were working in the dermatology department. I assume it, they started to give you more patients, but when did you decide to say, “I’m doing this blog, I’m doing this on the side. When do you think I could turn this into a business?”

Bonnie Koo: So I never asked myself that question, but what happened was I started going to conferences and meeting people.

So I met Peter Kim of Passive Income MD. and Dr. Jim Dolly, The White Coat Investor. I went to his conference and I was a speaker at his first conference. And then I started going to a conference called Fincon. I don’t know if you’re familiar, it’s an annual conference. I think it’s September-ish for anyone in the financial media world.

So financial advisors, bloggers, et cetera. So I started attending those meetings again, just for the comradery to be honest, there’s something fun about the physician group. The first year I was, there was like 10, 20 people on this included bloggers and groupies, so fans of the bloggers and then every year it would grow bigger and bigger.

And so I was just doing it for the fun and for the connection. And then what happened was after I had Jack or right before I had Jack I had some pretty bad postpartum anxiety. And I think the blog went dark for three months. Cause you know, I just had a kid.

And I was very confused. I was like, what should I do with this? Like, why am I doing this? And I had moved on to a private practice job at that point. The beauty of dermatology is it’s full-time, four days a week. So I never worked more than four days a week. And they were pretty short regular days.

And I remember asking Peter Kim I don’t know what to do because it was I thought this wasn’t like a specific crossroads, but at least in my mind it was, I was like, if I’m going to do something. Figure this out, or I should just let it die and just go back to my regular life. And so that was the crossroads that I had entered.

And I remember Peter, Kim said, he said go big or go home is what. And like he said in a very nice way. He’s if you’re going to do it, do it. Otherwise, see you later.

Mike Woo-Ming: He’s just a bundle of energy though. When someone he meets someone like that and, he’s got that energy and then entrepreneurial drive. So yeah, that definitely was the right person to talk to at that time. Yeah.

Bonnie Koo: And then I started working with a coach and then that’s when I basically was like, okay, I’m going to go for it. And I didn’t have a specific reason. I think I was like, why not? And yeah. I just thought it’d be a fun new adventure

Mike Woo-Ming: and how’s the venture so far.

Bonnie Koo: It’s honestly exceeded all of my expectations. I’m more like I didn’t really have expectations. I don’t think I really understood what it meant to have a business or even to be an entrepreneur like that word wasn’t in my vocabulary in terms of things I could be when I grow up. Like it never occurred to me that I could be an entrepreneur.

And I say this too, when I meet new, early on physician or any entrepreneur, because everyone has like imposter syndrome about it. And I remember being in medical school and I felt like there were two types of people. We were all obviously smart enough to get in. But I felt like there was a group of people that were like really smart.

And what I meant by really smart was like, they were creative. They were the types of people who are going to invent things. Cause obviously there’s lots of innovation in medicine. And so I just consider myself I’m just a regular physician, which is totally fine. It’s still a pretty good gig. But I remember just thinking “that’s not available to me.” I just assumed. Ever become someone like that, which is funny looking back now. And when I talk to people about that, cause I think people think like you either have it or you don’t.

Mike Woo-Ming: So you know, many physicians come up to me and very similar story. Like you, they’ll get on some Facebook group, they love to post, they love to help people. But then there comes that switch where you say, “I’ve got information that I can help other people. I feel like I can charge for that.” When did that happen for you?

Bonnie Koo: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I started working with a coach, Sunny Smith.

I know you know her and we’re creating an income goal. So th the year I worked with her, I think I made it was between 35 and $40,000. And she asked me how much my do you want to make the following year? The following year being 2019. And I said, oh, #100,000 sounds nice. And at this point I was thinking, I’m going to start a business, but I’m not the idea of leaving medicine or working less than medicines didn’t occur to me.

So I’m thinking $100,000 like, that’s pretty cool for a little side gig. And I remember she said, that’s not high enough. And I remember being like, what do you mean it’s not high enough, like 35 to 100 K that’s a pretty good jump. And her reasoning was, and she’s just not so fixated on the number, but she said, if you pick a hundred, when you’re already at 40, she basically said you just have to do more of the same.

And so she said, I, she says, do you have to pick at least $200,000. And then I remember my eyes like popped open and I was like if that’s the lowest I could pick, I guess I’ll pick $200,000. And in terms of monetize again, cause then people ask how’d you make money up to that point. It was basically sponsorships and speaking fees at that point and some affiliate marketing as well.

And when I worked with Sunny, we were talking about how will I create that income? So she’s. I think you should create a course. And so 2019 is what I call like my intern year of entrepreneurship. I basically took all the courses, Mike. So I took, you probably know these courses. B-School with Marie Forleo. Yeah, I did. And I did it through Amy Porterfield. I basically did everything through Amy.

Mike Woo-Ming: Definitely I’ve been, on your website and I definitely see that Amy Porterfield influence.

Bonnie Koo: I loved the model. Yeah. And then to try by Stu McLaren membership guide, even though I don’t have a membership and I went to a Kajabi conference where I got to.

Sort of the big names and entrepreneurship, on stage. Just talk about all the aspects of marketing online. Biz met with people it’s so fun to meet other entrepreneurs, Mike, and then at the Kajabi conference, I’m afraid there were hundreds of people in the room and less than five physicians, as far as I know, there could have been more, but like it’s just fun to meet people who aren’t physicians, all building businesses.

And then I’m like, oh, it’s not that weird to do or not weird. It’s not that.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, it’s when I would go to conferences and when we are physicians, you’d be gravitated to each other, but it’s so much difference when I have to go to a conference for a steamy requirements.

And, a lot of those obstacles, th are self limiting beliefs that we often see at, how can I do this? How can I add this, do this thing in medicine, you don’t have the same thing when you go into these business conferences, I’m sure that when somebody talked to you, it’s 200 K what are you talking about that maybe you had some self-limiting beliefs that there you didn’t even know it because it sounds like you’re doing it because it’s not really financial, not, you’re not doing it. You’ve already got a practice to thriving practice and money. Didn’t seem like a big motivator for you to start the business.

Bonnie Koo: You mean? Yeah, no it’s funny. Yeah. It’s a bit more on the radar now because don’t that I do it full-time but when I was starting it, it was looking back, like I wasn’t thinking so much about the money.

I just was interested in learning how, like the mechanics of building a business was really interested. And it still is. I love talking about business, like business coach. I don’t do that, like in terms of my offerings, but I love talking business with other entrepreneurs. Like I just find it super interesting and fascinating.

And so I really enjoyed learning how to create an online business like that. Like I said your immersion in all things business. So that was really fun to me. Like it was when I think about it, it was crazy because I was doing that while I was working full time.

Mike Woo-Ming: Wow. So where are you right now in terms of, you said your your coaching business is now full-time. Are you still seeing patients?

Bonnie Koo: No. I stopped seeing patients in person actually, when the pandemic started. And that wasn’t on purpose. Basically. I left para practice and I actually switched to locums, which gave me more flexibility in my schedule, so I was working, few weeks on few weeks off that sort of thing.

And so I thought that was be a better, just a better way to handle my time. Plus I got to travel to really cool places like I was in Hawaii for the winter, for example. But then when I returned from my last locals assignment was actually the end of February 20. And so we know what happened in March and the plan was to find a local part-time job in New Jersey or New York city.

And that didn’t happen because of the pandemic. And so I was like, okay, I’ll just work on my business. Full-time instead. And I was doing some tele Durham too, at the same time. That was super part-time though. And when jobs were becoming available, It was before the vaccine was, it was available. And I think I just was like, no, thanks.

I don’t really no desire to go back. And plus with the, the lack of vaccination at the time, I just figured why do I, why should I risk my health? Not just mine, but like exposing my family if I don’t have to. And so I haven’t looked back. It’s interesting. It’s not something I thought I would have.

Do like I wasn’t one of those people who was feeling really burned out about medicine or, itching to leave. It’s not something I’d ever thought I was do. But now that it’s been close to a year, I don’t, I miss certain aspects of, I think I just miss being with other physicians, I have to run through my business, and what I like even more is I get to talk to all physicians, not just dermatologists. So that’s, to me that’s really fun.

Mike Woo-Ming: So I’m really fascinated by this because I’ve loved seeing your journey and how you evolved in that. So what’s a typical day in the life of Dr. Bonnie Koo.

Bonnie Koo: So I’m trying to think, do I have a set schedule? And there’s somewhat of a schedule. I would say that the best thing about doing this full-time now is I don’t set an alarm clock. In the morning, because I don’t have to get ready to go to work. I naturally wake up between seven and eight. So this morning I woke up at 7:00 AM, for example.

So usually between 7 and 7:30 and I don’t schedule, I generally don’t schedule any calls until the afternoon. And there are certain days where I don’t schedule any calls. And so I would say, I like quote-unquote get to work between nine and 10:00 AM. That’s when I start. And I generally end by four or five.

I guess I technically work five days a week, but two days are like half days when I say off, it just means I’m not like actively working on the business, but I’ll be working out or doing something else instead.

Mike Woo-Ming: And then of course, you’ve got your family obligations, I guess we gotta fit those in too.

Bonnie Koo: Yeah, a toddler. And he goes to preschool and my partner, Matt, he does all the driving to and from school. So I love that. And most of the grocery shopping, all that kind of stuff.

Mike Woo-Ming: The so when the pandemic hit, you’ve mentioned prior to this, your revenue was basically sponsorship and speaking gigs. I assume the speaking gigs dry it up, obviously. And then was that replaced by your coaching program or where you, were you doing one-on-one coaching at the time or do you do group coaching? How does it break down now?

Bonnie Koo: So in 2019, I created my program money for women physicians. And that’s a digital course at the time. Now it’s a program and I’ll tell you the difference in a second. And then I started one-on-one coaching in 2020. And so now my revenue is, I don’t know the exact breakdown, but it’s mostly from the program, which includes group coaching. And then one-on-one clients as well.

Speaking, definitely dried up an epidemic. I think of speaking, not so much as a revenue maker for me, but more as a marketing, a way to offer yeah. Lead generator and just to get my name out, that sort of thing. That’s how I think about speaking. And so that’s why like negotiating speaking fees, like I’ll ha I do have a minimum, but I’m not too, I’m pretty flexible because I don’t think of it so much as a way to get paid.

I think of it more as a way to get my name out there. And yeah, programs and coaching. And then the difference between a course and a program in my mind at least is the course had a start and end date. When I say start and end date, a start end date for the live support, like weekly calls or a Facebook group or something like that.

And now it’s an ongoing program, which is like a, it’s like a hybrid between a course and a membership. Basically they pay one fee and it’s like a course and that they get the course. Live access doesn’t stop. It’s ongoing. And so when they people buy my program, they get the whole course at once and they can consume it like Netflix.

They can binge it or they can take their time. And there’s a weekly call usually with me once a week. And that is lifetime access. Meaning like it doesn’t end it’s it’ll end when the program, ends, but I have no plans to end that program. And then the Facebook group, as well as ongoing. And so I think it’s an amazing deal since. But they’re like, yeah. Yeah. So that’s the program. And then I take a limited number of one-on-one clients as well.

Mike Woo-Ming: Wow. Now, one of the things that really, new coaches and even, older coaches have problems with is pricing. Am I pricing myself? Is it too expensive? What will people think.

And oftentimes they just end up pricing it. So you know, so low that it really devalues it. Did you have issues with that in terms of pricing your programs and your one-on-one.

Bonnie Koo: I’m smiling. I don’t know. People can’t see that unless they watch the video. Because when I initially started my course in 2019 in my mind, I was like this is like the beta group.

This is like the founding member launch. You’ve heard that term before. And so I remember Sunny was my coach for all of 2019 and part of 2020. And I think I wanted to price it at something like 200 bucks. So it was something like that. And the reason why I picked that was I think I picked the price that Jim Dolly picked for his course, although his course, I think has actually four or 500, but it was basically, I picked a, a low, a hundred dollars.

And I remember when I told Sonny the price, I wanted to pick what, it was like two or 300 bucks. She like, she was like, I can see like the up on her ears. She’s what are you talking about anyway? So I think you’re right. I think we’re afraid to charge, and I think what helps us, cause I actually was coaching someone on pricing. It’s good to look at it. Ultimately, you get to charge whatever you want, but I think it’s good to do a little quote unquote market research has see examples just to see what the rip, but there’s always going to be a range.

So anyway, I settled on $1,000 for the first time I offered my program, now it’s $2,500. That’s what I tried. I think pricing drama is always, I think even for my one-on-one coaching, I went through many iterations. I actually started at $6,000 for three months, and then I actually lowered it to $6,000 for six months.

And again, I remember Sunny being really like why would you do that? And and now I charge more, but yeah, pricing, I think it’s interesting. And because I coach on money specifically, The person I was cooking the other day was a new coach. And I said, people never say no because of the money.

Like they might say, that’s the reason, like it was too expensive. Never the real reason people don’t pay it’s because they don’t see the value. They don’t understand the return on that investment.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. And that’s often a reflection of, the coach because we’ve, haven’t marketed our course appropriately. So that, that’s where, we’re where they’re having the disconnect. Yeah. And I’m sure you found that the higher you charge. I just said to, to have a better experience with a client or a better client.

Bonnie Koo: Yeah. So I’m in a business mastermind now, and we all have found that it’s much easier to sell more expensive things than lower expensive things.

So what I mean by that is selling a program, which is generally the lowest price of your offer. Is actually much harder to sell than a high-end one-on-one coaching package. Like I’ve definitely found that to be true, to some extent. And it’s funny because I started with the program and then moved to coaching, like one-on-one or high touch coaching, most coaches start with one-on-one coaching and then scale to a course or membership. And so it’s a different type of marketing.

Mike Woo-Ming: So what’s coming in the future. I understand you got a book coming out probably later in the year.

Bonnie Koo: Yeah. So my book’s coming out this fall of 2021 and it’s funny because I think that’s the first thing I wanted to write. Like when I first started all of this, like I even had a proposal written up and table of content, this was going to be more of a financial literacy book. And now the book is, a coaching, a money mindset book instead. And so it’s been fun to finally make the surreal reality. It’s bucket list for years at this point,

Mike Woo-Ming: I think too it, for me, it makes it more legit for yourself. Like my parents didn’t really care that I had a coaching business, but then when I came up with a book it’s like, “Oh, my sun finally made it!”

Bonnie Koo: I think a book definitely gives you that what’s the word not recognition. Establishes you as an expert in your field. Being an author still has that sort of panache, rather than I have a website, cause everyone can make a website. These days, everyone can offer one-on-one coaching. But to write a book is a big undertaking.

Mike Woo-Ming: I know. And it’s funny. It’s most of my, one of my coaching clients had never read my book, even though some of the things that I take from it. Are in, I share with my one-on-one coaching clients and, I think it’s the greatest lead generator out there.

You can sell it on Amazon and you’ll find people that, you never would have thought of out of reach, make, you can get more speaking gigs. There’s so many things that you can do with a book. I love this discussion because I love like you’re sharing all of this, how you got started with your coaching business.

Okay. And the last question, three books, you’d recommend that you’ve read. It doesn’t matter how that either influenced your life and got you to be the Wealthy Mom MD.

Bonnie Koo: So I actually don’t read a lot of books, but I will, I can think of three. I’m actually looking at my bookcase right now. So I actually really like Marie Forleo’s book.

Everything is Figureoutable. I love that. Yeah. And so that book is just all things, mindset, coaching, like it is basically. And that’s what I love about books because they’re assessable price-wise right. And so I liked that book a lot, even though I kinda knew everything in the book, so to speak, but it’s always good to hear it from another person’s perspective.

I’m trying to think what else actually, I just read a parenting book recently that I love, and I’ve been telling everyone about it. It’s called The Conscious Parent by Dr. Shefali. I just so good. And it’s the punchline is basically to really allow your kids to be who they are. And I think if you think of just letting them be who they are and not trying to, not, the parents are actively trying to diminish their kids, but a lot of times we want them to be a certain way, but, we all come out with everything we need and all the person to do a lot about this.

Bonnie Koo: Yeah. It’s just been a really eye-opening book just to basically we have to do our own inner work to be great parents, to just allow them to be who they are. So I just, Jack’s three and a half, these are things I’m thinking about. So that’s book number two, let’s see.

Book number three. I really liked the book Untamed by Glennon Doyle. And I think that’s mainly women read it. I liked it for a few reasons. One is. It is non-fiction, but it’s written as a series of short little stories. So some of the chapters are really short, some are longer, but they’re stories and lessons from her life. And it was just a really great way to learn about her sort of journey and the way she talks about it. So I like that book. So those are my three.

Mike Woo-Ming: Okay. So that’s everything is figureoutable untamed and the conscious parents or consequences. The conscious praying.

Now we really haven’t talked too much about your expertise, which is female helping with female physicians with finances. What are the biggest obstacles female physicians have when it comes to money and money management?

Bonnie Koo: Yeah. I’m trying to think of how to answer that question. I think the obstacle and this isn’t specific towards female physicians per se. I think it’s for all women, but if you just think about it, The way we are socialized. And I think that this is like a female specific thing, the way we’re socialized around money as a woman.

And then, because we’re all physicians, there’s like another layer of socialization, meaning we don’t like to think about we’re helping people and getting paid to help people like there’s this kind of like guilt and maybe even shame around that a little bit. And then as most women ignore them, Especially if they have a male partner, cause that’s still a thing where the male spouse will handle the finances and not the woman.

It’s definitely changing. Plus we don’t have women don’t have as many examples of rich women as men do you know? And so if I asked you Mike to close your eyes and think of a rich person, what would that person look like? Martha Stewart. People usually think of a white and old white man, right? Oh yeah.

That’s what I meant. Yeah. And yeah, because examples we have of, there’s obviously wealthy women, but there aren’t that many. And then also women, we feel guilty about money. If some, if a woman, the entrepreneurial world, people are very transparent about money, that’s one of the great things about entrepreneurship, but women feel like they have to justify it.

Why they want to make more money themselves. They feel like they have to think of a reason. And if they say it like publicly other women will often chime in, like, why do you want to make that much? But if I said it to a man, they’d be like, cool. I was just an example. Like it’s a stereotype.

So there’s a lot of sort of barriers to that. So women, I think a lot of us, we don’t. A lot of us will even say, I hear what lot of women say money’s not that important, or I don’t need that much money. That kind of language is used a lot. So I know that wasn’t, that was a lot of different answers to your question, but that’s, those are the sorts of types of barriers that I see.

Plus a lot of women really don’t think they can make that much money. Cause I asked this question in my group from time to time, how much money do you want to make? And I have them write a number… like I guess like an annual salary, whatever. And there’s a range of numbers. They starts at 200, then it goes up to over a million, but it’s always, they say the number, then there’s a, “but” after the number, but I don’t want to work much on that number, but I only work part-time. So I don’t know if I could really make that because most of us have conflated money with time. If you work part-time that means you have, that means you have to make less.

Mike Woo-Ming: Interestingly enough though, in terms of like entrepreneurship, at least when it comes to physicians, I would say the majority are women.

Bonnie Koo: I have no idea. Actually. That’d be an interesting survey. I haven’t even thought about that, to be honest, it’d be interesting too, because I think there’s a lot of, and you probably know more than I do, Mike. I think there’s a lot of physician entrepreneurs. I’m not even aware about it. They don’t hang out with an entrepreneur, like doing their own thing, which is great. So I think there’s a lot more out there than,

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, I think I find ways to pinpoint it, I think in terms of the physician slash entrepreneur slash influencer space, like becoming a coach or become a consultant Tor I tend to see more women in that. I don’t know why.

Bonnie Koo: Yeah for coach in the coaching world, I think for sure.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. Yeah. And so tell us about your successes. Cause I know you do, you’ve done a lot of coaching and I always love to hear about like the successes that you’ve done, because that’s what drives you. That’s what drives your business, tell us about the students and how you felt them.

Bonnie Koo: Yeah. It’s so fun to see before and afters and what I mean by that? What’s nice now is because I started my program in 2019. So now it’s 2021. So now I can really see where the people were in 2019 and where they are now. And there’s one person that a few people that come to mind, but one person in particular, I remember, cause I remember like being on calls with her in 2019, and she was completely new to money like that should a financial advisor.

She’s married. She has kids and just let the advisor handle everything and knew very little about money in general. Two years later now she’s invested in multiple real estate investments and is actually an entrepreneur now, too. Like she’s creating a product, a digital product, an app, actually. And then, so a lot of my clients will invest in real estate because that’s a natural vehicle for wealth building, besides the stock market. And so it’s, and somewhat, some of them have become coaches and entrepreneurs, not everyone does, but a lot of them it’s interesting. Because now that I’ve. Transitioned to mindset, coaching more than strategy coaching. It’s just really amazing. It just, even in physicians, how we really limit the way we practice and live.

Let me give you an example. I think everyone, just a lot of us subscribe to, okay, I’ll get a job. And even that’s a relatively recent thing because there was a time as I’m sure where most of us. Starting their own practice, but now it’s most doctors get a job. So I think most people who graduate a little bit later, I’ll get a job and then I’ll work for 30, 40 years until I retire.

That’s just what we’ve subscribed to. And I think people are starting to question that. So my clients question that, but mainly because they’re under, I coached them. And so it’s like, why you don’t have to accept that as the way to live your life. And I think it’s like people to start thinking like, Who made this up?

Like this full-time versus part-time I actually looked into it, Mike, and it’s fun. The industrial revolution, this whole lake 40 hour work week, Monday through Friday was it’s all made up. And, but like most of society subscribes to it. So for example, like today’s a Tuesday, and I had 12, o’clock my partner. And I went outside. We live in a high rise building. We have a large amenities deck with barbecue grills and. Pool and a pool. And we went to grill we’ve growed lunch and hung out in the sun. I was going to go for a swim, but I had to come back to talk with you, Mike.

Mike Woo-Ming: This has been illuminating at time and I really commend you and what you’ve done you probably don’t see yourself like this, but you really are one of the pioneers who helped. Pay it forward and now spring other people to start their own business. And I love that you gave us insight about your business because I think that we’re really elucidate and help others to get into space. And I love it. Where can they go to for if someone wants to work with you, what’s the best place to go to contact you?

Bonnie Koo: Yeah. Everything is Wealthy Mom MD. So wealthymommd.com. That’s @wealthymommd for Instagram. They can find me there.

Mike Woo-Ming: All right. I’m curious. So I know you didn’t really answer the first question which is where you got came up, the name Wealthy Mom MD when you felt like, yeah, you could actually do it. Cause long ago I bought the domain name, millionairemd.com and I use that as a goal for me. And then I was at my first million in my early thirties. Did you have the domain name before you actually had your successful business as a way of motivating yourself, or you really just said, this is who I am and that’s what I’m going to declare to the world.

Bonnie Koo: No, I, so my business started out as Ms. Bonnie MD I would just was like, I’ll just pick that. I bought that domain, that I was the blog and I, after few years I hired a professional web designer and they were like, “We’re still going to use Ms. Bonnie MD,” and that’s I think at some point during the design process, and this was like, and branding, I was like, I think I should change the name because Ms. Bonnie MD is doesn’t really tell us anything about what I do and I spent some time brainstorming names. Like actually one of the names was Rich Bitch MD, and I bought that domain name. Cause I was like, this is so fun. I still, I own it, but I don’t think I’m going to do anything with it. And I think Wealthy Mom MD won out finally.

And it’s funny cause I don’t know if I thought of it as am I the wealthy mom Dee or is that my client? And I think to this day, I don’t really define that, but I guess. It doesn’t really matter. It’s an aspirational brand name is how I think about it. I bought the domain name afterwards and it was available.

Mike Woo-Ming: Obviously we retreated to money, but wealth could be a whole bunch of things, different things, not just at this financial. So thank you again, Dr. Bonnie Koo. I know you’ve got some barbecuing or something or swimming you’ve got to do, and I really appreciate the time. Go check out her website, wealthymommd.com.

She’s got some courses. I know right now you you do some group coaching it’s close right now, but You have some contact information whenever it opens up, you guys wanna, you guys want to know how to get access to that? So again, Bonnie, thanks again for joining us on the program. And I really do appreciate your time.

How to Overcome Debt and Still Fulfill Your Dreams as a Physician Entrepreneur with Brent Lacey, MD

What is your relationship with money?

I know that sounds like a weird question, but medical doctors seem to have an unusual relationship with money, and most notably, debt.

How do you start a business If you have big burdensome medical school loans hanging over you? Or should you? Here to help answer these questions is gastroenterologist and financial expert Dr. Brent Lacey.

We discuss his origin on becoming a financial coach starting at his church, how his upbringing and military career influenced his thinking, and how he educates financial issues with physicians today. He also has a very interesting take on the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement.

The Scope of Practice – Brent Lacey’s Podcast and Financial Coaching Website
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RAW TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: One of the biggest obstacles that plays physicians wanting to start their own business is debt. Most likely their medical school debt. Today. We’ve got an expert who is also a physician. He podcasts about dad. He’s a gastroenterologist and he helps other physicians deal with debt and how best to get over this so that they can find an accomplishment they want to accomplish by interview with Dr. Brent Lacey on this episode of BootstrapMD.

Hey guys, it’s Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another episode of BootstrapMD. This is the podcast for physician entrepreneurs. I am excited for my next guest. We actually had collaborated on a lot of different projects in the space on, on entrepreneurship. And I knew kind of early on that, like there’s some doctors who like get it or kind of.

But I think this doctor got it in terms of just like I was impressed. We working on a project and there were some areas where you have a group. When you have a kind of a group of people, all with kind of different agendas, you really need someone kind of like to take charge and to like, The group into getting into the mission.

And I think probably it comes from his military background is where he got it. This gentleman is a gastroenterologist was formerly in the military for 15 years helping and again, thank you for your service to our country, sir. And is now a. In private practice as a get dressed or all this, but he’s, you may have known him by his podcast and his website, the scope of practice, where he talks about financial literacy and how he helps his, his fellow colleagues medical, as well as dental professionals and helping them build their wealth in eliminating debt.

So we got a true expert on the call. I’m so excited to talk to you today. Dr. Brent Lacey. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today.

Dr. Brent Lacey: Thanks for having me, Mike. I really appreciate it. I’m super pumped about it. It’s gonna be a lot.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I am super pumped. I’m in San Diego now we’re a military town. You did some time here in, in San Diego. Is that right?

Dr. Brent Lacey: Oh, I loved my time in San Diego. That was residency and fellowship. So we were there for six years. Loved it, loved it, loved it. And now we’re in Dallas, but yeah, I know San Diego. Well, I definitely need to go back and visit it. So.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Although I wasn’t in the military, my dad was in the air force and he did summer.

He was in the national guard as well. But I’ve married a Navy a brat. My father-in-law was in the Navy for, he was a nom and in 20 plus years and so I learned, How to be respectful too. And we would periodically at Thanksgiving he would invite, someone who couldn’t make it back to their family, invite them for dinner.

So I’ve a big respect for the military. I, I, sometimes they do some disability evaluations for the military in my clinic. So I can imagine though, that. How does someone who is a gastroenterologist now have one up and rising a podcast, the scope of practice, how does that happen?

Dr. Brent Lacey: So I think it’s the way a lot of entrepreneurs start is you start with an idea, you start with a passion, you start with a desire to solve a problem or to help people.

So for me, it began probably really began about eight years ago or so. I will. Starting to observe that when people, when physicians are coming out of training, that they’re really good at being physicians. And frankly, pretty lousy on the, in the most part on a, basically anything having to do with business and anything having to do with personal finances.

It’s not everybody, but there was an awfully high number of people that were kind of a mess with their finances and really. Didn’t have a great idea of how to actually start and grow and run a clinical practice because they just never had that experience. And I was blessed to have some really outstanding experiences in college, especially that really helped me understand business at a deep level.

And I really felt like that was something that was not being taught effectively or at all in medical schools. And that that needed to change because when we come out of training, we are expected to be leaders on day one, we’re clinical leaders, we’re business leaders, we’re leaders in our home and in our community, people look up to us.

And so we’re not trained for that. And I think we all need to be, so that was the main reason why I started the scope of practice was so we could help people, help physicians learn how to manage their business more successfully and master the personal finance.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: So how, how did you first get involved?

Was this like a, w with your family and like, when you’re talking about money, we, we get all weirded out, right. W with relatives, and we don’t want to talk about money and people don’t talk about how much, how much they make. Like, how does that start? Did you dislike, volunteer yourself to your friends and family?

Hey, I can, I can help you out. How did, how did that begin?

Dr. Brent Lacey: Well, so for me, I started out by teaching Dave Ramsey’s financial peace university at my church. And I think I taught that 12 or 13 times probably, and coached a lot of people at various income levels to eliminate debt, start building wealth figure out how to save for retirement.

Things like that. After I’d done that. I’d been doing that for a couple of years. And I remember there was one of the, our nurses at my hospital was also a member of my church. And she asked if I could come give a talk to the, or nurses on how to manage the thrift savings plan, which is the military’s version of the 401k.

And so I said, sure, let’s go do it. And then I got asked subsequently by the . To do a talk for them. And then I just started getting asked more and more. Hey, can you come talk to this clinic? Can you come talk to that? That area of the hospital. The thing that was really interesting to me is that I kept getting the same six or eight questions every single time I would give one of these talks.

It was, it was interesting. And I know you had kind of a similar background where you started in FAQ for for residents or for, for aspiring residents. People wanted to go into residency, tried to figure out how to get to the residency of their choice. And so I said to myself, well, it’d be great.

If I had an FAQ or a, or a blog or something where I had a bunch of articles where I could just say, Hey, I’ve got that answered. Here’s the site. Just go check it out. I wrote a whole thing about it for you. And then I thought. Hey, why don’t I just do that? What does it take to start a blog? Anyway, w w w what do you need, how do you make a website?

Do you have a, have a domain name I’ve, w what you even do for that? So I hopped on line and started looking up, literally just Googled. How do you start a blog? And just started, just started reading and trying to figure it out and sorta muddle my way through it. And the first attempt at a blog first attempt at a website was.

Terrible. Oh my gosh. It was so bad. And and so, but I learned a lot from that first experience and built a better site and then a better one and eventually built it to what it is now. And it’s, it’s just been a lot of fun, but the core of it has always stayed the same. The core is that at my heart, I consider myself a teacher.

I mean, teaching is my spiritual gift and I really feel like that’s what I can offer the world is a. Is an ability to simplify concepts that other people find complex and get people, the tools and resources they need to succeed in the journey that they’re on.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: As I mentioned, your gastroenterologist you’re in a group practice of other gastroenterologists you’re full-time you’re on-call.

You got a family? What compels you? You said you’re a teacher, but there’s different ways that you can teach how, having a podcast, a regular five tests. There’s a lot of time and it sounds like you don’t have a lot of time. What keeps you going? Or has it always been 100% positive or have you had weeks?

So maybe it’s just me where it’s like, oh man, I just don’t have the time to do this. How do I keep going? Or has that not happened

Dr. Brent Lacey: with you? Oh, it’s, it’s definitely happened. And I I’m, I’m a pretty positive person by nature. So I think. I think part of it, they kept me going early on is that I didn’t understand the sheer scope of failure that is possible.

And so I think it, I think it’s sort of an ignorance is bliss. This thing early on was, was somewhat protective. And then as you get farther along, you realize, oh my gosh, this thing is. Time consuming and it’s, and it’s difficult and it’s it’s you don’t and a lot of times you don’t know what kind of an impact you’re making, but I get feedback.

I get emails, I get calls from people saying, Hey, I listened to this podcast episode that you had, and it just touched me in a way that was really important. So thank you for. For, for bringing that to me. And, someone would say, oh, I’ve been really struggling with this area at work.

And the way that you broke that concept down really gave me the understanding that I needed to break through on my own problems. And every time I get one of those I, it just, it motivates me to keep going. I actually have a folder on my. In my email inbox that I created called encouragement.

And every time I get one of those emails, I save it in that folder. And so anytime I’m feeling like, man, what is the point of this? Is this really worth it? In my mind, I say, okay, I need to go back and read some of those and I’ll go back to that folder and I’ll just pull up three or four emails and I’ll just read them.

And I was like, okay, these are my people. This is why I do what I do. These are the guys and the gals that I write for that I speak for that I coach for, this is why I keep doing what I’m doing. And it just, it just motivates me to keep going.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I love it also too. I think, as someone who’s done podcasts, this is.

So reading content inclination of doing a podcast, but this certainly has been the longest that I’ve been doing it for the last two and a half years. It also gets you get to meet some really cool people that you wouldn’t get exposed to. I mean like yourself, we would have not probably met. But we’re in a Dr.

Podcast at work. We’ve done some things with so many docs and just having people on the call, but I want to find a guest it’s because. I got to know what they’re doing. I am, it’s not only just teaching, it’s also, learning. It’s like, I want to learn what, what they’re doing. What’s that all about?

Dr. Brent Lacey: Do you get that as well? Oh my gosh. I mean, some of the people that I’ve gotten to meet just by having a podcast platform, It blows my mind that I get to meet these people and consider them friends really. So, I, my first episode of the podcast was with physician on fire. I mean, he and I are on a first name basis.

And you never think about that. I mean, it’s. Who the heck am I? I’m just some guy here in Dallas, just, speaking on the airwaves. But, but I mean, he w he we’re in each other’s cell phones and, I, I got to meet I got to meet a guy named Scott Miller was on my podcast. He’s a, he’s one of the senior leadership thought leaders for Franklin Covey.

Like he studied under Stephen Covey as in the seven habits of highly effective people. He reached out to me because of the podcast and said, Hey, I would love to, I’d love to. Be a guest on your podcast. Like great, awesome. Let’s do it. But some of the people that you get to meet is it’s true. It’s just some amazing people.

I had a guest on the podcast recently that he has grown a functional medicine practice in Houston, Texas, and has 600,000 social media followers. And we’re the same, we’re the same age. And he’s built this tremendous, tremendous following that he’s coaching people on how to, how to manage their diabetes better, how to be more healthy, how to live more well balanced lives.

I mean, just people, no one whose name you didn’t necessarily have heard of. And yet they’re doing just incredible things.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Well, I definitely got as a practice owner myself, I definitely got to listen to that that interview. So, so it’s more than, w when they say entrepreneurship, people think, well, you’re just in it to make money.

And certainly you’re going to need money to, to really amplify your message. And does that gets me to this. This relationship we have with money. I’ve alluded it to, we don’t like to tell people like how much money we make and we don’t like, we feel weirded out and maybe it’s just with physicians and maybe, and you could certainly speak about it.

What do you think this weird relationship between physicians and money have to do? Do you ha do you have a problem? Have you seen that with your, with your client where you talk about money?

Dr. Brent Lacey: A hundred percent. We have a few problems, but I think the, the chief problem is that we don’t. Have training for money and we have an inappropriate relationship with money as we go through school.

And what I mean by that specifically is that we become numb to the idea of having debt. It just becomes this thing that follows us around like a, like a stray cat and no offense, if you like cats, I mean, cats are great. So go cat people. But, but you think about it when you come out of college and then you come out of med school, you’ve been.

Probably on student loans for eight years, the average medical school graduate has about $300,000 in debt from just student loans. And that doesn’t count if you’ve got a car payment or a mortgage or credit cards or furniture loans or whatever, but you may have 300, 500, $800,000 in debt. Maybe more than that.

If you’re a dual physician, couple. You start to become numb to it because it’s this thing that just exists with you. And so, we stopped thinking of money. As, as money we stopped thinking of it as a tangible entity, it’s this theoretical concept. And so spending it and saving it doesn’t have exactly the same meaning as something that would be, hard currency.

We just think of it as this. Like I said, just this a theorial thing. And so, we tend not to pay attention to how we spend the money. We tend not to. Consider it a priority to eliminate debt. We tend not to recognize how much we are failing to reach our own financial goals, simply because we are not strategically thinking about how we spend and how we save and how we give our money over a long period.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Now you’re in a practice. You work with your partner is, or you’re employed by a number of gastroenterologists. How have you applied your financial. Education in the practice.

Dr. Brent Lacey: So, so for me, it’s, it’s one of those things that you have to be just a little bit careful about inserting yourself into someone’s life.

If they don’t want you to be, you’re not

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: taking over the books.

Dr. Brent Lacey: I got this right now. No, no. So I started off college as a business major and. My first accounting class convinced me I needed to do something else. So, so I don’t do accounting. I don’t do a, I don’t do the finances for the group. I mean, the group is so big.

We need a chief financial officer who’s really savvy with business tax law and things like that. So, but I will tell you that I do, I do some coaching. Formerly with a lot of my nurses and my MAs and our staff folks that just want to know simple stuff. Like how do you run a budget? How do you save for retirement?

What’s the difference between a Roth and a traditional IRA? What’s the match in my 401k. What’s how do I, what are some tax advantage ways that I can save for college? Things like that. And a lot of times it’s as simple as just living your own. Living your own philosophy, living your own life and showing people by example what you do.

And so I drive a 10 year old Toyota and whenever I pull up into the end of the parking lot at work, well, I pull I’m the, I’m always the first one there. So I guess it’s empty. But when, when I’m leaving at the end of the day and I go, I go by and I see, big old Dodge, Ram truck.

And I see a Mercedes and I see a BMW and I see it Tesla. And I see all these different cars. That’s fine, and I don’t know none of that’s evil. I mean, go, if you like cars could get you a car, go get you a nice car. That’s fine. But. I drive a 10 year old beat up Toyota that I’ve had for years and years and years.

And my staff sees that they’re like, can’t you afford to have a nicer car. I’m like, heck yeah, I can afford to have a nicer car, but I’d rather have a 401k. I’d rather have my IRA. I’d rather have a. Solid nest egg that tells me that working becomes optional at some point, if that’s what I want or that secures my financial future for when I retire and my wife and I decided we want to do other things, I’ve, I’m being deliberate about what I’m planning.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: And where did that come from? Where did you come from humble beginnings? Was it through your, your teaching with Dave Ramsey that, it’s, it’s increasingly harder to find that it’s nice to say, but you know, I’ve been through some hospitals and, I haven’t seen too many. Things less than a BMW three series and the, and the doctor lied.

So, is it an anomaly where did, where did this come from? This, this, being the, the financial literate and, and, and watching,

Dr. Brent Lacey: watching your money. So it actually came from my parents. I was very blessed early on. To have parents that were really intentional, very deliberate about teaching us sound financial strategies.

So, there was a summer when I was, I think I was 14 or 15, maybe 15. And the, there was a week where it just happened. My brother and my sister and I were all away for a week. I think my sister was visiting our grandparents, my brother and I were at scout camp or something. And we learned that we. We can’t leave our parents alone for an extended period of time because they start to plot.

And so when we came home, they, they, they take us all out to lunch and said, and announced, we have a new financial plan for the family. We are going to create the Lacy financial plan. And so what they did is they increased everyone’s allowance pretty substantially. Like for me, it was, I think, $75 a month or a hundred dollars a month or something.

And then they said, and you are never allowed to ask for money from us ever. Wow. And we’re like, wait, say what? And so it was, it was, it was formalized. We had a thing that we had a typed out. We signed it. It was this very formal event actually is kind of hilarious. But they said, they said, okay, so room and board is free.

You can live in the house and eat the food at our table for free. You, and they said they would pay for car insurance because car insurance was prohibitively expensive, especially for a 16 year old guy in Dallas county, it was crazy expensive. So they said, bye. If you want, if you want to buy a car, then you will save up the money and buy a car yourself.

If you want to put gas in that car, you will buy the gas for your car. I had to buy my own clothes. I had to buy my own. If I wanted to buy lunch at school, I was buying lunch at school with my own money if I wanted to take. So I started making myself a lot of sandwiches after that. And I started paying attention.

I started paying attention to. To sales and discounts. I started, I learned how to balance a checkbook. I mean, my dad and I learned how to, he taught me how to balance a checkbook. I learned how to make a budget. I started we, they had a, sort of a makeshift 401k program that they created for us. So I had just phenomenal financial training from my parents.

And I know that most people didn’t benefit from that, which is one of the reasons why. I was so passionate about starting with the financial planning and the financial coaching with the Dave Ramsey stuff. And then it has just blossomed and frankly exploded from there.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. I, I, I I’m the same way. My parents were, well, I call them cheap.

Let’s let’s face it. I, we didn’t go out to eat we, everything was made at home and, and. I took that same mentality to my, to my own kids. And one thing that I I’ve always been like yourself, we’re not, we don’t have any financial education. And I had them do book reports on like improving your financial literacy and book reports on personal development and, Hated it, but it came to the point where it actually, it actually kind of sunk in because when he had his first job, he wasn’t looking to get, the Mexico car.

He was like, Hey dad, can I open my Vanguard account? I want to, put away money. I want to make sure that I’m investing to for my future. I’m like, oh, maybe that’s did a few things right. As a dad, but it’s so important. Why do you think where do you see areas. When you’re working with doctors, they’re coming to you for financial help.

Are you seeing any patterns? What’s? I would assume like the big medical student loan, that’s usually the biggest the biggest cause of concern or is there

Dr. Brent Lacey: something else? No, I think that is the biggest monster that’s out there is really the student loans, mainly because it’s just the biggest number, but that’s not the actual problem.

The. Isn’t the number of the debt. The problem really is your mindset around debt because any amount of debt can be eliminated it, but it requires an act of will. And it requires a. Regular regular discipline to eliminate it. And so a lot of physicians lack one or the other, or they just never quite turn the corner and activate one or the other.

So maybe they say, man, I wish I didn’t have all the student loans, but then they never sit down and say, okay, well how much do I make? How much am I spending? Am I upside down on that? What do I need to be cutting in my life? What do I need to not be spending money on? It’s like when you’re trying to lose weight, there’s, there’s, there’s a plan.

And then there’s a wish, right? I wish I was skinny, but I don’t want to put the work in, it’s like, everybody, everybody knows what you need to do to lose weight, but everybody likes to. And it’s just, it’s just reality. And at some point you have to decide that in the case of money, you have to decide that the pain of being shackled debt and having your your life choices limited and having your career choices limited is, is greater than the pain of sacrificing certain pleasures in the moment in favor of having that money available to knock out the debt faster.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Now, I know you, you, you teach on a Dave Ramsey and I kind of know how he thinks on this, but I’m curious cause we all, I know you learn from him, but you’ve, I’m sure you’ve also learned to develop your own principles. That, I mean, you’re here about one of the things that I see with some of my clients is they want to do investing, but then they have this big debt and, and.

Some say, well, don’t even think about investing. You got to worry about this debt first deal with that. What, what do you say to someone? Because there’s a lot of people out there thinking of this exact

Dr. Brent Lacey: thing. Yeah. It’s if you want to start a rumble or if you want to, if you want to just have some fun just go on white coat investors or go on some, a financial group and just drop that question in there.

Should I pay off my debt or should I invest while I’m there? Yeah, well, I’m an early career physician and just watch people go at each other. It’s amazing. How much, how much passion people have for both sides. Here’s my thought about it. There is nothing good about debt in your life. There’s no such thing as good debt.

That’s not a thing. If there was such a good thing, if there was such a thing as good debt, we would gift rapid and put it underneath the tree at Christmas and we just don’t do that. So the, the thing that I always recommend to folks is that debt elimination needs to be a very high priority for you, especially when you are an early career physician, because if you don’t take the bull by the horns, when.

When it’s early, you won’t do it. You just won’t. I mean, statistics have shown because you’ll buy a big house. You’ll, you’ll get you’ll, you’ll lease a Tesla, you’ll Lisa Maserati or whatever, which again, there’s nothing evil about it, any of those things. And if you like cars, you like a big house. You like private schools for your kids.

Go get you some that’s fine. But if you can’t afford it, then you look up and a year later, like, man, how do I have $150,000 more in debt now than when I started at the beginning of it? And, but by then the it’s, it’s like trying to turn the Titanic. I mean, you’ve got the big house, you’ve got the, your kids are established in school.

It’s going to be real hard to downsize all that stuff. So start early. That’s, that’s really one of the keys and you have to decide that it’s, that it’s going to be something that’s important to you, but it requires a conscious decision. It requires an act of will and There’s going to be a lot of peer pressure.

Right? So one of the things, one of the, I think the third episode of my podcast was with Sarah Stanley philosopher. She and her father, Thomas Stanley wrote the book, the next millionaire next door, which is a follow-up to Stanley’s early work, the millionaire next door. And it was a phenomenal conversation.

And she, one of the things that she talks about is the importance of social indifference. Not that we don’t care about the people in our neighborhood. But then we become sort of numb or, or maybe a better word would be immune to the things that other people are doing. So you’ve heard of the phrase keeping up with the Joneses.

Well, the Joneses are all on Facebook now and everything that we post on Facebook is Pinterest. Perfect. And it’s like, oh my God, gosh, look at my vacation and look at my new car and look at my new house and all. That’s great. And I am excited to celebrate those things with my friends and family. Yeah.

And so we, we don’t want to be jealous of those people, but at the same time, we don’t want to look at that and go, well, when’s it going to be my turn? That is one of the most. Most harmful things that you can think to yourself, when’s it going to be my turn? Because as soon as you utter that phrase, you think, well, why not now?

Which then turns into so now. And so you have to allow yourself to participate and celebrate other people’s successes without deciding you have to imbibe that for yourself. If you’re not materially ready.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I thought that exact thing is keeping up with the Joneses and, and, I know a number of colleagues who are like, oh yeah, I got to get the next best thing.

What you don’t see off it is, Hey, you get it. That a expensive sports car they’re leasing that they’re behind in their payments for that beautiful Caribbean vacation that they had. You got to go into the right school and you’re paying, hundred of thousands when maybe. Public charter school.

Hey, they’re doing some things that you, if you could volunteer your time and you’re getting the same education, and I think, you know that your millionaire next door, what that taught me, I read that, that’s books been around for years, but just these average people driving those ten-year-old Toyotas, right.

That are millionaires that you don’t see. Those are the ones who are, who, really Are at a good position to both wise and as more and more with the debt, we, we love dad, right? We love that. Like it like in social media, it’s not, it’s not exactly true. I wanna, I wanna get your take on fire because that’s something that has.

Has for the last few years, this, financial independence retire early you mentioned you interviewed the physicians on fire, but it certainly would not without controversy. What, what’s your, your take on it? People who, saving though, you can look at it another way where they’re saving every penny so they can retire in their forties and fifties.

What do you think about that philosophy? I’m going to put you out, yeah.

Dr. Brent Lacey: I wanna get your thoughts on this. It’s a great question. And I, I’m a big proponent of financial independence. I am not a big proponent of retire early for me at least. But I’m not opposed to it for other people necessarily.

So if you want to get yourself into a position that you can retire at age 50, I mean, that’s fine. You can do that. I still love going to work every day. I work with the best GI group in the country, and I have a phenomenal team of nurses and medical assistants has worked with me and I get to do work that is meaningful with people that I love in a community that I care about.

I can’t imagine giving that up. But that’s me. And so for me, I, I still, I still love going to work every day, so yeah. But I really am a big proponent of the financial independence aspect of the fire movement. So I consider myself not fire, but Firo it’s like financial ended up financial independence, retire, optional.

So the, the value of financial independence is that it gives you choices. It gives you flexibility. And so, for example, if you are someone. $500,000 in student loan debt. And you have decided you’re going for the public student loan, public student loan forgiveness program. Then you may be shackled to that job for 3, 4, 6 years, just in order to make sure that you’re able to achieve that loan forgiveness at the end.

Well, if you’re able to eliminate that, great and you’re serving in an underserved community. That’s awesome. Yeah. What happens then if three years into your six year term, a golden opportunity comes up for you to join a premier group within three miles or 10 miles of your family. And, it’s, it’s more money than you could ever dream of.

And more importantly, you get to be close to everything that you want to be close to. You, you get to be close to your family or your wife’s family or your husband’s family. And you have to say. No, I’m going to have to pass on it. Cause I really need to stay in this other job for three years, or here’s a better example.

Let’s say you’re in a job and you feel like you really need it because of the money, because you’re shackled to all this debt, but it’s a toxic work environment or there’s you’ve got sexual harassment with, from one of your bosses and you just feel like you’re, you’re trapped, right? Being debt free gives you a tremendous amount of freedom and a tremendous amount of choices.

And that’s going back to that question. You asked me earlier, should you invest or should you pay off debt? That’s the thing that I think a lot of people who are proponents of the investing strategy I think that’s where people kind of miss out on their risk analysis is they, they treat those two things as equal.

And what, what that, what a dollar invested. May equal a dollar paid off in student loan debt. And yes, you can make more in theory by investing in the stock market at 7% on average, then you can at eliminating a student loan at say 3% or 4% that’s mathematically valid. But what that fails to take into account is.

And loss of autonomy and, and minimization of choices. And for me, that was such a, such a, an, a critical thing that we wanted to achieve my wife and I decided that we wanted to live so far below our means that we would pay off all of our student loan debt before I finished fellowship. And we did it with a year to go and it facilitated a career.

That we absolutely would not have been able to contemplate had we still had $600,000 or a hundred thousand or, or however many thousands of loan dollars in loan debt that we might’ve had. And so I think for me, it’s really important to make debt elimination a priority. The one exception that I will say that I do give for folks is that if you have a match in your 401k, like if your employer offers say a 5% match, Invest enough to give a, to get up to the match.

And then everything else goes on to student loans. Cause I just mathematically, I can’t bring myself to, to not take free money. So, so I’m a big fan of that, but otherwise I say, yeah, get rid of the debt, get it out of your life. And man, the grass just feels different when you walk on it and you’re, debt-free, you’re your car drives differently when, when you’re debt free.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: I was blessed to actually, I would, I was retired from medicine in my mid thirties. But like you said, I came back because. Well, it’s, it’s actually could get boring. There’s so many, you can have only so much Netflix, you kid, you can watch it and I’m a horrible golfer. So, but that’s why I talk about in my book, physician’s position is I love medicine.

And so I had to come back to this time as an employer and we do offer a 401k. So, yeah, th they, I don’t see why sometimes they don’t take the max cause that is free money. Hey, we’re just at the end of time, this has been so fascinating. Where can they go to get more information about, about you. About what you do and how you help other

Dr. Brent Lacey: doctors, the best way is to connect through the website, which is the scope of practice.com.

And you can access the blog archives. You can access the podcast from there some online courses that are, that are going up now. And and so, people can get that reading list. If they’re interested, that’s the scope of practice.com/reading. And with all the financial stuff we’ve been talking about.

I think what people might be interested in as a, as a PDF guide that are put together called three critical tools to level up your family’s finances. So it’ll help you create a budget. It’ll help you set some reachable long-term financial goals and it’ll help you start having. Money conversations with your spouse, that don’t end in a fight which money fights and money problems are the biggest source of stress and strife in marriage.

And so if you can get that right, you can get almost anything, right. So people can download that if they want@thescopeofpractice.com slash. No money fights. So the scope of practice.com/no money fights. And yeah, there’s a, there’s lots more on the, on the site, so, and the podcast. So definitely come check it out and people need to come check out your episode.

That’s coming up. So we’re going to have Dr. Mike on the podcast real soon. So people need to come see that.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming: Yep. Very good. I always liked that. Cross-promotion thank you again, Brent. Thanks again for sharing all this wealth and knowledge gut check out of sight V scope of practice.com who knew that a gastroenterologists will give you so much advice.

I’m financial matters. Thanks again, Fred. And thanks for every one of you that are out there. Remember. If you’re stuck, you got that big debt. You, you can, you can talk about it. You can complain about it, but sometimes you may need to do something about it. And that’s, when you need help go find someone like bred to help you out.

Why look at your debt, see what you can do to, to reduce it. And as always guys keep moving forward.

How to Become a Physician Coach (Step by Step)

So You Want to Be a Physician Coach?

But you think the whole process might be too convoluted or complicated?

When our company launched PhysicianCoaches.com we got a lot of buzz.

So it was understandable that there was a lot of interest of people wanting to become coaches themselves.

As physicians, let’s face it, we can often complicate things.

Having worked with coaches, hiring coaches, and being a coach myself, I’m going to break it down. into ten easy steps.

But before we do that… there’s one IMPORTANT THING.

If you’re currently working as a physician, be sure your current workplace allows you to freelance and start your own side business.

Even if the are you are considering is completely nonclinical. I’ve seen too many doctors who had to shut down their coaching practice because their employer won’t let them.

Re-read your contract and be sure to talk to your HR department.

And ONE MORE THING, remember that starting a business isn’t guaranteed success.

Because as a physician coach, you are running your own business.

You are an entrepreneur.

You need to be able to understand that hustling means you’ll need to market yourself.

Some people aren’t very comfortable doing that.

Remember, there is risk anytime you start a business.

With that of the way, let’s talk Step-By-Step how YOU can become a physician coach.

Here we go!!!

Step #1: Decide on Your Coaching Niche.

What are you good at?

What knowledge do you have?

What specialized expertise that you could share that would directly impact somebody’s life?

If you don’t know, ask your friends or people who have helped you already.

How has their life benefited from what you know?

Now if you haven’t, don’t worry, we’ll cover that soon.

And is it something that people would want to pay for?

Generally, people pay for things that improve in one of these 3 areas:

Health, Wealth, and Relationships.

Health is easy to understand. You’ve been doing that your entire career.

Wealth is about making money. It could be anything from investing advice to helping someone pass their medical boards.

Relationships covers everything from improving their marriage to finding their soul mate.

As an example, one of my students makes money by buying houses and converting them into short-term rentals (aka AirBNB)

She makes steady passive income and is really good at it.

Well obviously that’s a skill other doctors would want to know.

And that’s a skill that she can teach other people.

Just like we learned in medical school:

Do one, see one, teach one.

Now an example of a bad coaching niche would be identifying the name of bands from one hit wonders from the 90’s.

(Any Right Said Fred fans out there? It may be sexy, but not a great choice for a coaching niche!)

That’s the skill that I have, but I have yet to make money on it.

Bottom line: If you have a skill that can help another human either through improving their health, wealth, or relationship
that is the foundation of a coaching niche that could earn you a living.

Step #2: Determine if You Need Coaching Certification.

As doctors, we love getting certifications!

But do you need one to become a physician coach?

Well it depends.

Certainly if your skill is based upon your own experiences such as flipping real estate properties, no certifications are needed.

At PhysicianCoaches.com, the most popular category is Life Coaching (Burnout).

The first burnout coaches were those who were able to overcome burnout themselves and then shared others how they overcame it.

However, over time it is now expected to be certified in this discipline.

When dealing in such an intensive area, the popular opinion is to get formalized training.

Step #3: Get Certified (if necessary)...

If you do want to go into life coaching, there are many schools to choose from.

A popular one recommended by my friend and supercoach Dr. Sunny Smith is Brooke Castillo’s life coaching school.

There is also the Physician Coaching Institute and the Physician Coaching Academy, if you prefer to be taught by medical doctors.

Every discipline is different with a wide range of prices.

Most, if not all, have some sort of training that can be done online.

Some can be pricey, so it’s a good idea to find former students and whether or not they benefitted from the experience.

So far you’ve identified your coaching niche.

You’ve completed your physician coaching certification.

And now you’re ready to coach somebody.

Step #4: Coach Someone…for FREE. (But with a catch).

Yes I said it.

Free!

Right now, it’s all about you gaining as much experience as possible.

You want to make sure that you work out the kinks and gain the confidence before charging someone for your services.

Start looking for people you can help.

Maybe start with your friends or family members.

Then make an offer.

One popular way is through social media.

Physician Facebook groups are quite popular to find potential students.

Let’s say you are wanting to become a freelance contract negotiator.

You might post something like this:

“Hey, all! If anyone recently got a new job offer, and would like another pair of eyes
to look over their contract, please reach out. I have been looking to gain more experience
in contract negotiation and would be happy to do so for free. Thanks!”

It might take a few posts to determine if you’re serious.

Don’t be afraid to close the deal on the phone if needed.

Step #5: Ask for Testimonials.

So what’s the catch?

Well, in return you are going to ask for a testimonial if they are happy with your services.

Ask them why they took you up on the coaching and what benefits they received after working with you.

The more detailed they can be in your testimonial, the more effective.

Video testimonials have much more power than a written testimonial.

You should work with at least 3 people or as many as you feel comfortable, no more than 1-3 months.

Step #6: Assess the Coaching Experience.

Now that you’ve coached at least a few people for a few months, how did you like your experience?

What were your big wins? Areas that needed improvement?

Did once a month seem to work for you, or should you meet more frequently?

Should you set up a conferencing call with Zoom or did a phone conversation suffice?

Did the program seem too short, or seem to drag on?

You’re going to assess what areas worked best for you, and any areas that didn’t measure up.

Not only should you assess the coaching experience, but you need to ask for feedback from your clients.

What did they like?

Was there something that you could have done better?

Did you give them the right amount of material to start with, or did they feel overwhelmed?

More importantly, did they get the results you were both hoping for?

Their perspective is so valuable.

You can get their input, and continue refining your coaching abilities to make it the best program ever.

And that leads to one of the most crucial steps…

Step #7: Craft Your Signature Coaching Offer..

Whatever you do, I highly recommend you do not charge by the hour.

Instead, charge by the result.

What do I mean by that?

You want to get results. And that’s what your coaching offer provides.

Your offer should focus on what are the results that will happen after they work with you. There needs to be an end point.

Or else, how will you determine success?

“After working with me, you will get X”

Fill in the X.

That’s what your signature offer is all about.

Then determine a price that meets your expectations.

In most cases you might be finding that you are charging much less than what you offer.

Step #8: Launch Your Coaching Website. (Optional)

Now a website isn’t as important as most people think.

In fact, I know a number of coaches who subsist by just their LinkedIn profile.

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy.

Remember those video testimonials you received. Yep, they go on your website.

List your bio, your signature offer and other services.

And don’t forget about your contact information.

WiX and Squarespace are just fine as website builders, and they often have website templates specifically for coaches.

We use WordPress personally, as it has many plug-ins that are adaptable and make it SEO (search engine optimization) friendly.

Step #9: Fill Out Your Profile on PhysicianCoaches.com.

This one is mandatory (although admittedly, I’m a bit biased)

But who doesn’t want coaching leads?

Just go to the site at the upper right corner, and there’s a button that says “Join Today” and then fill out your coaching profile.

Tell us about your coaching strengths, any certifications that you’ve had, list your website, and contact information.

You can put your testimonials of previous clients that you’ve helped.

Step #10: Continue to Market, Scale, and Grow Your Business.

Now this where the fun really begins.

It’s time to market yourself and your coaching practice.

One of the best ways to start is to go back to those fine people who you coached previously and ask for referrals.

Ask if they have friends who might benefit from them.

It’s important that you continue to educate yourself in marketing.

As you continue to optimize your coaching practice, you’ll discover you may have weaknesses that require more education.

At Physician Coaches we have a professional option where our coaches receive more education on helping them with sales, strategies to getting more online leads, and develop a highly converting coaching website.

You can also network and connect with other coaches to support and help continue to other people’s success!

And that’s it!

So there you have it! Those are the 10 steps on how to become a physician coach. Becoming a physician coach can be very rewarding, not only financially, but personally and professionally.

If you need to have a side gig, it’s one that is worth pursuing.

Now the researching part is over. It’s time to go out there and actually coach and serve others!

Launching a Start Up Business During a Pandemic (!)…and While in Residency (!!) with Greg Hanson, MD

Residency was hard enough…can you imagine launching a startup as well? Well my podcast guest did exactly that! Dr. Greg Hanson is a 3rd year interventional radiology resident in Philadelphia, spent months looking for side gig opportunities himself, and felt there could be a better way of doing so. This led to the launch of FlipMD, a web platform for physicians focused on getting side jobs outside of their main clinical practice as a source of extra income, that now attracts hundreds of doctors each month. You’ll learn how this young entrepreneur is able to successfully juggle everything from his clinical day job, family, and a pandemic, while still managing investors and new clients for his internet startup. If you say you don’t have time to start a business, you may think twice after listening to his inspiring story!

LINKS MENTIONED: FlipMD – online marketplace for physicians to offer their knowledge and experience to clients seeking medical expertise https://www.flip-md.com Contact Info: Greg Hanson, MD – greg@flip-md.com

Transcript:

Dr. Mike: I know it’s been a crazy year and it’s certainly been a lot of stress for many of us, but how many of you would want to start up a business? I know many of you do, but want to start a business and probably the craziest year in existence of mankind.

Just so happens. I happen to have a gentleman who did just that and get this guys. Not only is he starting up a startup during a pandemic. He’s also a third year resident. Dr. Greg Hanson is an interventional radiology resident in Philadelphia. He graduated from UCLA. With a bachelor’s of atmospheric and oceanic sciences before moving to New York city, you obtained his master’s of public health and epidemiology.

Some of them I’d have with advanced certificate and applied by statistics that his medical degree at Dartmouth and in June of 2018 started a surgical internship. And then the next year, when it’s to becoming interventional radiology, he has stood up eight. A company called flippant deal. We’re going to find out more about what that is, why he decided to launch it, but without further ado, Dr. Greg Hanson, thank you for joining me on the program today.

Greg Hanson: Thanks so much for having me excited to chat a little bit. Yeah.

Dr. Mike: And what’s funny is we just found out that we actually went to the same high school of all things. This is probably a first on, on this call. We went to Jesuit High School up in the Carmichael’s or Sacramento, California.

I graduated in many years. Prior to him, but it’s very cool. How, there was something in the water at at Jesuit that led to this entrepreneurship physician thing. I don’t know. But again it, and you also went to my Alma mater for a few years, UC San Diego. Do you ever have plans to going back to the west coast?

Greg Hanson: I was gonna say, that’s a great question. It’s really a lot of it’s up to my wife where she wants to go, but we’re like in Philadelphia, but I’ve been on the east coast now for 10 years this month. And wouldn’t mind getting back to the west coast somewhere, whether that’s California or Oregon or Washington, it would be be nice to be back on the west coast.

So we’ll see. I don’t end it until 2024, but yeah.

Dr. Mike: I do see if you’re watching on the YouTube video, you have, you do have this UCLA blazoned on your on your clothing right there, but I’m not going to do what most obnoxious Californians do. And just telling you about, how’s the weather on the east coast.

We’re not getting you. Any of that, do you let you know, it is gloomy and rainy here. So if the guys have any constellation, but what I want to talk about is, I have, I’ve had a number of physician entrepreneurs on the program. And many of them have started their businesses, prior to 2020.

And I know there’s a lot of stress involved, certainly. Going into medical school, getting, going into residency, being a resident which you are now a PGY-3 , I believe. Wait, does it go four years? Or how far in your training is it?

Greg Hanson: Yes, I’m done a surgical intern year. And then I’m about one and a half years into the diagnostic portion, which is three years total. And then you go to two years of interventional radiology.

Dr. Mike: I’m such an old guy. I don’t even remember the residency. So you got to forgive me but as I always say, a lot of stress being a resident, a lot of stress, being married, a lot of stress, having a kid and a lot of stress on starting a business, you decided to do all of this and you’re currently balancing and juggling all of that.

So what kind of led you to deciding to start a business during your residency, as opposed to after residency?

Greg Hanson: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I can give you a little background on who I am and why we did this. So starting off in my surgical intern year, you work between 80 hours and what you want to put on, basically your hours for him.

And we worked a lot of hours and then I roughly transitioned over to diagnostic radiology, where I got half of my life back. So I was working 45 hours instead of 80 to 90, depending on what rotation I was in. But like you said, at the same time I have a wife. I had a two year old at the time who was just starting school.

And we also bought a house down in south Philadelphia and we needed to figure out a way to make some extra money. And I couldn’t Moonlight yet because I was a PGY-2 two. And so another stressor buying a house… life stresses. So I couldn’t move. And I was like I have an MPH and I have my MD.

Let’s see if I can do anything with it. And that’s what I did. I basically threw myself out there and said, I will help with data analysis. I’ll ghost, write a paper for you. I’ll help with FDA stuff, I’ll help with IRB. So I really did a lot of different, weird, interesting things to make a little bit of extra income and ended up making quite a bit.

So working between 5 and 10 hours, I made $30,000 in six months doing that and really built up a reputation of being able to get things done quickly. And that’s how we thought of this business, to be honest. So towards the end of last year in June, we. We’re actually coming back from a vacation on a cabin that was very isolated because of COVID when we were supposed to be in Paris.

And we said, why can’t we do this for other physicians that are looking to get outside of clinical medicine and do something else completely. And so that was the idea for flip MDA. And then from there we just sprinted and we launched and we figured it out and we’ve been figuring it out now for five months.

I definitely want to talk about flip MD, but I know you breezed through a lot of these things because. I hope you know, what you’re doing is quite unusual. Now you said you have a reputation for either productivity or organization. Did that start back, in medical school or, what kind of things that led you to be more productive and maybe have this reputation?

That was definitely a surgical intern year. So going through that and knowing that you can basically work 24 to 28 hours, depending on the shift in a row and still be productive and get things done that you need to it was really the surgical intern year. So waking up at four 30 in the morning and.

Stand at the hospital until 8. If you’re on vascular surgery and you have cases that are going long, it’s a, you learn what hard work is. And then when you transition over to something, that’s a little bit less heavy. I tried to keep that and I would still wake up at 4:30 in the morning and do other things, whether that was going to the gym or whether that was doing a little bit of work on the side or studying.

But yeah, it was definitely the surgical intern year medical school. I definitely worked hard, but not as hard as anywhere near that intern year. That was that was the hardest year I’ve ever had to do. And it was also a lot of fun though.

Dr. Mike: So did you have to learn to give up things? And also is your wife also working?

Greg Hanson: I’m sure. There’s a lot of things, especially when raising a child that you can, you’re gonna have to make some sacrifices here. Yeah, luckily she was doing some consulting work. So she’s her entire history is in ebook publishing. So in that world, she worked at a Harper Collins and Kaplan test prep.

And then when we moved to Philadelphia, she had basically a consulting gig with Barnes and noble. And so she was doing that from home when she could. But yeah, we had a seven month old at the time when we basically started internship. So it was definitely hard. Definitely some some sleepless nights and it was hard on everybody.

A surgical intern. You’re not just, I give a lot of props to anybody that can go through an entire surgical residency. It’s a lot of hard work. And there is a lot of sacrifices that you make. And even as an intern, you make those same sacrifices and hopefully you come out a better physician at the end of it.

Dr. Mike: So you knew that you got this house, you knew that you needed to make extra money. You found a way of getting a side gig, during your residency, what made you decide to say, Hey, you know what? I can start a business to help other doctors do this.

Greg Hanson: Honestly, it’s never been part of me to ever want to do anything business-related or entrepreneurial.

And we honestly thought we saw something in the market that hadn’t really been tapped into yet, and we decided to give it a shot. Basically. And we said it’s a good enough market to go into without having any experience at all. And we’ve learned a lot through it. It’s a very odd thing that I really never thought I’d be doing and never thought I would be doing a startup or doing anything like this.

It is a lot of fun though. Using something, using a side of my brain that I’ve never used before. In order to figure out how to make it work. But yeah, it’s never saw this coming whatsoever.

Dr. Mike: So what were the kinds of obstacles when you were looking for jobs that FlipMD hopes to

Greg Hanson: address?

It’s sourcing them. That’s the hardest part is figuring out where do you find these people that need physicians? Because there are a lot of different industries that need physician expertise. It’s just, where do you actually find that people without having to spend your entire time actually trying to find those actual jobs?

And so that’s what we’re doing now. On the platform. We work with startups. We work with VCs that are looking for due diligence. We work with pharma device lawyers, medical education companies. Really, it runs the gambit of what we’re trying to do. And those are the same things that I was doing last year, just at a smaller scale.

But yeah, honestly the hardest part is figuring out where to find those people that currently need physicians. And that’s the market we saw was a centralized platform to do that.

Dr. Mike: Greg, I’ve still tried to get on you cause I want to know why you said, I want to start a business during my residency because what you mentioned. For example, the jobs that you had, how did you find those jobs? If you want to give some examples and what kind of difficulties did you have?

Greg Hanson: Yeah, we use basically another platform that is not meant for physicians. And I posted my profile up and said, Hey, I’m a physician.

If you guys are interested in basically work with, to work with physician and that’s. How I started out doing it, and then basically created a little bit of a client list that had repeat projects to do a lot of it was data analysis. So using that MPH degree one of the odd ones that I had to come by was a, another physician that was starting another company related to PPE during COVID.

And he just didn’t have time to find really good credible links for COVID resources. And so he tasked me with doing that and that ended up being a $2,000 job that took. 10 to 15 hours. So it’s those kinds of things that we’re looking for that are really honestly difficult to find. And unless you have something like this that can draw people in, then it’s a little bit easier.

Dr. Mike: Now I have to ask does your residency know? And how have they took it where it was?

Greg Hanson: Yeah. A few people k now. So most of my co-residents know what I’m doing. And then my program director knows what I’m doing. I told him way back early in kind of July when we were just starting out that I was going to try something and see what happens.

So yeah, he knows. And then a few of my other attendings know as well just from having conversations with them, but I’m not not blasted out into the world at my own hospital that I’m doing this. I’m mostly trying to stay a little bit under the radar as a resident.

Dr. Mike: Yeah, because you definitely, someone who’s had.

Other doctors, not necessarily being a resident, there’s always someone who especially, knock on wood, kind of takes off and goes crazy. Then they’ll be coming for, their piece of the price. You always wanted to make sure that the people who are.

Should know, do know

Greg Hanson: It’s exactly what my program director said too.

Dr. Mike: So you got this idea. Did you have a tech background or did you hire a programmer to put together a website for you?

Greg Hanson: Yeah, I have no technical background at all. It was really, we needed to find somebody that could do it. And we found a development team that was able to.

Do it and do it relatively quickly and put together the website and it functions well. It is not the most beautiful website you’ll ever see and that’s something we’re working on to change. But it does function and it works and yeah, no, me and my wife, both of us do not have a coding background or anything like that. So we needed to find a solution and we were able to find one, luckily.

Dr. Mike: And where’s your wife? Was she a proponent to starting this app?

Greg Hanson: Yeah. She’s a big part of it. So she’s the CEO of the company. She runs the day to day and she does basically everything. So it’s not just me.

That’s doing this is very much not just me is very much a split of work. And we’re both working pretty hard and putting in the hours to build this, but it’s a lot of the credit has to go to her because she’s worked your butt off to do this.

Dr. Mike: So you’ve got a website and you’ve got this. And what I like to do is just digging in, in the mind of the entrepreneur how you get there and how you move past this. Because a lot of people who are listening, who, I call them more entrepreneurs than entrepreneurs and they know how to get a website.

They may not how to get a programmer for what was the biggest hurdle for you. Was it getting the attraction of these other companies? It’s to show us that you don’t really have a track record, I assume. Was that difficult? Was there something else?

Greg Hanson: Yeah, that’s honestly, the hardest part is figuring out how to balance.

So it’s a two-sided marketplace. So you have clients that are like the startups, the pharma, the device companies, and then you have the consultants. So the physicians balancing out how to attack. Both of those has been the hardest thing because you have to be able to balance it a little bit. So if you have a ton of jobs, but you have no physicians to fill them, then it’s completely useless.

And if you have a ton of physicians without jobs. And it’s completely useless also. So figuring out that balance and striking the balance correctly is extremely hard and we’re still working on it and trying to figure out exactly which side of the platform we need to work on at the moment. But we figured out a pretty good way of growing relatively organically and figuring out a way to get both to grow at the same time. But that is easily the hardest part.

Dr. Mike: So tell me about this and then let’s give the URL right now. It’s a flip-md.conflict-md.com. How did how did you get your initial physicians? I assume maybe your other co-residents. Our friends, physician, friends?

Greg Hanson: Yeah, a little bit a little bit of, yeah, that, but truthfully we went out and we brewed, forced a lot of this.

So we would go on LinkedIn and message people and say…Hey, we’re starting this thing. Are you interested in joining? Or going on Facebook groups, so saying, Hey, we’re doing this. Anybody interested in joining? And we have nothing right now. So it’s really just putting up a profile with the hope that we’re able to sell this to somebody that is interested in posting a job on there.

And maybe you’ll make some money. That was really how we started back in July and it’s grown pretty quickly. So we started literally with nobody on the platform, July 27th. And today we have about 1400 physicians on it right now. And we’re trying to aggressively grow at this point, but yeah, that’s how we started was.

Just talking to people. We’ve spent no money on marketing to either side. So yeah, that’s that’s how we started and we’re going to continue to grow that way, but hopefully we can also throw some money at it. Some of the marketing stuff as well, eventually, but yeah.

Dr. Mike: It doesn’t cost a physician to put a profile on it right now, right?

Greg Hanson: Correct. Yeah. There’s no. So there’s no cost. There is that it’s completely free to join as a physician and actually it’s completely free to join as a client as well. So we want to basically eliminate any barriers of entry for both the physician and the client. The way that we’re monetizing the platform is we take basically a 20% cut of the first thousand dollars of a project.

That’s with one particular client, and then it goes down to 10% after that. Which is pretty similar on a lot of the other freelancing platforms out there. So it’s the same kind of monetization, but it’s completely free to join. It’s completely free for people to post jobs. So we’ve actually had some physicians, post jobs as well to other physicians.

So yeah that’s how we monetize it and that’s, we’re trying to keep it that way for a long time. So that. There really aren’t hopefully going to be any barriers between a physician working with a startup that is doing something really interesting. That’s the whole, that’s the whole point of this.

Dr. Mike: So give me an examples of some type of jobs that you hope to have on the site.

Greg Hanson: Yeah. So we’ve actually had a fair amount of the jobs that I was really hoping to have already, which is great. So we working with a couple of AI companies that are working in different spaces, one example is a couple of weeks ago, we had the startup founder of a AI company that’s within kind of psychiatric mental health that’s operating in stealth mode.

So they don’t want to tell too much about what they’re doing, but he was looking for a grant writer that has a grant writing experience within psychiatry for NIH and NIH grants. So that was a $18,000 job that was posted. And it’s basically 20 to 40 hours of work. We’ve had other jobs. So we had a BC firm that needed to talk to five precision medical oncologists about a new platform that was coming out, that they were thinking about investing in.

That was $1,500 an hour. We’ve had PR and marketing firms. I needed to talk to orthopedic surgeons. So that was a $600 an hour job. And then we’ve had medical education companies that need help writing their Q banks or reviewing their articles that they have on their website. That’s a really good resident job that was 30 to $45 an hour.

So it’s really, it runs the gambit on types of jobs and then also compensation. And we have opened up the medical expert witness portion of the website as well. So we’ve had a couple of jobs posted for looking for physicians for expert witness.

Dr. Mike: But generally these are nonclinical.

Greg Hanson: Yeah. Completely nonclinical. We do not want to get into telemedicine or anything like that. That is not the goal of flipMD. I also don’t want that liability. So yeah, we’re a completely nonclinical kind of project based jobs now.

Dr. Mike: You’ve already have gotten a lot of interest in what I’ve run into coaching with.

Like my consulting work, I coach physicians and I’m sure you’ve run into this too, where a physician says, you know what? I just, all I need to do is become a physician. Is there any advice you could give as someone who is young and you’re in your medical career and was successful at getting other jobs, what they can do to expand there?

And I know it’s self-deprecating when they say just a physician, but they feel that they can’t do anything. Past that what advice would you give for someone who wants to expand monster, who’s attracted to some of these jobs? What can we do to make them an, a much more attractive job candidate?

Greg Hanson: I think that physicians need to realize that they’re much more than just a physician. Like you said, there’s so much thing is there’s so many things that a physician can do. They’re usually extremely smart. They’re very driven. And they’re curious, that’s what we’ve seen on the platform so far.

And that’s my own, like my own history. Like I’ve I know that if I put my head down and work at something hard enough and can figure out ways to make it work, then we’ll see what happens. But for physicians that are saying, they’re just physicians, there are so many industries out there that are.

Interested in dying to work with you because of your domain expertise that you have that no one else has. So that’s one of the issues that I see on the platform too, is that people undervalue themselves, people think, oh, that jobs posted at… $20,000. I’ll bid on it at 5,000, because I don’t think I have the expertise, but you do, you have the expertise, you went through four years of college, you went through four years of med school, plus potentially a PhD or an MPH, whatever it is, you will then went through residency.

You’re a practicing physician. Like you have expertise that no one else has, and you should not be scared to go out and use that.

Dr. Mike: Yeah. And I think, just simple things too, even just like learning how to create a resume that attracts, clients is one thing. And for many of us, we don’t, we either…

forget how to do a resume or it’s all clinically based. Some of the skills that you have, you may not necessarily have had a bunch of expert witness expertise, but you’ve had a lot of clinical. You may have had a lot of clinical decisions that you’ve had to make. Having that translate that into a resume or into a profile that can be com attractive is a strength that, I think you just need to learn. Would you agree?

Greg Hanson: I definitely agree. And one of the other aspects of, why we wanted to do this also was because there’s a ton of people that are interested in potentially switching to a nonclinical career. Full time. And this is hopefully a way that they can get their feet wet a little bit and maybe meet that company that they do a project with.

And they’re like now we want to hire you as X, either as COO or chief medical officer or medical affairs professional. So that’s another reason that we wanted to do it because we saw so many people, especially on Facebook groups that are interested in doing something completely different outside of clinical medicine, especially after going through COVID.

Put yourself out there, like you said, remember how to reword your CV or your resume. Write a cover letter and go out and try something new if that’s what you’re interested in doing.

Dr. Mike: And I know one thing about … Putting yourself out there, getting yourself on the job boards.

A lot of them are not looking to, replace their clinical job. So of course there’s some that are, but they may also be, more private that it’s out there. And it sounds like FlipMD is. Is the solution to that, that you’re not necessarily blasting out your resume to Google or to the social media, correct. You’ve got some privacy filters involved.

Greg Hanson: Exactly. Yeah. And actually that’s something that we’ve done from pretty early on is we basically take your last name and turn it into a letter. And then really the only people that can find you are people that are actually posting jobs. So there’s, it’s not publicly available information that you’re interested in doing anything outside of medicine, if that’s what you want.

So yeah it’s pretty anonymous. You don’t have to put up a picture or anything like that if you don’t want to. And yeah, it’s pretty nice to be able to just put yourself out there and see if you can find something that’s a little bit different outside of medicine that. You may have never known you wanted to do that’s what a lot of the physicians have told us too, is that, working with, especially the startups that are really trying to change. Medicine and healthcare for the better is one of the more interesting things for them to do because they’re so fresh and have great ideas. And it’s great that hopefully practicing physicians can come help guide them to the decisions and build their companies in a way that’s going to change medicine for the better.

Dr. Mike: Now, I know you said that, right now, you’re doing this for free on both sides with the revenue model hopes to be acquired. By some type of big company. But what are the plans for flipping D I’m sure you’ve got some things that you got considering or adding anything you want to share right now.

Greg Hanson: Yeah, we have quite a few plans for the future. Some of those we won’t discuss today just because they’re in the works and figuring out how to make them work and have pretty big plans for the platform. I’ll tell you one of the things that we’re doing and we’re currently, I’m actually starting to do it is actually we’re jumping into your world a little bit. So we’re creating a podcast. And this podcast is specifically for, we’ve had a lot of people interested in basically investing whether it’s in our company or in startups in general.

And so that’s one of the things that we hope to do is bring, it’s basically going to be a pitch event for startups that we’ve seen and met along the way that are doing really interesting and innovative things to come onto a podcast for 20 or 30 minutes, talk about their company and really.

Pitch physician investors that are interested in potentially investing. And we’re also going to use it as a vehicle to teach physicians what it means to actually angel invest because I, myself never knew anything about investing. I didn’t know anything about safes or convertible notes or priced equity rounds.

All of this is learned information. That took five months, six months to actually learn. So that’s going to be another big piece of it is this educational piece. So we have one of our physician investors actually going to come on as the first podcast episode guest, and really talk about his journey into angel investing and then go through some of the more common terms you’re going to hear throughout the podcast and throughout these pitches.

So that’s something that we’re bringing up right now. It’s going to be called White Coat Capital and… we’ll we’ll see how it goes, but hopefully launch it in February. And actually one of my co-residents is going to be actually doing the podcast, not myself. I I don’t really have time to do that and not really super interested in hearing my voice all the time.

But that’s one thing that’s coming down the pipe for us, and then we’re really just going to try to continue growing the platform. And then we have a couple other ideas for how to make this a little bit bigger and more scalable.

Dr. Mike: I’m sure your residency director is just loving hearing this! This has been great. So let’s give the URL again for your company.

Greg Hanson: https://www.flip-md.com/ And that’ll get you right to the website. And there’s also a way if you don’t want to sign up right away, there’s a way to get job alerts.

So there’s a little tab up in the right-hand corner. It says get job alerts. We’ve had a lot of people do that so that you can at least stay tuned into what types of jobs are being posted. So if one kind of strikes your eye and you’re interested in applying that you can sign up then.

Dr. Mike: So right guys, so it’s flipped-md.com. It costs nothing for you to set up a profile. You could get job alerts. This is really good. And I think it really addresses an area where physicians just need to be more aware. When I was looking for side gigs, the short time that I was doing, I didn’t even know really where to go to.

And now you’ve got you got flip, empty there’s other places where you can go. And so it just helps more physicians. We didn’t talk about burnout, but certainly it’s something that It’s very prevalent as physicians. We don’t talk, we don’t want to let the residents know about every it’s all, it’s all peaches and cream right now, as you get older, there are some physicians who suffered again, not to not to trivialize that.

But it definitely is where they’re looking for different opportunities. They’re looking for different things in different ways to explore. So again, that the website is flipped-md.com. This has been Dr. Greg Hanson. And yeah. Thank you effort for coming on the program. Any last words that you want to share with the audience today?

Greg Hanson: Thanks for having me. If you guys do have any questions or thoughts or how we can make the platform better or whatever it is, just send me an email. It’s greg@flip-md.com. We’re very open to hearing from people. So we’re really trying to make something that is actually valuable to you. So feel free to reach out and let us know what we’re missing or what we should add.

Dr. Mike: Thank you again. And guys just like, as a Greg, don’t let anything stop you. Whether it’s a residency, whether it’s buying a house, even at a pandemic, it’s all about keep moving forward.

How This Doctor Semi-Retired at 45 with David Yeh, MD

Obviously, I’m a big proponent of physicians supporting other physician-owned businesses, especially when it comes to education-based companies.

Usually because they often develop the business simply for the love of teaching others, rather than just another profit vehicle.

I once had the opportunity to witness my guest, Dr. David Yeh, speak for nearly 2 hours at a breakout session patiently answering questions from young physicians, on issues of financial literacy and investments. Dr. Yeh did so, completely unpaid, enjoying teaching others who were hungry for information, all while doing so with a smile on his face, seeming to have the time of his life!

Outside of his work as a nuclear physician and radiologist, Dr. Yeh was able to develop a financial system using his diagnostic skills he learned as a medical doctor that allowed him to semi-retire at age 45. On this episode, you’ll learned his trial and tribulations of investing in the stock market as a medical resident, why he became a financial investment advisor, and his thoughts on the stock market today (and yes, we do discuss Gamestop!). Learn more about this journey of this extraordinary doctor on this must-listen episode!

Wealthy Doctor Institute – specializing in providing education and portfolio management services to individuals, families and small businesses.
https://wealthydoctorinstitute.com

The Busy Doctor’s Investment Guide: How One Adjustment Per Month Can Save and Maintain Your Portfolio’s Health
https://www.amazon.com/Busy-Doctors-Investment-Guide-Adjustment/dp/1599325527/

Transcript:

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 0:10
Hey guys it’s Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another episode of BootstrapMD. I’m really excited about this interview. This is someone that I’ve been wanting to get in touch with for quite a while. I first learned about him through Peter Kim’s Leverage and Growth Summit, and he was kind enough to give us an interview. I’m always curious about meeting other doctors who retire or semi retire before our typical retirement age. And on the call today, we have Dr. David Yeh. He’s a nuclear medicine specialist in Chicago, who got his degree from NYU School of Medicine and he actually became someone who retired at 45 when he started a financial investment system that allowed him to retire at 45 years old. And it’s great to hear someone who actually practice what he preaches. And he is now the founder of The Wealthy Doctor Institute, and he’s also the author of a book that you guys need to pick up called The Busy Doctors Investment Guide: How One Adjustment Per Month Can Save and Maintain Your Portfolio’s Health . David, welcome to the BootstrapMD podcast.

Dr. David Yeh 1:30
Thank you, that’s an amazing intro. The respect is mutual. I was looking at your talk last year, and I was amazed by this whole community of physician entrepreneurs. I wish I had that years ago.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 1:43
I know, you’re introverted, you’ve mentioned the past, I’m introverted as well. So I’m glad that we were finally able to come together and have this interview. I’m curious how someone who is a nuclear medicine doctor, and I also believe you’re a radiologist, how the heck do you get involved in investing, in an intern year?

Dr. David Yeh 2:08
The short answer is for radiology, it’s all pattern recognition, quantitative analysis, I just applied similar skills to the markets. But the long answer is, you’re right. I started in intern year, for good reason. And that’s because right off med school, I had my first paycheck and I was financially naive. So I quickly learned that real life could be really rough. And I got to that point where I had credit card debt, sleepless nights, knots in my stomach, and finally hit this proverbial rock bottom where I said, never again I have to get this part of my life handled its ridiculous. So that’s when I really started to just push aside my fears around money and just start studying. I started with the Dummies books course, Personal Finance for Dummies, Investing for Dummies, and all these other beginning books. But then, as I started reading, and digging myself out of my hole, when it finally came to getting my financial life in order, I came across a options investing course. And at that time, I was sold. I thought oh my god, you make so much money, so quickly. I didn’t realize at the time, there was a difference between investing and trading. But that was okay, because there were concepts in that course that I just applied to my investing. And eventually, I developed systems that I only had to watch once a month. Because let’s face it residency was really tough, you don’t really have time to watch the mortgage all day. So eventually, I developed systems that I didn’t have to watch so often. And I just continued on, even in private practice.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 3:45
Just to have an idea, and again, I don’t want to date you but I have to figure it out in my head, because you do look young. So what timeline are we talking about just so I can get an idea of where the stock market was at the time

Dr. David Yeh 3:59
Sure, my intern year I started 1994, rock bottom was 1995. And, by the time I dug myself out and started really investing, besides just dollar cost averaging, actually doing options trading was 1996. And remember, the 1990s was a big bull market, right? And the worst thing that could happen to any beginning investor, and this could be for gambling as well, isn’t that you lose money. The worst thing that could happen is that you could you are wildly successful. And that’s exactly what happened to me. Within two trades I doubled my money and I thought I was king or God or something. And of course, you get cocky and then within five trades, I blew up my account. So I learned something valuable because even within a raging bull market, the dot com bubble, I could still lose money. So, again you get this rock bottom point in life when you learn something valuable and one thing I learned was money management, risk management is so important in investing.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 5:02
Now, that’s interesting. So I went to residency probably a few years after you. And that’s actually is when I got involved in the stock market. And when I say involved, it was basically a resident saying, hey, there’s this new biotech company, we you need to invest in it. And being a dumb resident, I did and nothing really came about. And then of course, later on with dot com boom, that certainly got crazy. But were you buying stocks? Or were you buying calls or puts? What was the extent of your options trading or your portfolio at the time?

Dr. David Yeh 5:38
At the time, I was trying out various different systems. I was trying covered calls, Benson’s, but I always had some kind of exit strategy. So even with a covered call, I would have a stop where I said, it’s lost too much already, let me get out. I was doing spreads, straddles, eventually I was doing condors. But yeah, just sculpting this risk graph was key to options trading.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 6:01
You talk about it in your book, and we all got to have to get your book, but how did your investment strategy evolve over time? I think we all lose money, that’s our first education. We all we all get very confident, we all think it’s always gonna be a bull market, and then things happen. So how did it evolve over time, was it just a gradual process? Or just learning from your mistakes, and just seeing what works and what didn’t?

Dr. David Yeh 6:29
In the beginning, it was just straight dollar cost averaging. Just through a certain amount each month, at first, I could only afford $50 per month. So that’s what I started with. I eventually opened up an account, which was like $500, to start trading options. I was following along this course, where at that time, they had something new called the web, where we can log in and see the live trades that we’re doing. And I would look at those trades, and I would wonder, okay, how do they figure out how to get in? And what I’ve done the same thing? And many times, I thought I probably wouldn’t have taken that trade, but then I follow along anyway, and it turns out many of those trades, I wouldn’t have gone in, blow up anyway. So at least at that time, even though the class wasn’t great, I thought I still learned something. So I figured, okay, I think I learned enough to actually construct my own trades and place them. Let me see if I can track them now. So for instance, if I had one or two covered calls, I would trace a copy of that. And I would track it, maybe paper trade and track it as if I placed a trade live. Maybe some momentum trades, maybe some stochastic trades, something like that. And every week, I would update all by live and paper trades and just follow along in Excel and see which ones had which ones had strengths and weaknesses. And whether or not the weaknesses were because the system was wrong or because I just couldn’t do it. Because sometimes you can have the best system by just doesn’t fit you as a personality. So for a while, I was tracking up to 20 different strategies. And I found out when there were big market upsets, like in 2000, the crash of 2000, crash of 2007, I found out that the most robust strategies happened to be the ones that I didn’t have to watch that often. The ones that didn’t involve options at all. Ones that all I had to do was, once a month rotate, just use the same criteria, calculate out the numbers and if numbers say buy, I buy. If the numbers say sell, I sell.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 8:36
I was listening to another interview you were on, and you said that you being a physician and radiologist had an impact in creating your investment system. Can you elaborate?

Dr. David Yeh 8:47
Yeah for, radiology anytime we look at scanners, scanner data, CT scan, ultrasound, MRI, nuclear medicine, the raw data that comes out of the scanners is an interpretable to the human eye. We’re used to using our own filters to sculpt the data into something that’s interpretable. So we know how to modify these filters to optimize these images. And I just use the same form of technology on the stock market data. The most people when they try to invest, if they don’t just blindly follow some guru, they would at least analyze some markets. But what most people do is they will analyze fundamentals. For instance, they might analyze interest rates or news or Trump tweets or something or wars. But these are indirect data that have very little correlation with the actual market direction. I look at the actual markets because every single trade every single buy and sell is recorded in the stock market chart. The stock market chart does not lie. The CEO can lie. Their pundits can lie. Talking Heads can lie. Even the financial statements can lie, because there are ways to hide certain numbers so that it looks like you’re doing well when you’re not. But every single buying trade has a truth in the market. So if we can just take that raw data of the markets and analyze that, then it’s easy to at least tell whether or not we’re relatively safe or dangerous.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 10:14
So it sounds like you’re not watching Fox Business or CNBC all day with your system?

Dr. David Yeh 10:20
I watch it for entertainment. I watch how other people react to the news. I used to be very triggered by many of the news items, because I used to think, oh my God, this news item made the stock rise or something. But in actually that didn’t happen. So once I had my own systems, I could just rest easy and just be entertained.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 10:46
So also during that time, and again, my stock knowledge was probably influenced by a lot of senior residents at the time. And I remember this one doctor, and he was always on his, I guess, laptop at the time, and I was asking what he was doing and he said, hold on, I gotta buy this. He was day trading. And so what is your feeling on day trading, and physicians? I think I have an idea, but I’d like to hear from you.

Dr. David Yeh 11:12
I actually know a physician that was actually good at day trading, he happened to be a cardiologist. Which makes sense, if you’re in the ICU watching these EKG monitors all the time, you probably can react like a day trader. But other than that, day trading is difficult. And that’s because when you make a decision, you have to have the information that you need to make a decision and make that trade in a timely manner. And then, more often than not, the trade would go against you. And you have to decide on when to decide when you’re wrong and get out. Most traders, when they start out, they don’t realize that most of the trades are probably going to go against you. And if you don’t have a systematic exit strategy, you’ll get crushed. Because the markets are pure emotion. So it’s been said that, if you want enlightment you can either sit on a mountain top and meditate for seven years, or trade for seven days. And that’s because when you trade, all your emotions just bubble up to the surface. All that fear and greed and anxiety just come up. All your limiting stories about money and your self worth and your self identity, just all comes up. And unless you can control your emotions, you’re not going to be good at trading, especially day trading.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 12:35
Yeah, although I can tell you I’m a real prognosticator with day trading, because I can tell you in hindsight, that usually when I get in on a trade, is usually when it goes down. So I think it’s a good indicator that that’s when it’s going to go down. So let’s first actually talk about your system because from what I understand, you don’t work with individual stocks, you worked with ETFs and funds. Can you talk more about that?

Dr. David Yeh 13:08
Exactly. I don’t work with individual stocks, at least not much right now, just because individual stocks carry idiosyncratic risk. In other words, news really does influence individual stocks. If there’s a BP oil spill, for instance, that one stock may tank even though the rest may still be doing well. If scandals come out, if something negative about a single stock comes out, it’s very hard to protect against that type of risk. Whereas with ETFs, sectors generally have momentum that is not as volatile and carries usually through a whole month. So when I make a calculation, the likelihood that’s going to change mid month, beginning month, and ruin my system is decreased. So that’s another take on diversification, but not quite.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 13:59
So what I was getting at, I got involved in the stock markets, probably during the pandemic. And I got involved in options trading and I’m not a millennial, but like many of us, we certainly have seen a phenomenon for the Robin Hood traders. My son wants to do it. And I’m talking on the forum groups, so we’re talking about Tesla, and we’re talking about Neo and all of these other stocks. And then of course earlier this year GameStop, everybody knows about it. What is your take on all of this? I’m sure you’ve heard about this Reddit group, the WallStreetbets, the idea that there can be a group of traders that can somehow influence the direction of a stock. Which as we know, the GameStop company is not growing, it’s pure speculation and drive. I’m curious, as someone who’s involved in this industry, what is your take on all of this?

Dr. David Yeh 14:55
Remember that markets are pure emotion. Warren Buffett says in the short term, the market is a voting machine, the long term is a waiting machine. And that’s because long and short term there will be ups and downs. Now, having said that GameStop is a very specific situation, because somehow they were short shares. You know what shorting is? Let me just explain it for the audience. When a stock or a company is unlikely to survive in the near future, and there are people who have bet that this stock is gonna go down, how do we make money? Well, they can’t buy because the stock price will go down. So what they do is, they borrow money, or they borrow shares rather, then they sell the shares, keep the money, when the share price goes down, they buy back at a lower price. So sell high buy low. That’s what shorting means. A lot of people don’t understand that. So when you have a company that has a number of shares outstanding, that’s all you can trade. So if someone said buy stock, and there’s nine of shares, the stock price has to keep going up and until it entices someone to finally sell their stock. When you have something like GameStop, where most people agree is probably gonna go bankrupt, just a matter of when, then a lot of these hedge funds start to bet that the price will go down. So the short the stock. And when they short, someone else buys that borrowed stock, and then they short that. So that’s why for GameStop it’s very unusual, because the total number of short shares was larger than the float, the actual number of shares that’s available to trade. That wasn’t so much that the internet could rally an army that could buy enough stock to raise the price. It was just that it was this perfect storm, that this particular group of companies had a situation where there weren’t enough shares to support the trade. It’s a relatively small company, relatively small amount of shares. So that’s why they were able to at least short term, boost the price up sky high. Now here’s the problem, it wasn’t just because the traders were at war with each other. Traders have been at war for centuries, institution versus individual traders. It’s the fact that, when you have shorts, there’s something called a short squeeze. For instance, when you buy a stock, and it goes down, people tend to sell. So when more people sell, stock prices fall even faster. For a short squeeze, when you’ve sold a stock, and you must buy to cover, and the stock price keeps going up to a point where you’re losing money, then you’re forced to buy, then thevforced buying pushes the stock even higher up. That’s called a short squeeze. This is a hypothetical problem called an infinity squeeze. Which has been talked about but never really experienced yet. And here’s the danger of an infinity squeeze, when the stock price goes up too high, then it’s not just the fact that the individual hedge fund accounts don’t have enough money to cover, it’s not just a margin call. It’s the fact that the clearing houses that back the brokerages, they don’t have capital to cover those. It’s not just the shares of stock that they have to cover too. It’s the fact that you have all these call options, that are now with tremendous amounts that they cannot cover. It’s the fact that you have these short put options, that now it just becomes a real mess, trying to sort it all out. Because now you have the very existence of the clearing houses in trouble. So had the stock price gone up to $1000. The very survival of the markets would have been severely in danger. People don’t realize this. But that’s why the trading was harder to buy only, and people were thinking they just colluding with the hedge funds. No, actually, they were in survival mode. Trying to survive for their very existence.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 19:24
Have you seen a change in what you do with these apps now, like Robin Hood and not having fees? Used to be just Etrade and Ameritrade and now they’ve all gone to no fees and then more and more people are getting into the stock market. And again, I don’t want to age myself for these millennials, they’re putting in their money and we’ll see what happens kind of thing. Have you seen an effect on this? What could be the ramifications of this?

Dr. David Yeh 19:57
Actually remember, stock market is pure emotion. So no matter what kind of technological advances we have, it still underlies emotion. So for instance, if you look backwards in stock market history, back in the 1980s, when we had a crash of 1987 people going, Oh my god, it was crashing because of program trading. Because one program was selling the other program detected that it sold, and then they said, back in the 1990s, we had the high frequency trading, and that was affecting markets. But actually, if you take a look in 1929, the same patterns were happening. If you take a look at the patterns, they just erased the timeline. And look at the actual patterns, they don’t change much over time. And that’s because human psychology underlies all of the market. The market actually is all just same animal, just different technology advances. And we just use it, but it’s still the same pattern.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 20:55
In your company, The Wealthy Doctor Institute, do you work primarily with physicians?

Dr. David Yeh 21:03
Because I’m a physician, because my books full of all these analogies to physicians, because I have so much rapport with other physicians, most of my clients are physicians. In the beginning, when I was building my business from scratch, I was going to these business classes and seminars and things like that. So I have non physician clients as well.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 21:26
Now I have a friend who’s a financial advisor, she’s not a physician. And she can’t stand her physician investors because she says she tries to recommend something that’s conservative, and they want to buy the next alternative Bitcoin. What is your opinion of the physician investor, and I don’t want to get you in trouble with any of your clients, But what has been your experience?

Dr. David Yeh 21:54
Alright, my experience, again, I’ve only had like maybe five years of really talking to physicians about their investments. And there are some, even private practice, there are some cowboys who want to buy the next hot stock. And I gave a couple of these examples in my book. Where colleagues wanted to buy this hot stock. But when I bought in, I had a set exit strategy. I told my colleagues, I have this exit strategy. They told me, okay, tell us when you exit. When I exit, I told them, and they said, well, I think it’s just a small dip, right? Now it’s gonna come back, I’m just gonna hold on. And lo and behold, they lose 80% of the money. And they don’t position size. So we actually lose a whole account instead of just a small percentage. So a lot of these rookie mistakes based on emotion exists in even us relatively well educated physicians. Because, again, markets are emotional. That’s why I use algorithms, to plan out everything from position sizing to signals to get anything out. So that’s one group, the Cowboys. Then you have the other group, and this is the group I started helping out the most. Because originally, I was trying to teach the Cowboys how to invest, here’s a systematic way of looking at things so that you don’t get burned in the markets. But then we had, the really fearful physicians who got out during the crash in 2008 and didn’t dare get back into markets. I showed them the system that I use, and instead of learning how to trade or how to invest, he asked me what can you invest for me? And that was a group of physicians that I my heart really reached out to, because they were so scared of something that was unfamiliar to them. And they really needed this help. And I used to really look down on financial advisors because when I was a cowboy, I tried to learn this myself, I got burned by financial advisors before charging high fees. But now I realized I can be the financial advisor that I wish I had when I was a poor broke intern. And so now, I have physician colleagues who are just afraid of investing, who trust me and this is why I went to med school to begin with. I envisioned myself just helping people, helping patients. But I went to radiology because I liked the tech, I liked the you know, toys. And I didn’t really get that physician patient interaction unless I was doing barium or something. So now, as an investment advisor, I get to talk to clients one on one again, and it’s beautiful. I just feel like I’ve come full circle this way.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 24:39
So when you talk with your client or your prospective client, what do you what information do you get from them? And do you structure your system based upon, let’s say, the resident who just graduated who may have 200 or 300k in medical student loans? Versus the the new parents and they just their first house? Versus the soon to be retired doctor?

Dr. David Yeh 25:05
Yeah, so there are so many stages of life. And once I semi retired, I actually started part time work at the local university hospital. So I was actually teaching residents. So, at first, because I was in private practice, I never gathered interesting cases to show during residency conference. So I decided to just give my give a little lecture on investing and personal finance and it went over well. The residents really loved that. So now I have a series of lectures that I give to residents. Their situation is very unique, because nowadays, they have mortgage size, student debt, which was unheard of when I was a resident. Back when I was a resident, if you have $100,000 worth of debt, that was huge. Now $300,000 is normal. So that to me, it’s just incredible. So trying to help them deal with the debt, trying to help them deal with what all these other investment advisors are trying to sell them. And what do you actually have to look for in terms of insurance, disability, whole life or whatever, and how to invest. What to look for. That, at least is an educational tool that I can add value to the residents. When there are younger physicians who are establishing themselves and gaining the income to at least start attacking that debt, and they want guidance in terms of investing. I have a whole different system of helping that particular group of physicians. And then there are people my age who tried to invest, maybe got scared, maybe got burned, maybe got something but they know that they’re not where they need to be. And then I can really help with my investment system with what they have so far.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 26:52
And what do you say to some of those colleagues, your physician colleagues who say, doctors shouldn’t even be involved in the stock market? What is your take on that?

Dr. David Yeh 26:59
We shouldn’t be involved, why? Because we don’t understand the markets? Because oftentimes, by the time we get information, it’s too late. By the time we get a stock tip, it’s too late. So that’s why we shouldn’t even trade or anything, we should just invest blindly in index mutual funds, and just let go. My take is, if you have a system, and there are many systems out there, systems are a dime a dozen. But if you learn a system, and then the key is to apply the system with discipline, that’s the key. And us physicians, we have discipline. We round on our patients religiously, we go through charts systematically, we can definitely do something like stock market investing. If we have a system, most people don’t realize systems are extremely important. The fact that we can take our emotions out of investing, that’s key. So when people say we have no business investing, if we don’t overcome our emotions, and then have a system, that’s true, we shouldn’t be investing. But we need education.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 28:12
Yeah, that is so true. And almost every book that I read, books on stock trading and and then I really enjoyed the ones on the psychology of it. Everyone says it’s all about the emotion. But that FOMO is also very strong, too. So it’s always good to have a system that you can always fall back on. And that’s what we do as doctors. We follow checklists in the emergency room to make sure that when we have situations that are pretty emotional, we can take a deep breath and move forward. So I want to change the pace a little bit, recently I’ve been introducing something here on the podcast called Five Unexpected Questions With My Guest. So I did warn you a little bit, but Dr. David Yeh, are you up for the challenge for these five unexpected questions? Okay. All right. Okay, so number one is you went to NYU, and now you live in Chicago, or close to Chicago, right? Which has the best pizza?

Dr. David Yeh 29:19
I grew up around New York. Obviously, I’m very biased towards New York pizza. When I came to Chicago, and I see pizza that’s slice into graph paper, into squares. To me, that’s insane. Because pizza, you’re supposed to eat as a sector, you hold the crust and you eat it. But with squares, you get your fingers all messy and things like that. And then they have these deep distributions, okay, that’s fine, but still cut it in sectors. So… my bias is still in New York. I lived maybe 21 years in Chicago, but I lived the rest of my life New York and and I still feel like a New Yorker. Over here in Chicago, I still walk faster than most people, talk faster than most people I’m still an east coaster.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 30:08
You’re right. New York pizza is better. Number two, what was the last TV show you binge watched?

Dr. David Yeh 30:16
Oh my god…

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 30:17
These are tough questions.

Dr. David Yeh 30:19
Yeah, it’s been a while since I watched TV. It’s like, ever since I started my business, I’ve just been more concentrated on it. I remember for a time I was watching Doctor Who when I was on a treadmill, just because I wanted to watch something on the treadmill. I used to watch it as a kid and now we have this new series. So that’s probably the last one I binge watched. But that was five years ago.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 30:45
All right. So speaking about science fiction, there’s an interview with you with William Shatner. So I want to know, there’s been a number of captains, but the most famous four are Shatner, Picard, Janeway and Cisco. Which one was the best captain?

Dr. David Yeh 31:01
They all embody different aspects of strength and leadership. And frankly, sometimes when I think about leadership, I think about those qualities of each. Having said that, Patrick Stewart, Captain Picard, he embodies the more straightforward diplomatic yet purposeful leader, that a starship captian or any leader an emulate, so he’s the one I look up to most.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 31:36
Okay, so you’re gonna have to get an interview with John Luke, on your website then.

Dr. David Yeh 31:41
Yes.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 31:43
I’ve learned you’re a ballroom dancer, very good ballroom dancer. And he’s gonna, kill me, so I’ve got a son who’s about 23-24. He’s at the age where he’s trying out dating and he wants to become a better dancer. What’s the best type of dance that he should learn if he wants to woo the ladies so to speak.

Dr. David Yeh 32:06
One of the most useful ones right now, if you go to any parties or clubs or whatever, they play mostly blue music. So what I call blue music, are music that you can dance, swing, cha-cha or hustle to. So if he learns any one of those. Or nowadays, latin dancing like salsa. That’s very useful that can be applied to many different types of music. In terms of versatility, those are most useful. In terms of personality, if he ever learns other dances, he’ll naturally gravitate towards one dance versus another. Just because we’re all a little bit different personally.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 32:43
I had a friend who actually met I think it was his fiance. But he started to go to salsa dancing, because they were more girls than guys. And so that’s what he learned and it helped him out. And then number five, three books that you would recommend, actually three books that that that changed your life?

Dr. David Yeh 33:06
Well, so many holy cow. Now, many of these books after a while, they repeat similar concepts. So depending on which order you read these books, they may affect you differently. So one book that definitely changed me was Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Now, back when I was a poor intern and felt powerless, just knowing that choices were within my control, and I could actually structure the effectiveness of my own life towards myself, as well as whatever else I can control, that was huge. The second book that hugely impacted me, was hate to say, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The only reason I say, I hate to say, because it has a lot of great information in it, a lot of mindset, changing information in it. I also happen to have taken courses with the real life Rich Dad, Keith Cunningham. Cunningham and Kiyosaki. They both used to give seminars together. And I won’t go into the story, but I got the information from the hay before it goes to the horse. So even though I know what the hay is before going to the horse, the book itself was mind changing to anyone who’s not familiar with the material.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 34:35
Yeah, Cashflow Quadrant is the one I like. But yeah, there is some controversy between whether whatever was involved in terms of who was involved. Yeah, that’s another part of the story.

Dr. David Yeh 34:47
The third book would be, Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 34:51
All right.

Dr. David Yeh 34:53
Just because it just takes time and hard work and tries to order in a way that just eliminates the old way and that was huge.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 35:01
Those are classic books and I love that you read your first book in medical school or residency?

Dr. David Yeh 35:11
No, it was in internship. That’s a book I discovered audiobooks with. Because I had that book sitting on my shelf for years. I was a poor broke intern, I got this ad to get the audiobook version for $59. I was going, holy heck, how am I gonna afford that? But I did it anyway. And because I had so much skin in the game, I just listened to it, and listen to it, and listened to it, and just changed my life.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 35:33
Yeah, I hear you. And I’m sure you agree we need some type of financial literacy, or some financial education if not in residence, something in medical school, because I think it can impact a lot of our future doctors. I know we only have a few more minutes left, let’s talk about your company, The Wealthy Doctor Institute. For a doctor who’s interested in this, how do they find out more information? They go to your website, and then what happens next?

Dr. David Yeh 36:00
They can go to my website, wealthydoctorinstitute.com, and there’s a contact me button or schedule me button. And what they can do is they can either send me a question, or they can just schedule themselves. And there’s a calendly link where if you want to just talk to me, you don’t have to play phone tag with an assistant or anything, just pick a time that works for you and we just hop on a zoom call, ask any questions you want. Trust me, no matter how stupid you think that question is, I used to ask even more stupid questions, because I know but it feels like to be a beginner.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 36:39
That’s awesome. So guys, if you want to get involved investing in the stock market, and you want to hear from a physician, and I really think more physicians need to be hearing it from physicians, check out his website The Wealthy Doctor Institute at wealthydoctorinstitute.com. Set up a call and just check it out. Also check out his book, The Busy Doctors Investment Guide, also available on Amazon. David, it was a pleasure to finally get to talk to you and having you share your advice with us. Thank you, and thanks, guys. As you learned with David, he was a poor broke intern, as he mentioned. But he took the information and just used the knowledge. With knowledge is power and then implemented this power to create his system. And it can work for all of us. Some people think that money is bad or evil, but if you know it and know how to leverage it, it can be used for a lot of good things and investing in yourself, I think is the best investment of all. So with that is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming and as always, keep moving forward.

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