When I first saw a blog several years ago, I couldn’t believe it!  Here was a blog, written by an anesthesiologist,  that made many of us believe that as physicians it was possible to retire early.  Today I got to interview the man, behind the Physician on Fire website, Leif Dahleen MD.

We’ll discuss whether it is still possible to retire, in light of a bad economy and crippling medical school loans.  If you aspire to retire early as well, do not miss this interview!

Dr. Leif Dahleen’s Physician on FIRE Website

https://www.physicianonfire.com

Physicians on FIRE Facebook Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/physiciansonfire

Transcript:

Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Michael Woo-Ming welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD. I’m so excited for this next interview. I’ve been hunting this man down. I’ve been a big fan of his for years, and I’m so excited to finally get him on the program. If you have been in the. This kind of weird space that we’re in for physicians doing other things, investing.

I’m sure you’ve come across his website. This gentleman retired from medicine at the age of 43. Can we achieve financial independence actually several years earlier, he started the website physician on fire to enlighten, educate and entertain other high income professionals while discussing money matters of all sorts.

He’s happily married with two kids. He lives in the Northern Michigan and he travels frequently as a family. We had to. Hunt him down because he was traveling to all these incredible countries and just living that life of fire. So I’m so happy to have on the program. Dr. Leif Dahleen! Leif, how are you doing my friend?

Leif Dahleen MD: Hi, I’m doing great, Mike. And thank you for the incredibly kind introduction. And yeah, you did hunt me down and we found each other in Phoenix you a month or two ago. Happy to see your smiling face once again.

Mike Woo-Ming: At the time of the recording, it is Doctor’s Day. So Happy Doctor’s Day!!

Leif Dahleen MD: Happy Doctor’s Day to you!

Mike Woo-Ming: So is there a Doctors On Fire Day? Are you going to, is that something that’s coming up? I haven’t seen that just yet.

Leif Dahleen MD: In my Facebook group, I put an image up, one of those happy doctor’s day things that are. Yeah, Google. And I said, this JPEG is the only thing you’re going to get most likely so enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Woo-Ming: That’s pretty much, I haven’t gotten any gifts today, but who knows, I think, I’ve been in this, I’ve been retired for medicine in 2004. And when I saw your blog, like I knew about white coat investor and then your blog came out and then.

I really didn’t know how to react, to be honest with you when it, when I saw it or you’ve gotten the same response, because here was a physician who, who claimed, we didn’t know, your name wasn’t out, that he had retired from medicine, whichat a young age, which was almost, I’m thinking of a better word for this, like heresy?

Yeah. I know when I retired and my story is I retired and then now back in as a practice owner, but I had been out for several years and I knew how my response was for my family and just from my colleagues. And so seeing a blog like this was. It in retrospect, it was really illuminating and I’m thinking of a better word, but it… represented freedom for many doctors who are out there who didn’t know that it was even possible. And I and leave and be honest with you. I don’t think we would be in a situation where these days with all of these Facebook groups and we’ve got Peter Kim’s side and Mike could investor. You guys being pioneers in that. So I do want to commend you on that.

Leif Dahleen MD: Thank you.

Mike Woo-Ming: But, so tell me, how did this all start from you? T tell me your background for those who haven’t heard it before. How did we end up, how did you become Physician on FIRE?

Leif Dahleen MD: For. Yeah, sure. That’s a great question. I didn’t plan on retiring early necessarily. I’ m a my Minnesota guy went to undergrad and med school at university of Minnesota.

Now I’m a Michigander and I understand you were a Michigander…

Mike Woo-Ming: You’re actually, are you up here or?

Leif Dahleen MD: A little more on the index finger, but bigger? Okay. Yeah, we’re at, we’re an LP in a Michigan, which is very close to a. Wife’s family is and where she grew up. So that’s how I ended up over here.

Mike Woo-Ming: That’s probably the only few Northern Michigan towns I know.

Leif Dahleen MD: Yeah. Escanaba I’ve been through there many times. Also Marquette and I did some locums work in Ishpeming Michigan, which is just west of Marquette. But those are upper peninsula towns. We’re technically below the Mackinac bridge and below the bridge were known as trolls, because. trolls live under the bridge.

Mike Woo-Ming: You still get access to good fudge.

Leif Dahleen MD: Yeah. It’s close by. Yeah. But back to the question at hand yeah, I went through did an anesthesia residency after medical school and went to the University of Florida for that. That’s where I met. My wife did locums for a couple of years, get to try out different practice types and hospital. Sizes. I was at a VA hospital where they did transplants and everything under the sun. I went to some small community hospital. Found that suited me better. And that’s where I did know most of my positions.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, you didn’t do the traditional thing that most doctors do is “all right. I’m ready to sign a contract with this hospital and I’m going to be there for the next 20 to 30 years.”

Leif Dahleen MD: No, I didn’t. No. I went to the ASA meeting, which is the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Intern, I believe in, and maybe a couple more times before finishing residency and I walked around the exhibit hall and saw these tables. There was a global medical staffing offering locums in Australia and New Zealand, which I thought was fascinating.

And other companies with jobs all around the country that, a lot of them are like a try before you buy type of situation where you go there and you learn what it’s like to work. And often they clearly a hundred percent of the time they have staffing needs or they wouldn’t be hiring locums.

And often times they’re looking for permanent staffing and just don’t have it. Haven’t been able to recruit those positions. It’s a working interview for the most part. And I worked a number of different places for one thing. I didn’t necessarily know what the real world would be like.

Residency is always at this tertiary care center and a. You’re basically in the room doing your own cases. And in the real world, you’re doing a lot of supervision. Maybe you might work with CRNs, you might work with anesthesia assistants, residents, et cetera. I just wanted to try out different places.

And then a very, more practical reason I chose that path was that my fiance at the time now wife was going to match is a dietician into a program. Very similar to the way that we matched into residency. And you don’t know where until you get your letter and open it up. And lo and behold, we were going to go to Pittsburgh for nine months and I say, We were engaged in the newly married.

I didn’t want to live apart. And so I was able to find locals work there in Pittsburgh. And we tried out some other places where we thought we might want to live, including Northern Minnesota and Northern Michigan. And, that ended up being two of the three places that I worked full time for a number of years for each of them.

And we worked other places too. It was a cool way to have our all expense paid trips around the country in as little as one week at a time in some cases. But generally I prefer to work for several months at a time and we’d get a furnished apartment and rental car provided per diem for food and everything.

So my living expenses those first few years were like, like nothing,

Mike Woo-Ming: Now were… you talk about your background, did you come from an affluent background or… what kind of background did you do? You grew up?

Leif Dahleen MD: Yeah, I used to think of it as upper middle-class, but now I’ve come to learn. That means like luxury cars and huge houses. That sounds more like upper-class to me, but I would say we’re somewhere in between middle and upper middle, maybe for the Midwest it’s upper middle, but my dad was a dentist and we had a cabin up north in Minnesota. But we also, My dad liked to be frugal in certain ways.

So we would stop at thrift stores and hit up the garage sales every weekend and look for great deals, things that we could turn around and make a profit on, or just collect. And we’d take vacations. We take long road trips for example, or take advantage of a deal where you fly to Florida in the spring and then drive back a rental car a week later because they would offer a really good deal as the rental car companies wanted to move those cars up north for the summer.

Anyway, things like that where my parents were, good bargain shoppers. Taught us the value of money. We worked quite a bit growing up, mowing lawns when we were too young to get real jobs. And then I worked at a grocery store as soon as I turned 16. Yeah. So again, we weren’t hurting for money by any means, but I also think I learned good money habits in the way that we did grow up.

Now thinking about, working in your job, unlike most doctors they’re out trying to get the, I don’t want to stereotype, but most of them when they come in. They want to get that expensive house. They want to get the the super expensive Mercedes or Lexus or Tesla or whatever you have in there.

Mike Woo-Ming: It sounds like you didn’t follow that path.

Leif Dahleen MD: And no. Oh, it was, two years, like I said, we’d spent next to nothing. I kept my little one bedroom condo in Gainesville, Florida. And we actually started renting that out after a year, just moved what little belongings we had into my wife’s mother’s garage.

And but after. Two years of doing that. And once we were married and expecting our first child, we started to build a very nice home and we did build 4,000 square feet on the water really nice place. Four years later, the hospital went under in a small town and there was no one to buy our what, might’ve been the nicest house in town.

So that, that set on the market for a long time, when we did finally decide to sell it after. Using it as a seasonal rental and that sort of thing for awhile, but yeah, long story short. We did make that one financial move, I guess in hindsight it was a mistake, but it didn’t feel like one at a time.

We really thought that would be where I spent my career, 20, 30 years working in this small town in Northern Michigan about an hour and a half north of where we are now. But yeah, that didn’t happen. So the car. I’ve never been a big car guy. I know some people are just not my thing. I’d rather walk or bike.

If I can, a car is a utilitarian kind of thing. It gets me from point a to point B. I don’t get too excited about the maker model. I drive a new center model.

Mike Woo-Ming: We’ve gone investing in something that’s going to depreciate the minute you purchase it. Exactly.

Leif Dahleen MD: Yeah. And I knew I was poor. I finished residency.

Thing other than, some home equity, because 2006 had gone up, so the condo was set. It mine were pretty small. I went to, like I said, public school, undergrad and medical school had scholarships that more than covered undergrad. And and about 60,000, I think my wife had about 15,000 in student loans.

Now this was back in 2018. To so 20 years ago, so these numbers sound tiny, but the average at the time, I think was around 90,000. So I had less than the average, but I also lived awfully frugally as a as a med student. I had a beat up old car. I lived with roommates and not the greatest apartments, yeah. Then didn’t take out any loans that I didn’t need to pay for it.

Mike Woo-Ming: What was the point of saving? Where were you looking at retiring early or was it just a way that I really don’t need to buy a lot of stuff?

Leif Dahleen MD: Yeah. I’d say it was more of the latter. I didn’t know what I was saving for.

I just knew that I didn’t have any reason to, and I want him to see my net worth grow. Like I, I learned about, again, I mentioned. Parents taught me some good values in terms of money management. And my dad taught me the rule of 72, which is how long it takes for your money to double at a given rate of return or interest rate.

So I knew that if I got, let’s say 8% on my money, it would double every nine years. If I got 12% on invested money, it would double every six years. And even, as a. And resident looking at jobs, paying wow, like $250,000 a year, $300,000 a year. I knew that was on the horizon and I was like, I’m going to save a lot of money and that’s going to double and that’s going to double again and I’ll be a multimillionaire someday.

By the time I actually got out of residency into the real world, the jobs were even better than I had imagined. And so I didn’t necessarily know what I was going to do with millions of dollars. It wasn’t until. 2014 or so that I discovered the concept of financial independence and realized that, oh, I can use this money to buy freedom, to buy back time and, location independence, the ability to travel.

Like you mentioned, in your introduction, taking our kids around the world. And that sounded much more appealing than. 2:00 AM labor, epidurals, and long, long days in the hospital. So that’s the that’s the route that I decided to do.

Mike Woo-Ming: So you could have invested in a lot of things in front of when I read the stock market or a Vanguard is what got you interested to talk about? There’s a lot of places where doctors can be investing. Why was that the best route for you?

Leif Dahleen MD: Again, going back to my parents, one thing my dad did in medical school at the time, I guess I was not thrilled with life. I was in a surgery rotation somewhere on the internet. I found something about swing trading and I was reading about this and I sent my dad an article and he said, he sent me a book.

It was Andrew Tobias’s The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need. And I read that and then. Introduced me to what investing should look like. And to me that means index funds as the bulk of what you invest in. Now, in the back of the book, he mentioned two companies that he believed were excellent T. Rowe Price and Vanguard.

And I thought T Rowe price sounded quite Regal. And he mentioned that Vanguard was kind of a, no-frills sort of a low budget kind of deal. And I actually went those two real price. Sounded, I don’t know. It sounded more appealing in the final chapter of the book when I revisited it, once I had some money and and it turns out after six or seven years, I took a closer look at everything.

And that was in like an S and P 500 fund paying expense ratio of about 38 basis points. If I remember 8.3, 8%, and I realized Vanguard was charging like 90% less. And. And I looked at, and I invented, I invested in some mutual funds that were of funds, but they’re all actively managed.

I didn’t do everything right. From the get-go for sure. But I also didn’t make any really big mistakes. The thing I did right. Was save a lot of money and invest it. I didn’t invest it perfectly. No one does, no one can really do a perfect, but I would’ve done things differently in hindsight.

But again not super costly mistakes. And I do believe and still believe. The US stock market is a great place to put the bulk of your money. And that’s where most of mine is.

Mike Woo-Ming: Even this year.

Leif Dahleen MD: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Stock market, I think it’s up on the year finally. I’m sure it took a little dive at volatility is part of the price you pay for long-term results.

And I think just understanding, where the stock market has been over many decades and all of the tribulations. It has seen and recovered from gives me confidence that most continues to continue to see strong returns from the stocks. You’re investing in companies that do wonderful things for people and make great products and provide services that we all use.

Mike Woo-Ming: Now, when you invested heavily, what kind of give me an example of what percentage you were actually putting into investing and how much percentage where you go to paying your bills and other expenses?

Leif Dahleen MD: Yeah. Every year is different. There’s no such thing as a normal year. At least it seemed like for us in doing locums for a couple of years, building a big house, I cost a lot of money and that hospital going bankrupt, finding another job, realizing that wasn’t a place we wanted to spend.

Yeah, the rest of our career move, finding another job back in Northern Minnesota. So the percentage wise, I would say anywhere from probably 30 to 60% given, depending on the year, maybe 20% on a year where we had a lot of expenses, I like to pay for cars with cash and it’s when locums made some extra money, even during my vacations, when I had full-time jobs but yeah, towards the end, when things are stable, the last five or six years, we had paid off our house by then we were spending maybe 70,000 a year, not counting certain things like charitable giving, but just food, lodging, travel, bills, utilities, et cetera. That was maybe… 20% of what I was bringing home. When we’re saving maybe a 70, 80%, not counting taxes, I’m talking net not gross because 30, 35% goes to taxes, but from what’s left, I saved most of it. When I didn’t have any other big expenses,

Mike Woo-Ming: Take me to the decision when you. decided you wanted to retire. Tell me, what was your thinking process then? Was it one day you decided, was it that one year decision? How did that work for you and your family?

Leif Dahleen MD: Yeah the first, it was that realization like a, is this really possible and spent a lot of time reading, all the safe withdrawal rate studies and. .. Kind of verifying in my mind that this was a real thing. We had enough money to make it work, and then did some spreadsheet work to project out because I had just moved about a year earlier to Minnesota and I was happy to be back home and it was the best job I’d ever had. So I was in no hurry to leave.

I thought maybe we’ll come up with a five-year plan. And our kids just started at this a really good grade school at a gifted program. And we figured well about the time they’re in middle school, I will have been here five or six years and it might work out just really well. I want them to have a nice cushion and it turns out that we had, at some point, double, what I had five years early by the time I actually did leave my job. So I felt very secure by then. And of course, as we’ve talked about a little bit, I did start a website too, and that as turned into a source of income as well. And yeah, it was just a lot of conversations with my wife, like what we wanted life to look like.

She was excited that the idea of traveling. Yeah, weeks and months at a time, rather than quick vacations, where you hit up all the tourist spots really quickly and then race home, and then you’re supposed to be here. Now, my wife didn’t work much. She did teach a nutrition class like one night, a week kind of thing for a couple of years.

And now she probably works now more than ever. She does all the verification for our physician. Only Facebook group. There are a lot of people trying to sneak in that are not physicians that want to have access to us. So she spends an hour, maybe an hour or two some days just working on that for me.

But no, she’s stayed home to take care of our kids. We have two boys they’re now 11 and 13 years. When I retired now almost three years ago, I guess they would have been eight and 10. So yeah, she was home with them until they went to school and they were in public schools until I left my job. And since then we’ve taken over. Primarily my wife has taken over their education.

Mike Woo-Ming: Now I know when I first retired, I have that conversation with my wife and. A lot of, I did have spreadsheets back then I had to do a lot of convincing. And then they were on board. Then the conversation with my parents was another thing.

And my mom still, to this day thought, “you’re nuts” that, “you’ve got some mental things” and just from many doctors out there, cause I’m not the only one where we are. Being a physician is so in wrapped what we do and I’m sure you’ve come across this as well. How old are those conversations?

And even now these days, you’re a doctor and why aren’t you working? Why aren’t you. For me picking up my kids or, why aren’t you doing this? Or what kind of doctor are you who doesn’t work even, college roommates, so that I’ve had say, I’m not sure what exactly what you’re doing now, or at least when I was retired, how are those conversations going?

Leif Dahleen MD: The one that I was most concerned about was the one with my parents. I remember when I was accepted to medical school, they offered a percentage of the class and I think it was somewhat merit-based. They asked if we wanted to take early summer anatomy and then we could be TAs and help teach anatomy to the rest of the class.

And at first I accepted. But then it was like my last summer freedom before what I knew would be a long, difficult slog of medical school and residency. And I was having a great time and I just don’t let parents I think I don’t want to do this summer anatomy program. It’s just, I don’t really need to I can take anatomy with everybody else.

And I remember my dad was like, do you even want to go to medical school? You want to be. Yeah. I just want to have a little fun this last summer before it gets crazy. So when the time came 20 years later to tell my parents that I was considering retiring early I didn’t know how that would go, but it went really well.

Actually, my dad had retired by then. I think he had a different outlook on, how much time you get on this planet and everything else and said, “Hey, if you can afford it, Do what makes you happy.” And we had conversations about finance. Like before, before I started a blog, he was probably the only are they, my mom and dad were the only people I talked to about, money matters.

And no, I’ve found a lot more people that I can talk to about that. But yeah, no, it actually went well. And then as far as other people, friends, distant relatives Maybe some have found my site and read a lot of things or listen to podcasts or whatnot. But I don’t get any real pushback.

No one seems to be particularly upset by what I’m doing so that a lot of people know I have this other thing that I do, on the website and that, so I don’t know if they really realize or get the facts. That’s all just bonus just to, it’s gravy. I didn’t need to do that in order to retire from medicine.

And I think that’s the question I get most often is yeah, you retired, but that’s because you have this thing. Oh no. I had probably more than twice as much money as I needed to retire, with a high five figure, low six figure annual spend, which has plenty of money in Northern Michigan.

But yeah, no I’ve been very pleased with the reaction. Like public with my name and decided not to be anonymous. There was, it was like crickets, no one really cared or noticed, which was how I wanted it.

Mike Woo-Ming: So let’s talk about that because I was interested too, is first off you to, why did you decide to create the website and two, why did you go anonymous at the beginning?

Leif Dahleen MD: Yeah, but circling back to that question, I never really answered it earlier, but I had read about financial independence realize that was something that we had. Gave us amazing opportunities to retire. If I wanted to, or take a lower paying job or work less, or, basically when money is no longer a concern that opens up a world of possibilities and it was a concept that isn’t taught in schools.

It wasn’t anything I really thought about retirement is something to do when your kids leave the house and they’re on their own. And. You’re getting older and don’t like working all those hours. But no, I just wanted to share the message on people to know what it means to be financially independent and what that can do for you.

So I read a blog called Mr. Money Mustache. That led me to a handful of others, including one by a physician Dr. Jim Dolly, who writes the white coat investor. And. I saw what he was doing. I saw what other people are doing. I didn’t really see anything in the fire space. Financial independence retire early from a higher budget, higher spend approach.

Not that we’re, among doctors, very high spenders, but among the, fire crowd, I guess I would say. More of a quote-unquote fat fire where lean fire means you are very low budget. If that fires on the other end of that spectrum. And we do like nice things. We spend more than the average American household, but less than the average American doctor.

So we’re somewhere in this kind of odd place. But I found out that I enjoyed writing and I initially set out to write like once or twice a month and it ended up being once or twice a week. And. And it just has taken off from there.

Mike Woo-Ming: What I like about it too, is you’re very transparent. Some of the little pushback you get, you actually, I know about it. Cause you actually leave it on your website. You left a few of the comments that may not be as flattering that are on there was that was a conscious choice.

Leif Dahleen MD: I’ve deleted very few comments. I delete the spam, there’s just random stuff that links to garbage, but yeah, if someone’s critical, that’s good feedback in general. And I can usually explain why I think that perspectives is a little off and maybe they don’t know my whole story don’t know exactly what I’m doing. I had a post about donor advised funds not long ago, which is a vehicle where you donate.

To an entity that holds the money and it can remain infested that entity is a charity. And once the money is there, it can only go to other charities. They have to be 501c3 registered IRS charities. But I like to use that as a mini foundation. We’ve been building up the balance in that while donating from it.

We only donate maybe five to 10% of the balance, but the balance is now inaccessible like a half a million dollars. And I got shit for that from some random comment or as “oh, you guys just do rich people. It’s just a tax write off.” It’s okay. Yeah. I get to deduct maybe 37 cents for every dollar I give to it.

And I can’t give that money back and it will go to charity. That’s the only destination for it, and I’m like, I don’t think he knows that. No, we pay the salary of a physician now donated like a bunch of money to COVID causes Ukraine more recently, we’re trying to do good with the money I’m making online.

And a bulk of the profits end up being donated and I think that’s a good thing, but yeah. So if someone’s gonna write some hate, I’ll be like, okay. Yeah. But here’s the other side that maybe you didn’t realize.

Mike Woo-Ming: Exactly. And following up on that one question about when you decided to tell us the decision when you decided to out yourself, is it just like continuing, just just being transparent,

Leif Dahleen MD: It wasn’t my decision. It was Jim Dolly’s. He said, so we partner pretty early on. He liked what I was doing, and I liked the exposure that you would be able to give me. He bought a small piece of my company and we’ve been working together in some cross promotional ways and different things since 2017. And he had his first white coat investor conference in 2018 and he said, you’re going to be on the big stage.

Leif DeLeon MD. This’ll be your coming out party as I got I. Okay. I’m like first, let me make sure I let my colleagues at work know that is part of my plan. So that was one of the factors that went into my being anonymous initially, I didn’t know for sure that I would truly follow up and retire early.

It was an idea I had that I was exploring and writing everything out really helped me… firm up, what I wanted out of life and what I wanted early retirement to look like. But of course I had to let my colleagues know and I didn’t want to be writing the site about, “Hey, I’m gonna retire in a few years. And I saw this thing online about you not working with us anymore pretty soon. What’s this about?” So I wanted them to be the first to know. Once I talked with my chief and some of my colleagues there. Then I felt comfortable putting my name out there too. You always worry about what are people gonna think.

And most people don’t think much.

Mike Woo-Ming: And usually are not thinking about you at all.

Leif Dahleen MD: They’ve got their own things going on. Like I go, huh? That’s good. That’s cool. All right. Whatever.

Mike Woo-Ming: You’ve got quite a big following and many, you probably get a lot of questions. I want to be like, do you leave?

How can I get started? What are some, maybe three or four things that you could recommend for someone coming out, they want to retire early.

Leif Dahleen MD: Yeah I would start with not having that attitude, right? I would hope that you can enjoy because no matter what, unless you get a big inheritance or, get really lucky with a moonshot kind of investment, you’re going to be working for a decade or two minimum.

And so figuring out how to enjoy the job. Are doing, you went to medical school for a reason, went through residency. This is supposed to be the good part. It gets better and it really does. So that would be the first thing, but to put yourself in a position to become financially independent then you just need to focus on growing the gap between what you earn and what you make.

And honestly, over the first five, 10 years, how much money you have invested. Is going to be depend much more on how much you saved and invested in much less on your investment returns. Now over 20 to 30 to 50 or a hundred years, your investment returns make a huge difference, obviously. But initially it’s just brute force savings and you’ve got to pay off debt.

You’ve got to invest, you’ve got to live and you’ve got to have some fun. And I think there’s a tendency among. Many people and physicians are certainly not immune to this, to equate expensive experiences, expensive items with just being happier. And that’s not always the case, and you can look at big studies on happiness from country to country.

There was a study and this is now 10 or 15 years old. So inflation has changed the numbers, but making more than about 70 grand a year, didn’t seem to make people a whole lot happier, maybe a little more life satisfaction. So people have equated that to maybe spending more than about 70,000 a year.

Does it make you all that happy? Maybe it’s a hundred thousand now after inflation. And obviously there are easy ways to, refute that anecdotally, but also when you think back on some of the happiest times in your life and the things that have brought you the most joy, was it hanging out in college meeting, your future partner, camping trip, playing games with your kids, all these things that really don’t cost a lot of money necessarily.

And I learned to be selectively frugal, spend. Bringing the most joy and as far as investing, yeah, I like VT, sax and chill. I don’t have the t-shirt, but I’ve seen it. That’s a good one. Which would be the Vanguard total stock market. Like I said, index funds and and I think it’s all right to use a little bit of play money.

Whether it’s for your own business, someone else’s, an individual stock. I just wrote a blog post on this that published the other day. I think, maybe up to 5% of your invested dollars could be in that moonshot deal. When you have a little bit more, you can take some more chances.

Mike Woo-Ming: What’s your opinion on cryptocurrency?

Leif Dahleen MD: I don’t know where it’s going. Some brilliant people have said that it is the future. Some equally brilliant people have said that it should be worthless. Really doesn’t have any intrinsic value and the use cases are difficult to find. So I am somewhere in the middle and I don’t profess to know which way it’ll go.

But I don’t want to miss out entirely. So I do have some investments in companies that will do well as crypto does. Cracking is an exchange and I was able to invest in that pre it’s still pre IPO because that’s still, I don’t know, in the future, if at all. And I invested in a company called Republic, which republicans.com does.

A lot of funding for startups helps attract investors to different types of startups. And they also do crypto and tokenization of assets and whatnot. They’ve got a pretty diversified kind of. Business model now. So those are companies that will be well as crypto does. As far as directly owning it, I don’t have Bitcoin.

I don’t have Ethereum. I did invest a small amount, a few thousand dollars in a pre-seed round for a token that apparently is worth 10 times what I put into it. Although I don’t have liquidity options at this point in that yet. So I’m dabbling, and. We’ll see where it goes. I’m as curious as anyone, I read a lot about it, but I don’t have any strong opinions because people that know more than me have very strong opinions in very different ways.

Mike Woo-Ming: Okay. Gotcha. This has been amazing. So what’s the plan for a Physicians On Fire for 2022?

Leif Dahleen MD: The same as always, thankfully we’ve been able to travel again and that’s been good. We go to Europe for a month in January. We spent part of February and most of March and Florida and south America.

And we’re doing a two week cruise after spending about a week in Texas. And. Some time in New York city, Boston, Maine. So I’m not sure if you’re asking about me or the website, but it’s one in the same sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. So just continue on putting out, content four or five days a week, something for just about everyone we’ve got interview series.

My original thoughts stuff on investing taxes travel, you name it. Yeah. We’ll keep an eye.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, you’ve got the really great stuff, guys, if you want a good read too. I love what you wrote about when you were traveling during COVID than in history or experiences. That was that was really enlightening and Leif the great writers.

Go to his website, physicianonfire.com. Check out if you’re a physician you can get on his Facebook group. If you’re not. His wife is going to kick you out. So don’t even try. It’s a great place to put up some good posts and inspiring, and as a great community. If again, thank you so much for joining us on the program today.

Leif Dahleen MD: Thank you, Mike. I appreciate the introduction and the the invite and the conversation was quite good. Appreciate you sharing my story with your readers and watching.

Mike Woo-Ming: Thank you so much and thanks all of you. And again, if you want to be inspired, don’t just read it. If you want to start implementing these things, learn about finance, go and study all these things.

Whether it be stocks, whether it be crypto, whether it be real estate, invest, find mentors are actually doing it. And don’t just read about it. Keep moving forward.

More doctors are learning the benefits of becoming a practice owner and starting their own direct primary care (DPC) practice.  DPC is a primary care model where patients are not billed by insurance, but instead charged a flat recurrent membership fee.  Dr. Cynthia Villacis is a direct primary care physician and one of our life coaches at PhysicianCoaches.com. She opened her DPC over 5 years ago after getting burned out as an employed physician, and then opened her life coaching business a year ago to help physicians who are stressed and want to make a change in their personal or professional lives but feel stuck. You’ll be energized by Dr. Villacis’ inspiring story!

Dr. Villacis’ e-booklet: How to Beat Physician Burnout

https://www.coachcynthiamd.com/Burnout

Transcript:

Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD. As this is the podcast for physician entrepreneurs, and I love to spotlight doctors who are in the trenches. Becoming their own boss. And I’ve got another one here and I’m so glad she’s on the program. She has a direct primary care physician as well as a life coach.

She opened up her direct primary care practice about over five years ago, after getting burnt out as an employed physician at a federally qualified health center or FQHC. She then started her life coaching business about a year ago to help physicians who are stressed and want to make a change in their personal or professional lives, but feeling stuck.

So I’m super excited to have her. She’s one of our physician coaches on our physician coaches.com website, where you can find over 200. Physician coaches, but you can pick four in a 12 different specialties. So I love to bring into the program here today, Dr. Cynthia, via VSCs. Cynthia, how are you doing today?

Cynthia Villacis MD: I am doing great!

Mike Woo-Ming: Thank you! Thanks for coming on to the program, I was mentioning just prior to us coming onto the call, I know doctors who started up their own DPC practice and they’re super busy just trying to manage the business and doing all the things that we often don’t think of when we were employed physicians.

And then you decided, you know what? I want more stuff. I want more stress in my life. I’m going to take on more things and I wanted to become a life coach as well. So I want to hear about your journey. We talked about it. We’re probably gradually. Graduated residency, but at the same time, you’ve had those turf wars.

You’ve probably got them experiences, but when they take about your journey from getting into the medical school, then get into residency and then deciding to start up your own DPC.

Cynthia Villacis MD: That’s going back quite a ways. So I am 19 years out of residency. So going into as far as the going into med school part I was a little bit late in terms of coming to the decision that I wanted to be a doctor.

So I graduated back in 1993 from Oberlin and stayed up there and worked a couple of years finishing up my pre-recs and then came down to Wright state. And Dane for med school, I was interested in doing primary care and I had applied to and gotten into two med schools in the state of Ohio. And I had gotten married and undergrad and the other school that I got into.

Was new Yukon. I was one of two people who had gotten been accepted and I didn’t want to be like the only married medical students and I’m right. Stayed had people coming from all different backgrounds. And I had a focus in primary care. So that’s how I ended up down at Wright state. And then I had my first child fall of my fourth year of.

Med school. And I was looking at residences at west. I made it out to Seattle with my husband and a two month old. And yeah, we were like, oh, we love Seattle, but his family is in Ecuador. My mom was in Cincinnati and We just decided that we wanted to be at a place where we’d have more support. And then as we went through med school and I had my second kid at the end of residency at the, my second kid at the end of residency we just decided to stick around the greater Cincinnati area.

My kids would at least to get to know one side of their grandparents. So that’s how we ended up here. So actually on the other side of the river, I’m in Northern Kentucky and family is very important and when we can be starting to raise, yeah, sure.

It is so. Ended up coming back here, figure, we could always go to Seattle on vacation if we wanted to, but we didn’t have to live out there.

Mike Woo-Ming: So you went into residency and this was a time too. It was like, cause I was in that same time, a lot of people say you gotta go into primary care was a lot of your colleagues going into primary care that time because now it’s the, I think, it’s definitely shifted everything now is about specialties and primary care is off after thought. It sounds like at least I perceive it that way.

Cynthia Villacis MD: There was but… Set up with a focus on primary care. I’d helped remember helping organize like primary care day and, we had a family practice interest group and stuff like that coming up. So me and it was the only practice was definitely recognized and encouraged.

And we had great mentoring as far as going towards primary care. And I remember working. Doing some rotations, as far as at the us and the community health centers, up there with Dr. Gala Roy at east Dayton health center. And just really got encouraged to go in that direction. Okay.

Mike Woo-Ming: So you’ve graduated, you completed your residency and now you’re looking at a whole different job offers, I assume. Or did you have a. A place in mind where you wanted to practice, what was that for you?

Cynthia Villacis MD: For me, I was wanting to stay in the greater Cincinnati area, at that point in time. I was pregnant with my second kid and my husband was in school at Northern Kentucky.

We were wanting to stick around the area and yeah, I ended up initially working At a hospital owned group for a couple of years. And as a hospital owned group, you don’t really have much control over what’s going on. And they ended up moving a physician into my office that had a problem with prescribing and it just, it was not a good match at all.

I ended up leaving there. I did urgent care for a year. And then I started working in a community health center systems. I had gotten exposed to community health centers through medical school and really wanted to be able to try to help people from different backgrounds and the community health centers have a way of having sliding scale for folks that don’t have insurance and tend to have reduce fees for labs.

And sometimes for medicines also, but they’ve got this weird thing where the way they get reimbursed by the government, they would get reimbursed like for the same amount, for a level three and a level five. You have the thought that, it’s a more complicated patients that you should get more time with them.

It doesn’t really work very well. But I stayed at a community health center system for a number of years. I was at neighborhood healthcare for three years. And then I was with another community health center system in the greater Cincinnati area for eight or nine years. And I love that.

Mike Woo-Ming: Which one kind of worked better or what was the reason for switching?

Cynthia Villacis MD: But the CEO, to be honest the CEO at the first place I always wanted to provide. Quality care as far as to the patients. And she was more interested in how timely everything was, but didn’t give me support to help make it more timely. My ma had to do the blood draws as well as from the patients.

And. It just it was a very dysfunctional system. There was one time where she came down and knocked on my exam door and told me to hurry things up. This is a community health center system where people like literally would get off the bus, before their appointment and after their appointment, all of a sudden you’d have a waiting room full of patients, that was the way the saran, you just saw whoever was next, but yeah, it wasn’t a physician. No. Oh no. She was definitely not a physician. And what kind of made me move me towards leaving is when they were having economic fit financial problems.

And I was trying to think through, as far as what other things we could change, how I could change things once again, wanted to try to have some influence on how things happened. And the only answer she could come up with to get me about how things were going to get better is that I was not seeing more patients and I was already seeing.

Literally I was like, how about this? This, yeah, no, the only thing that she came up as I would see more patients I’m like, yeah, I can’t do that. I’m already doing 10 to 15 minute visits on the patients and yeah. That wasn’t gonna work. So I left from there and went to another community health center.

And this can be health center. They looked at me house number was not having the same kind of financial problems. But once again, I think it was in that committee health center system when we switched to EHR. So it was a very dysfunctional EHR system. At what point in time I counted, there were over 20 clicks that I had to make to get lab results into my inbox and send it to my nurse. 20 clicks! You can imagine primary care, how many times over and over that had to be happened, and just add to that.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. I love that because I’ve simulated done these kinds of passive aggressive ways of explaining things. And I love that it’s constantly 20 clicks to do something that I could just write down for yes, 20 clicks.

Cynthia Villacis MD: Yeah. And the person that they had in charge of the HR implementation I think she was very overwhelmed. And there, I remember one point in time, I was trying to ask her to change the wording on one of the orders that we had to do, because we’re getting called from the radiology centers, asking us what they were supposed to be doing.

Because there was one of the codes was for an extracranial ultrasound. Which a crowded Doppler, but, apparently, it was confusing everybody, but it’s just like something that would go in and you could just change the words really easily, in terms of I knew how to do it, but I couldn’t do it because I wasn’t the person that was supposed to be doing it.

I didn’t have authorization. But it didn’t want to make changes like that, so it’s, it was it was a struggle there in terms of the computer system and I just ended up working longer and longer hours. I had 36 patient contact hours a week, but was probably working more like 60 ish. At least, for all those extra hours. Yeah.

And I remember talking about wanting to cut back on my hours at one point in time. Because I’m like, this is too many hours. But then I was going to be part-time and wouldn’t call it for the benefits that I needed. So I just felt really stuck, and I, got burned out I still wanted to provide good care for the patients, but I really ended up feeling like I couldn’t, I just couldn’t make the system work. I was running behind. I didn’t like being behind, but I thought it was more important to take care of the patient in front of me than to get them in and out the door.

Mike Woo-Ming: Who did you were able to talk about these things? Did you talk about this with your husband? You have to plan for dots at work?

Cynthia Villacis MD: Yeah. I talked to my husband about it. I was on the leadership team. I talked with the medical director of. Oh, yeah. I brought up, my concerns, my issues.

I made some suggestions, I was having problems with charting and I was like Hey, can I have a scribe? Could I have Google block? Could we try the Google goggles? Could we try the way scheduling? And it was like no. And I’m like, okay. I basically just end up getting really burned out and it didn’t I feel like it was it wasn’t sustainable.

And I was trying to figure out how to make it change or what to do differently. Cause I, I didn’t know what to do. I thought it was me. I didn’t burn out. Wasn’t a thing that people were talking about in the early the night. Not nineties, but it’s 20, 2010s, right? Whatever year that is. Moving people, weren’t talking about that back then. At least not people that I knew. So I thought it was just me. I didn’t understand that I was getting burned out or whatever else was going on, but I know I needed to change.

Mike Woo-Ming: There were no internet discussion groups back then.

Cynthia Villacis MD: No. Don’t remember any of that. Anyways, I was reading a medical economics journal and I wrote about this thing called direct primary care. And I Googled direct primary care near me and found a lady that was about an hour and a half away. And then a little Dr. Molly Rutherford, and she had opened a direct primary care practice. So I went down and visited her software office, went to a conference with my husband and came back and was like, “Hey, this is what I want to do. How are we going to make this work?”

Mike Woo-Ming: And I’m curious, how did that conversation, did you just email her or pick up the phone and say, Hey, I want to do the same thing. Can I shout at you? How did that happen?

Cynthia Villacis MD: I don’t remember, this is those like six or seven years ago, but I either called her, emailed her, but she was, super helpful, very open to, yeah, come on down and shadow me and I’ll show you what my offices like. And that’s one thing I really appreciated about the DPC community is there’s a lot of.

Helping each other that’s going on? I think part of it comes from being a relatively newer practice style and not being quite so many of us, there it’s, that’s, it’s been a good community. But I still felt stuck. It was hard to make a change. One of the things that helped me move towards making a change though, is I also do addiction medicine yet.

I forgot to tell you about that half. So I started doing. Started doing that year or two before I opened my DPC and I was as an employee And I had seen what people were able to do to change their lives, to improve their lives and to get back on their feet. It was all these things against them.

They were able to make things better, and I’m like, whoa, I don’t have any of that stuff going on. I’m just talking about, opening a business and even if the business has problems, I can go get another job. As an employee someplace, if that’s what I want to do, so worst case scenario is I go back to doing what I’m doing now or to urgent care.

And you know what I’m saying? It’s so that you put things in a whole different perspective, and helped me move forward. And I think that, and seeing that there were other people out there. That we’re doing something different. That, that probably was, that was super huge. I think if I had just read about it and hadn’t gone to the conference and met these people who were doing things other than being an employed physician, I, that would have been so much harder for me to move forward.

Mike Woo-Ming: You saw some people who were actually implementing it. Wasn’t just a pipe dream,

Cynthia Villacis MD: Exactly. It wasn’t a pipe dream. And everybody was happy. It was like the only medical conference I think I had been to, at that point in time where people were actually like, happy about what they were doing. There were hopeful, and I think it’s the whole. Being able to have some control over your practice or how you do things. Yes, you’ve got the responsibility for it. You have to make payroll, there’s certain things you have to, do. But to be able to decide, if you want to do something or not that was one of the things that I had challenges with as far as an employed physician, is that.

I felt that I had all these responsibilities over the outcomes. I had all these boxes that I had to check all these criteria, but I didn’t have any control over the process. And so here I am, I’m like, okay. Yeah, I agree. Those are great ideas. We should do things. We should make sure that people have their

But if you only have 10 or 15 minutes to do it, And you how was all that supposed to happen? I don’t want to not educate them on their diabetes medicine so I can ask them if they have gotten that at all these other things done that. Anyways, so try to do PHQ cycles around that.

But it never got things working well enough that I felt I could do what I wanted to with the patients.

Mike Woo-Ming: I read this somewhere and it was a great description of why we were anxious or why we have anxiety. And it wasn’t, it was simply a math equation. It was anxiety equals uncertainty plus.

Powerlessness. So in the future, we can, when you’re an entrepreneur, you’re always going to have uncertainty, but you have power. You empowered yourself. And often times as employees, we have both, we have this uncertainty and we feel powerless. Does the DPC, you found a way to empower yourself. It’s

Cynthia Villacis MD: Perfect.

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s the empower. Yes. You hit it right on the nail.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. So you just, you go in you go to this conference, you’re surrounded by like-minded individuals. They seem really happy. You tell your husband, I want to do this. What was that timeline like? And when did you actually, like, how did you work on your business, working your practice while still probably work in, full-time schedule I assume. And your FQHC?

Cynthia Villacis MD: How did I do that? Actually I, I told them a little sooner than I was planning to. They were asking me to start up a new line of service for the company doing addiction medicine services. And I was like, oh, I have to tell them because I can’t be responsible for starting a new line of services and then leaving.

Yeah. So it was. Basically evenings and weekends, and it was hard to find the time to do some of the things that I was wanting to do. I did have a brief period of time where I wasn’t open yet after I had left. The employed position, but that was really because I outed myself earlier than I planned to in terms of letting them know what’s going on.

That was actually really helpful because it is hard to make calls and find out about things during the day. It’s hard to look at commercial properties that, if you’re not getting home until eight o’clock at night, how are you going to go look at the properties?

Mike Woo-Ming: If you do have to, when you’re looking for a place, did you want to make sure or where they’re like non-compete clauses or anything like that? I know it’s probably a different type.

Cynthia Villacis MD: No they’re told they’re totally were non-compete clauses. So my community health center that I was working at with was over in Ohio. And that was part of the reasons why I came back over to Kentucky besides the fact that I lived here. There was a non-compete.

So it was really irritating because, I’m working at a community health center with patients with Medicare, Medicaid and our insured. And there, there are more people there, more patients needing those sorts of services, and there are places for people to get it, and I just honestly personally have a philosophical issue. People having non-competes I understand as a business owner, why you’re concerned about losing your patients, but from a patient perspective, people should have the right to follow their physicians.

They should be able to, have their physicians tell them where they’re going, some of my patients got their letters and some patients just had me disappear on them because not all my letters were sent out appropriately and there wasn’t anything I could do about that, but yeah, so I moved to a base of basically I was starting from scratch, over here in Kentucky. And one of the big things I had to figure out though, was how was I going to finance it? ’cause, I’m not independently wealthy. I’m the primary bread earner, so a lot of those things were things that had kept me stuck before.

But it’s one of those things that you have to, if you agree to move forward before you have all the details figured out, you’re more likely to figure out the details, So initially, I increased the number of hours that I was doing the addiction medicine. So I was doing that with twice a week and in part to our money part, because I like it.

I’m there one day a week still at this point in time. But also in the practice, once I was talking to more people about, the practice and what I wanted to do, and I found other things that I could do in addition to seeing the patients as I was trying to get more patients come in physicals, for vets. I could do telemedicine. There, there was all these other opportunities that I wasn’t aware of. Immigration physicals. I do those. I started doing those actually like right before the pandemic. So I didn’t deal with this initially. I love doing immigration. That’s actually one of my favorites.

Things just because I love meeting people from different backgrounds and cultures. And I’m mean, you can see that looking back that I was an exchange student for a year. I remember, back in 88 and I speak Spanish as a second language. That’s something that. I like and I also haven’t brought my husband through the immigration process.

He came over on a FIA fiance visa back in 91. So I have some experience that way, but being able to do the immigration physicals for patients who speak Spanish in their native tongue. That’s. That’s really nice, to be able to actually have a conversation with somebody, as opposed to having them have to do everything through an interpreter.

Yeah, it’s fun.

Mike Woo-Ming: We have a number of people who listen to our podcasts. You want us to set up their direct primary care practice? What are some like two or three things, advice that you can give them? Lessons that you’ve learned after starting a beer DPC.

Cynthia Villacis MD: Let’s see. I would say network, both with other people who are doing direct primary care with people in the community so they can know you’re there and know that your services are something that they want.

And with other physicians who are doing things outside of employed medicine, both to learn of opportunities as well as just to get support, cause it really helps mentally when you are working with and talking with. I have support with other people who are also trying to do something different.

Mike Woo-Ming: Now, when you signed up, did you there’s a bunch of DPC companies out there, like MD VIP and some other things like that. Did you go with one of these companies or did you just do this on your own?

Cynthia Villacis MD: Yeah, no. MD VIP is really concierge more so than DPC I was wanting to provide something that’d be more accessible, coming out of the background, the community health centers then MD VIP was and yeah no, I did it on my own.

With, support and talking to friends and stuff, but it was a lot of learning, but I think being open to learning and I think that’s another big thing as far as learning when you’re starting your own business realizing that. If you make a mistake, you didn’t kill anybody.

And it’s actually a good thing cause that’s how you learn. You know what I’m saying? And there’s, it’s much easier to fix things somewhat and in business if you miss something on the lease that you should have found that you stopped well, the next time you see it, at least you’re not going to miss it.

You learn something, and don’t beat yourself up about it. Take it as a lesson and go on,

Mike Woo-Ming: Tell us about your practice now. Is it a small practice? Micropractice how many hours are you working on your business right now? And, yeah,

Cynthia Villacis MD: so I have gone back to forth between being a small practice micropractice I had an ma with me for a bit.

A year and a half and then COVID. So then I would, then I had no MNA for quite a while. Probably about a year and a half, and then I just hired her back in January. And I also have a virtual medical assistant that’s with me two days that answers respond Tuesdays two days a week. So I’m currently working in my DPC.

Four days a week combination of practice stuff, seeing patients syndrome. You’ve seen direct primary care patients doing immigration physicals, and then the business part of it, it’s obviously a mixture of all of it. But I’ve really been able to, I think, grow a little bit more again, these last couple of months since I’ve had Danielle back, because it’s hard to answer the phone in a schedule appointments when you were working with patients,

Mike Woo-Ming: What surprised you, is there anything surprised you after you’ve launched your practice?

Cynthia Villacis MD: I’m trying to think one thing there were lots of surprises.

Mike Woo-Ming: I would assume. So we knew everything before it happened.

Cynthia Villacis MD: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say honestly, I can’t think of one thing that was a surprise. It’s just been an ongoing learning experience. Which is good because, I like learning and trying new things, but Yeah, I’m sorry, I can’t think of one thing.

Mike Woo-Ming: In terms of a physician who wants to do this kind of practice, what type of skills do you think should they have, if they want to take this on?

I think being willing to learn about the business aspect as well as the medical aspect. I think being not being as scared to make a change, if something isn’t working.

Being willing to put your out yourself out there in terms of talking with people about your practice because you do have to go out and find patients they’re not just going to magically appear on your doorstep and that takes word of mouth and networking and it’s different than when you are.

If you’re an insurance-based practice, people, a lot of times would show up because your name was on their card or they look to see, where, who is the doctor that’s close to them, or that has the, the reviews when you’re starting from zero and you don’t have an insurance feeding your patients, you have to get them from someplace.

So you have to be willing to be a person to get out there and put yourself out there.

So how do you put yourselves out there doing community talks? Are you marketing online? What are some ways that you market your practice? I’ve done a variety of things. COVID mess with some of them, but things that I have done, like over the last five to six years I was in BNI for, at one point in time.

Cynthia Villacis MD: I gave different health talks as far as to the library on different topics. I have had open houses. I have done cold calls and showed up at people’s offices. Hey, why don’t meet you? Also like in the like the local, like physicians, mom group, so like putting that out there and then they I guess I’d like to say obvious, but maybe it isn’t obvious.

Cause I don’t know that it’s obvious to me originally just like having a website and a Facebook page and then that kind of stuff. I’ve done different forms of marketing, but really the. Word of mouth has done the biggest

Mike Woo-Ming: return. Yeah. That always is the best.

It just word of mouth and let’s add your name of your practice is

Cynthia Villacis MD: health connections, direct

Mike Woo-Ming: primary care actions. Okay, great. And we can put a link to that too, in our show notes. You’re also a life coach and we were joking. I was like, sounds like you don’t have a lot going on right now. So tell me how that journey started being a life coach.

Cynthia Villacis MD: Yeah. I you had brought up is it not stressful? Like doing all those different things and actually, I think coaching helps me with stress as opposed to adding stress. So it goes on the other side of the equation, but I was struggling with some things, my practice in terms of.

The ability to pivot and make changes and let myself do some of those things. And also having some issues in my relationship. I’ve been married for a long time now. I think anybody who’s been married for 30 years be lying. If they didn’t tell you, they didn’t have some things that they wanted to work on.

And I was at the lever nigger, some that back in 2020, and there was a physician on there and she was talking about what she was doing with coaching. And I was like this sounds like this could be really helpful. And I signed up for her summer coaching program and just fell in love with coaching.

And it was a really deep dive, was like, at least four days a week, I was doing something related to coaching. And either, one-on-one coaching or the group coaching or having a guest speaker coming on, it was pretty awesome. And then I went on and I did. Enrolled in the life coach school.

As far as for training to be a life coach, I had actually I had heard of coaching before and that I’ve been listening to Brook’s podcasts for a number of years. I knew that I knew that it was out there. I had done self coaching scholars at one point in time. But I had never been in a coaching program.

I had never invested in myself that way. And it’s definitely different when you are. Really investing in yourself and doing a deeper dive than when you’re meeting with rotating people, for 20 minutes, it’s a very different experience. So I signed up for the life coach school and that was my start.

Mike Woo-Ming: So tell us about your experience. Now you’ve been doing this for about a year or couple years.

Cynthia Villacis MD: Yeah. So I’ve been certified for about a year now. So the certification. Yeah. So I’ve been doing this for probably about a year and a half, as far as from the beginning of the coaching program, but the business for about a year.

Yeah, so basically I. I have worked with different groups of people, but probably the group that I worked with the most and who I probably relate with to the most is other physicians who are. At a place where they want to do something different, but they’re feeling stuck, and they’re trying to make decisions in terms of how to make things better for themselves.

Mike Woo-Ming: So you didn’t have that?

Cynthia Villacis MD: No, I did not have a coach just want to, would have been so helpful. Because there are some things. That, we can change internally about things about the way we think about things about whether things are stressful or not. And there are other things that just need to get changed in terms of the circumstance, and just having somebody to talk through.

About what kind of a change that I wanted to make and work through some of what we call limiting beliefs that would have been super helpful. And I think I would’ve been able to move faster, in terms of towards making a change in a way that was healthy and helpful for myself, if I’d had somebody to work through those lists.

So limiting beliefs are beliefs that we have that we are like, we really believe are true, that whole is back from moving forward, So so that’s something that I work with folks on and that can be really helpful.

Mike Woo-Ming: So why do you think it just seems, I was reading a thread on physician coaching. There’s definitely people who have gotten benefit from coaching. It’s still a majority or maybe just my perception of docs or say, you know what, this is a bunch of bologna. I could just do it on my own. What do you say to those folks who feel that coaching is a bunch of woo woo and stuff?Cause I’m sure you’ve seen this too.

Cynthia Villacis MD: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think there are a couple of different groups of people you mentioned. There are people that thinks the whole thing is blue and blue. And those people make well, they obviously have a closed mind against coaching. They haven’t probably tried it themselves.

And that’s too bad, I would love to talk with them and, have them see what coaching is like if that’s something that they’re interested in, but then there’s the other group that I can just do it myself. And I think a lot more people are in that camp, and what I’d say to that is, yeah, you probably could do some of that.

Absolutely. That’s why Brooke has the self coaching scholars program is, there is a way to go and self-coach on things, you can look at the circumstance and look at the thoughts that you’re having related to her circumstance and what feelings you’re having related to those thoughts and and try to work through as far as the model yourself absolutely. And I do encourage people to do that, but it’s really hard to see. In your own mind, the same way that somebody else can see in your mind? I know for myself, there have been lots of times where I have been stuck on something and I’ve been like, it’s been like, I’ll be trying to figure out, the model for myself okay, I’m trying to coach myself.

And I’ve been like hitting my head against the wall and then, I’ll have a session with my coach and it’ll be like, Something we’ll just click, or sometimes it’s not even right. Then I remember there was somebody that I would…. had done coaching with and I was like at a stop light and it was like, we’d have this conversation like two or three weeks earlier.

And all of a sudden I was like, oh, it was like something just shifted or clicked. And it was just really where it’s I felt the clump, like mentally a clunk. And it was like sometimes when you see things like that, you can’t unsee them. And the problem I had been talking with her about was something that I had been trying to work through for like 10 to 15 years.

I talked to the counselor on and I was still having the same issue. It was a, and it was. It wasn’t in the moment, the conversation with a coach. So the different set that clunk happened, but it got the wheels turning and think about thinking things in a little different way.

And with that, I was able to. The shifts, how I was thinking about something and it really altered a relationship that I had been struggling with. So

yeah, I think too is because as physicians, we are usually the decision makers. We are usually the buck stops here. When our nurses come to us or men come to us, we have to make, hundreds of decisions, if not thousands of decisions, weekly and.

Those same people who say, who are closed minded with coaching also, they don’t really have a solution. They tend not to have a solution to their problems. And they’re in the same situation that they were, three or six months ago. Yeah. Yeah,

go ahead. I was just thinking one thing that I think is, can be a misperception sometimes is that people think that the coaches are going to tell them what to do, we don’t tell people what to do, but we help them figure out what they want to do. It’s a very different mind shift mindset in terms of being a coach versus being a position, in a, as efficient as a physician, when I’m working with a patient, I have certain things that, they should do this, they should do this, they should do this.

Whereas with a coach, it’s really, it’s more inside that person in terms of what is right for them. And it’s more me working with them for, to help them decide what is right for them and decide to have them decide how to move forward and what is going to work best for. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Mike Woo-Ming: It does perfect sense. And Sophia, this has been amazing lots of great information work or they go, if they want to get more information about your practice, about your your coaching practice, where can they go to find out. Yeah.

Cynthia Villacis MD: My webpage for the coaching practice is www.coachcynthiamd.com.

And I do have a freebie on there that they may be interested in talking about overcoming burnout or some things that they can do questions that they can ask themselves if they are looking at trying to make another change in their life to try to help them decide what direction they wanna move.

Mike Woo-Ming: All right. So we’re going to leave that link here too. And again, if there are anybody who’s interested in DPC, are you open to absolutely open for content as well?

Cynthia Villacis MD: Awesome. Totally open for contact. I’ve definitely talked with folks about DPC in the past.

Mike Woo-Ming: All right. Thank you so much. Any final words before we end the call today?

Cynthia Villacis MD: No, just thanks for having me on here. And I think the more people talk about other things that they can do Other things that more than people talk about things that other people are doing out there besides being an employed physician. I think that gives people hope and it gives them ideas in terms of other directions that they may want to move for themselves.

So thanks for having me.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. And again, we’re at a special time now where I go, just like Cynthia, I didn’t see any of this stuff. 10, 15 years ago. Now we’re seeing doctors who are doing different things outside of their typical clinical employee practice, opening up their own practice, starting out on their own online business, coaching business.

What have you. So there are never feel that there’s no. There’s no opportunities out there because the more we talk about it, the more we learn from each other. And as always guys, don’t get too stuck in a rut that you can’t do anything. There are people out there like Cynthia who are willing to help.

And again, thank you so much f and as always keep moving forward.

Connection is a key ingredient In an entrepreneur’s journey.  It is very hard to venture out on your own.  When my friend Sharon McLaughlin let me know of an upcoming free virtual entrepreneur summit that promotes networking with other doctors, I said it’s vital that I spread the word!

Sharon is a plastic surgeon turned successful entrepreneur I interviewed back on Episode 90, and has one of the largest physician entrepreneur Facebook groups.  We also discuss her upcoming project in helping more entrepreneurs add more journaling and mindfulness in their career.

Female Physician Entrepreneur Summit
April 23-25, 2022

REGISTER HERE:
https://bootstrapmd.com/go/fpe/

Mindlull – Bring more entrepreneurial fulfillment through journaling
https://www.mindlull.com

Previous podcast episode with Dr. Sharon McLaughlin:

https://bootstrapmd.libsyn.com/90-empowering-women-physician-entrepreneurs-through-community-with-sharon-mclaughlin-md

Transcript:

Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike. welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD today on the program, a special treat. One of my favorite people in this weird physician entrepreneur space that we’re in. I’ve had her as a previous guest. She’s a board certified plastic surgeon and she had. A summit coming up.

That’s really exciting. We’re gonna talk more about it. It’s called the female physician entrepreneurs summit. That’s coming on April 23rd through 25th. She let me know about it. I said, I need to get you on the podcast. Most of be asking her some projects that’s coming up that I think it’d be really exciting, especially if you’re someone who wants to be able to refocus on your business and your life.

She got something that it’s really cool. That’s coming up that I like to share with you today to welcome to the program Dr. Sharon McLaughlin!

Sharon McLaughlin MD: Thank you so much for having me today as always. I’m doing well. Mike, I’m excited about the summit. I’m excited about the upcoming book. I’m excited to share with other people and just help that’s the bottom line, but I never, when it comes to helping other physicians, that’s what gets me most excited because I think with this day and age with burnout being so high and career dissatisfaction, being so high, it gives me purpose.

I’ve had so many failures throughout my life, what I consider failures, and if I can save someone else time, then I want to be able to do that. And I’ve been able to grow a network and there’s a lot of people that I know that can help with others. So I just want to give them a platform to be able to share what they’re doing, just like you’re doing with your group and with your podcast.

Physicians know that there’s other opportunities out there rather than corporate medicine, or rather than being a cog on the wheel. Just to know that there’s other opportunities you may not want to make the move today, perhaps you’re, 100% happy. But if tomorrow comes and you find yourself unhappy, just know that there’s all the options and that there’s people out there willing to help you.

Mike Woo-Ming: I always thought if we didn’t have failures, that means we weren’t trying. So I’ve had a lot of failures in my life and most entrepreneurs, actually, all entrepreneurs probably did. Now, for those who are listening to you for the first time, or maybe watching this video on our YouTube channel just tell us about yourself. How did you become a physician entrepreneur?

Sharon McLaughlin MD: I think it started with my dad. Really. He was excellent. I think it all has to do with our upbringing. He was, is a man of integrity. He loved helping other people. He had a business is to deliver oil, but he was, just going around as a little girl with him on the oil truck, making deliveries, and we’ll see how he interacted with people, seeing how.

He actually… the first word that comes to mind is he brought joy to people and you would think his delivery man, but though his, he was so very personable, very hospitable. And he loved talking to people. He really loved getting to know them. So yes, he was delivering oil. Yes. He was fixing the oil burner, but he truly got to know his customers.

And that’s what I remember growing. Wanted to go into medicine, but I always knew that I wanted to do things outside of medicine as well. So for me, I started with some skincare and I did some scar gels. I did a lingerie line. I’ve tried different things, but it always comes back down to, really what you’re passionate about.

And what’s going to make you happy. I believe that if you’re not thoroughly passionate about it, You’re not going to be able to pursue it because even though it may sound like a good idea, maybe it’s a way to make money. If you’re not passionate about it, there’s always bumps in the road, no matter what you do. So unless you’re passionate about it, truly easy just to give it up or, get off that path.

Mike Woo-Ming: So you started the Female Physician Entrepreneur Facebook group. And if you don’t join it, go check it out. And we’ll put a link on here. When was that? When did we, when did you start that again?

Sharon McLaughlin MD: About four years after I started it, I wanted to be surrounded by like-minded people. One of the things that I believe that if you’re struggling or you feel stuck is to be around people that are similar to you in the sense that they have the light, the same likes desires passions as you and I really didn’t have that in my life. I have a wonderful husband. I had friends that are in medicine. They really didn’t have an interest in entrepreneurship. And I did, and I found that was a boy that my life. And I figured if I was interested, perhaps there were other physicians interested. So I started this group and it really took off rather quickly. Oh, eventually I have to be honest with you in the beginning, people were joining.

It was very, it was crickets and it all, I think, in this time that we’re going to talk about community building, but I believe one of the things you have to do is make it about the other person. And I just kept on adding value as much as I could, but honestly, it was crickets for awhile. And I was like, you feel that people were joining.

I really did question it. I’m like, am I doing the right thing? Because the numbers are going up, but people really weren’t engaging at all. And I just kept pursuing it. And then, it did take off rather quickly after that. And I w I’m happy that I’ve done it. I’m happy. So many people have reached out over the years and said, this group has really given me ideas.

It’s really why I’m where I am. Even if I didn’t get the feedback, it’s just nice to know that you can, again, it comes down to helping other physicians, I feel very. I think a lot of people are very concerned about where medicine is right now. And what do we do about it at so many levels?

So I really would like to bring people together that are working on legislation that are doing things, working with the hospitals that are doing things, working with health plans and really network. And that’s what this summit is about is. But it has to do with my Facebook group. When I see that someone’s really trying to hard to make a change.

I am so happy to promote them as, the way that Facebook is going. It’s hard as far as doing links, as much as we used to in the past Facebook doesn’t like it you’re off their platform. You’re or you’re off the group and they penalize you for it. So I that’s another reason why I wanted to do the summit on a separate Facebook group.

And I figured as long as I was opening it up, might as well open it up to everybody. I really would like to make connections. I think that we move faster when we network with other people. So to answer your question, I started the Facebook group because I needed it. I had avoided my life and I wanted it filled.

I wanted to see if others were interested and I believe that we learned and grow faster together than we do by ourselves.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. And I’ve had many guests on the program and, a number of them, point to your group, as, really the starting point for where they got started and say, “Hey, there are other people, that’ll like me, I’m not just crazy trying to think of this. I’m trying to invent this.” And really that’s really what you need as an entrepreneur. And you went from myself. I remember you asked me to come onto your program. I’d been teaching other entrepreneurs, not too much on the physicians, because I wasn’t sure, if they would be interested in that kind of the crazy stuff that I’d be doing and you invited me and you’re so generous and we’ve had a great relationship talking about all the different projects.

So when you told me that you have the summit to say, Hey, let me know more about it. That might let my folks know more about it. So let’s talk about the summit. Why did you create the summit and tell us what we can learn when joining the summit?

Sharon McLaughlin MD: There’s so many. Great people in the group and it always comes down to “geez, who do I ask? Who do I not ask?” I wanted, it’s very diverse, truthfully. It’s you could say a hodgepodge, but for me, in my head, I’m like, we need the speakers. I wanted it where, okay. You start where you’re at. You’re a physician you’re unhappy. It’s really targeted for the physicians that are unhappy.

So you’re a physician. What do you do? Speaking as a really great, we have a couple of speakers at Ted speaker. We have from me coming on, who was. Really built a career on keynote speaking. So she’s going to be talking about that. You could start a book, right? You could start a book, you could publish a book.

So we have Jasmine talking about that, just really where you are on that…,

Mike Woo-Ming: If you could get the names of some of the people who like, you don’t have unfortunately basis, but if you didn’t have the full name so they can check it out.

Sharon McLaughlin MD: Absolutely please. We have Dr. Lulu, she’s a Ted speaker. She’s going to be talking about that. We have Dr. Romie talking about keynote speaking. And Nivedita, she is a poet. So she’s like a published poet. We’re going to be having a reading from her, one of her poems about people struggling. And then she’s going to be talking about becoming a pilot, which I think is really important. We have real estate investing, both syndication as well as direct buy direct ownership, such as like short-term or long-term rental.

And that’s by parent and it’s by all summer with Miranda Phillips, back to now. Okay. So you have an idea of what you want to do. How do you get out there? How do you market it? So there’s a couple things we have Manasseh who has started a whole line on children’s. How do I say this? Dinnerware, plateware, it’s unfortunate that children are exposed to plastics.

It’s an endocrine disruptor. So she’s designed a line that are really, safe for children. So she’s going to be talking about how she got her product to market. And how do you get, PR for a product, the same thing, even if you’re want to be a spokesperson, how do you get out there?

You have an idea. You have a book. Product service, how to get out there and market it. So she’s going to help with that. We have Amy Shaw also speaking about, getting out there doing social media, cause she’s made some great connections with large companies makeup companies health companies, doing shakes.

Getting my name on products. I can go on and on. We have some coaching talking about coaching, building communities, and you should meet us talking about that, how to negotiate. Cause that’s such a I hate to say this, but I think women are as good with negotiation. It’s not something we learn as we’re growing up.

So we have Karen coming on, talking about that. She’s a physician coach. And Latifah is going to be talking about financial freedom because it’s so important. I believe as physicians, we make these salaries, we should be putting money away for investing. And just so that we have options in the past. I want me to keep going,

Mike Woo-Ming: This is amazing! We could check it out on your website.

It’s again, it is the Female Physician Entrepreneurs Summit people 23rd through 25th. The price, I think you said it was at 1500 or $2,000 for

Sharon McLaughlin MD: the summit?

The summit. Is that. No, it’s a free online summit. It’s a free, here’s some great mic. It’s a free online summit.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yes. I know some of these speakers pay a lot of money.

If you want to do consulting and coaching, it’s well worth it, but it’s not, cheap if you would like to stop with these. So getting the opportunity to hear from them on promoting the speakers is, some people say with the summits it’s free. It really comes down to, what you want to put in and on what you get out of it, there.

And I really feel more people need to be taking advantage of these opportunities. What’s a you,

Sharon McLaughlin MD: so I’ll be honest with you when I started this, Summit’s all about networking. I want links. I want to hear about your businesses. I want people to work together and collaborate. So that, that my goal is that yes, you’re going to listen to the speakers.

You’re going to get some ideas. But you better network with some of the other members there. And I’d like everyone to come out with relationships that they had after the summit that they didn’t have before the summit. And when,

Mike Woo-Ming: what did, just so the listeners know, how will they have an opportunity because it is a virtual summit.

How will they have the opportunity

Sharon McLaughlin MD: to net. All in Facebook as far as putting posts there and comments, and I don’t care if you take this offline, I prefer that you don’t message people if they’re not asking to be messaged, but listen, Mike, this is how we add, right? Like we met through Facebook and so many wonderful things can happen.

I can tell you, I do fundraising, right? For mitochondrial diseases. I’ve raised thousands of dollars doing the things that I’m doing strictly from Facebook, and it’s really. You can do anything. The sky is the limit. What’s not what is a problem. And it always will be an obstacle is how do you get it out there?

And there’s people willing to help you with it. So take advantage of it, make those connections. It’s the fastest way to grow.

Mike Woo-Ming: Now. It is called the female physician entrepreneur summit, but is it open for men to write? It

Sharon McLaughlin MD: is it’s open for everybody. Once I started putting lists together and I was looking at the speakers, I was like, we should all benefit from this.

And I believe again, being that I wanted this summit to network. Otherwise I would have just kept it in my own group, but being that I want networking for a lot of sharing links. I don’t care. It’s important to have other people involved, too, men and women, we’re going to grow faster together. So

Mike Woo-Ming: th this is great.

Now I do want to focus on your own businesses. You got, you’ve got some projects you’ve been working on it. Tell us about my LOL. Tell us what is that? Yeah, you’ve

Sharon McLaughlin MD: got either. I can say, remember slow, cause I’m not, but I’m always going at a fast pace. Like even the summit. Do you know how long it took me to do this?

I’m giving myself two weeks. Like I had this idea last week. I’m like, okay, put out some messages, people, I count me interested and then we’ll put it together. I did a weight loss summit about three years of count. Same thing, third, like we had no joke, 32 speakers. I did a lot more for that summit. Cause everyone, I can build on websites and all everyone have their speaker page and all that.

And this time around, I was like, no, I’m not doing that. That took up too much time. I need to promote this. I need my own sanity. So that’s just how I am. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are now focused. They have all these great ideas, but where do you really focus? So I’m in the process of creating a planner as well as a workbook to really answer some has journaling and miserable.

Those questions that are going to make you think, really plan out your day, plan out your week and plan out your month. And it’s going to be over 28 days. And you can say 20 days, isn’t that much for those people who feel like they’re all over the place. It’s a start. And I don’t believe in.

Overwhelming. I believe in small, if you truly feel that way, like you’re overwhelmed and you don’t know where to focus, start small. So I had said, four weeks is the max. Cause I’ve had people telling me you gotta do a quarter, one, I’ll do a quarter, one. I, my plan is to do a series, but I really want to touch on the people that just can’t move forward.

They don’t know where to go. Ask those questions give you some ideas of what you could start doing and then take it from there, plan it out, do journaling, at least once a day, how do you what’s that morning routine looked like, mapping out your morning routine for you. And then it’s a tracker to, where are you at the end of the week?

Where are you? Did you reach goals and if not, why not? You really need to focusing on

Mike Woo-Ming: that. Yeah. I’m such a fan of journaling and planning out my morning. And sometimes, we try to do this and then we, some few days I fall off and. That’s usually when I’m the least productive is when I let it go and giving an opportunity to be able to have, a site that allows you to do this is very point, especially if you’ve never done this before now, it’s coming out.

We don’t, it’s not ready yet. Where can they go to get more information or is it a you’re going to let us know when it’s coming out and I can let my group. The

Sharon McLaughlin MD: Y the website is mind lull. L U L O is mines. It’s that giving our brain a lot of time, quiet time to really just focus because I believe that’s how we focus.

Just giving it’s not, they can’t do it. I’m doing like quiet time. And I’ve learned to actually factor that in. I need those quiet times because it’s when I’m most creative. And when I feel like I’m saying. It’s usually because I’ve been go, and over all over the place. Really want to like center myself, bring it back to me and what needs to be done to, to move forward.

So you can find it on the website at mine, little.com. I have an opt-in there’s some tips. As far as focusing, there’s an ebook there that you can sign up for. And then if you’re on that email list, I will send out when the book actually launches on May 3rd.

Mike Woo-Ming: And I love what you’re building an email list.

We’ve been talking, I believe

Sharon McLaughlin MD: like it is so important for those people out there. I always even don’t have to do what you pre-train. And I always preached about building an email list, but because Facebook I’m so on it and But I never did build that email list. I built a Facebook group over 8,000 people and I never had an email list for it or one that I didn’t push.

And now with Facebook, logarithm changing so much, I’m like, oh no, I really need to change this up rather quickly. So I’m yeah. To enter the groups. Now you need to give an email it’s really important. If there’s changes at all, you won’t even see it. If I publish it in any of the groups. So I want an email to be able to connect and I don’t spam.

I don’t send around crappy stuff. So it’ll all be valuable information. That’s pretty much how I run.

Mike Woo-Ming: Okay, perfect. Yeah. I know, w when marketing, sometimes we forget all the things that we should be doing. You mean when I started out my practice, W practice advisor to say do you have an email list?

Oh yeah. I should probably email them. Oh, you got you probably, it is one of those things that it is so important. So we’ve got this, we got mine low. We got the summit coming up. Anything else that you want to share or listeners

Sharon McLaughlin MD: to know? I really don’t like just for them personally, if you’re not happy, reach out to others, there’s no reason to stay unhappy.

I’m telling you, years ago, maybe it was, I think it was different. People were still doing things outside of medicine, but there’s ways that you can actually stay in medicine. One of the talks that I have for the summit is actually. Being really smart about running your business because I know when I was practicing, I didn’t know the back office.

So Sandy Weitz is actually going to be talking about building up your practice. Remember, it’s all about staying where you are right now. What can you do? So as far as me, no, because I’m really concentrating on the summit first, then the book and really taking those breaks and really focusing, it’s going to be about helping others with their quiet time.

And if that’s the case, that’s why your time as well. That’s what I’m focusing on. Thank you.

Mike Woo-Ming: You always come from a source of giving and it definitely shows go out and check out or summit. It’s a female physician, entrepreneur summit. It is open to everyone’s coming up. April 23rd through 25th. We’ll have.

We can go to find out more information. Thank you again, Sharon. Thanks for spending time with us today.

Sharon McLaughlin MD: It’s always a pleasure. Thank you for doing what you’re doing!

Mike Woo-Ming: And thanks guys. If you would need to get motivated, don’t just try to do this on your own. Sharon said, it’s all about networking, finding other like-minded individuals and keep moving forward.

This week we look at how creating Amazon Kindle eBooks can lead to a sustainable recurring income. My long-time friend and wildly successful online entrepreneur shows how he built a publishing empire with Amazon Kindle Books, writing everything from romance novels to how-to books. You will learn how his students have made $10,000 a month or more selling everything from romance novels to cookbooks using the Amazon Kindle Publishing platform.   Even his family have been involved in the business, getting his son to publish his first Kindle book at 15 years old!

We discuss what are the best selling niches and what are areas to avoid.  If you are looking to build a revenue generating asset (RGA), Ty says this is one of the easiest ways to start. Get his Newest Book “Kindle Publishing Secrets” for Free: TyCohen.com

Transcript:

Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD. I am super excited for this call because I’ve got one of my oldest friends on the internet marketing space. Joining me today. He’s an accomplished internet marketer, entrepreneur. Who over a decade ago, took a major gamble with his life by financially quitting his corporate job and starting a business of his own.

That story kind of resonates with me. He became an offline and online success. He now generates millions of dollars in sales, transforming people’s lives. And he does it through something which is known as Kendall. He’s the founder of the Kindle Cashflow system. He’s going to talk all about it today. One, welcome to the show, Mr. Ty Cohen. Ty, how you doing today?

Ty Cohen: Mike, I’m doing fantastic. Even better to be here. I’m excited to hear what we’re going to talk about. So

Mike Woo-Ming: I was trying to think before we did the interview, I’ve known you at least what? 10, 15 years. Something like that.

Ty Cohen: No, dude. It’s gotta be… So my son, Tyler is going to be 18 in March.

And I think I met you just before we moved from Connecticut to North Carolina. Wow. So we, that was he was a year old when we were in Connecticut. So we have known each other at least 16 years, at least 16. That’s how I remember. I use my kids’ birth dates as a timeline.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. Yeah. I think also cause a COVID that like adds like five years I dunno anything like prior to COVID.

But we were in I got to know you really well. We were on a cruise ship because we were both part of a mastermind group with Russell Brunson. And that was really cool and got to meet the families and just get to know and over the last few years it’s really been a pleasure. rEally appreciate you taking the time and joining me here, because I know you’re really busy. You teach these courses and you do a live events, so thank you again for coming onto the show.

Ty Cohen: Yeah, absolutely. There’s nothing like being stuck on a cruise of someone for five or seven days, where you get to know them a little bit more.

Mike Woo-Ming: Have you been on a cruise since,

Ty Cohen: You know what, coincidentally, so we’re going on a cruise next week. So we actually sell out on Sunday. So that was our last cruise. Which was that had to be what, two years ago? Two years ago. So it was right before COVID really hit. And then now we’re going on a cruise where we’re selling out Sunday. And this has been my first time since,

Mike Woo-Ming: Okay let me know, as it goes, I still can’t give it to my wife to get her on a cruise. So…

Ty Cohen: That was me. That was me. So we had a couple of books then we said, do you know, we’re going to hold off? So that’s it.

Mike Woo-Ming: So let’s talk about it. Now I talked a little bit about your background, but I know you’ve been involved in this for quite a while, helping authors now I told them a lot of my clients and students If you’re going to make money, probably the one thing you can’t really make money in is having a book, is being an author. Most authors are starving authors, but you’ve changed that, thinking a bit about, maybe talk about first for those who don’t know what is Kindle and really. How did it kind of change for you? Because I’m sure you’ve heard that same a message too that there’s a lot of starving authors out there. Yeah.

Ty Cohen: Yeah. 100%. And we hear it every day, from traditional authors and writers that are trying to still follow that traditional route. So for me, so I got involved with Kindle Publishing almost, I want to say 16 years ago. I got invited by Amazon to become a beta tester and they were releasing the Kindle the KDF platform, Kindle direct publishing platform.

And that was their way of competing with the Barnes and Nobles, the Borders bookstores, and all of the other bookstores that were out at that time. And honestly, Mike, I thought it was the silliest thing. I thought digital books? Who are going to want to go in and buy like digital books? We’re used to physical books that we can dog air and mark up.

So I said, you know what? This is Amazon. I’m going to humor them. And at that time, 16 years ago, can you believe it’s been over 20 years that Amazon has been around, but at that time, right? So Amazon wasn’t the huge giant that it is now. It was a major player, but not where it is now. And I said you know what, I’m going to humor him because I was selling a lot of physical books through what was known as the Amazon advantage program at that time.

So with the Amazon advantage program, it allowed people who were authors and publishers who had physically printed their books up independently to ship out 20, 30, 40, 50, a hundred books to Amazon and Amazon would store them. They would ship them. They would take the orders, fulfillment, handle, customer support and everything.

So that’s how they kinda got in contact with me and said, Hey, you’re selling a lot of physical books. We’d love to have you beta test. I reluctantly jumped in. I took the digital format of one of my physical books, which was a book for a musician, it was a book that taught musicians how to start their own independent record label.

I took the word format of that, uploaded it to Amazon and walked away, forgot about it because honestly I didn’t think that there was going to be much to it. About two months later I checked myself and I had just under a thousand dollars worth of sales that came in. Through the digital sales of my, a Kindle book.

And I said to myself, I said, you know what? I was wrong, but this is one of a few times when I don’t mind being wrong. And you and I have a mutual friend, Greg Cesar. And Greg was like, dude, there is something to this. Like you need to really just hit this thing hard and teach it to other people. And I reluctantly decided to teach it after about a year or so of Greg and one of our other friends hammering me really wanting me to go in and teach this to other people.

And I said, you know what? I’ll do it. So that was my beginning of Kindle.

Mike Woo-Ming: You talked about the traditional route and maybe you could talk about that. Most people when they get a book, they go to a publisher. So how is Kindle different than the traditional publishing?

Ty Cohen: Yeah, absolutely. Good question. So the beautiful thing that Amazon did was they said, okay, so how can we remove. And the middleman was basically a bet publisher. So the traditional route, typically someone will get an idea for a book. Someone tells them, Hey, you’ve got this amazing experience or you know how to do this extremely well.

You know how to decorate homes, sell houses, buy houses, whatever it may be. And they say, okay I’m going to go in, I’m going to write this book. I’m going to submit my manuscript to a publishing house. And hopefully the publishing house thinks that my idea for a book is viable enough and I’ll pick me up and I’ll call.

So that’s that traditional route. Now I have a problem with that is there’s a few things. Number one, publishing houses, they get a ton of submissions, right? They get tons of submissions. The second thing is publishing houses. Don’t pay good royalties. So you’ll see royalties in a single digit percentages.

So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6%. So Amazon said, here’s what we’re going to do. We have this platform, it’s a global platform. We’re going to open it up for anyone that has content. So content being a book. And the beautiful thing about that is they said it doesn’t even have to be in a traditional lamp.

So it doesn’t have to be a a hundred page book, a 200 page book. You can come in and upload a 25 page report and sell that on our site and we’ll make it available to our audience. And at this point, Amazon has just over 600 billion customers. We’re not talking about just people that go in and just serve, but actual customers and credit card numbers.

So we did that. That was the first beautiful thing that they did. They made it available to just anyone, any country, any experience, as long as you have content, the second thing is they made this available for free. So you can go in and you can upload your content for free. The third thing is the percentages.

So they changed the playing field with the percentages. And instead of it being signaled digit percentages that a traditional publishing house would get would give out, they give you 70%, which is insane and they keep 30%. And they handle everything. The aim in doing that was basically saying, how can we get as much content as possible and beaver planet’s largest books.

Do you remember that was Amazon’s really bill of rights, right? His backstory before he started selling things like B12, vitamins and hand sanitizer and tires and everything else. So he said, how can we do this? Like, how can we really shortcut our way. There. And they basically said more, let anyone come in and publish content and we’ll give them a lion’s share of the royalties that come in. And I think it was a beautiful idea.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah! And I think too, it made eBooks legit. Yeah. Cause I remember back in the day before Kindle, I was selling eBooks. But I was doing like pay-per-click advertising when it was cheap to do, but still there was this stigma of I don’t want to get a file.

And I’m sure that’s true for a lot now it’s made it so much easier. Now we don’t even think about it with Kindle or I love reading it on my iPad because I don’t want to wait for the book. I want to instantaneously want that information.

Ty Cohen: Yeah. We’ve normalized it. Because, and that’s the exact mindset that I was in. Because like you I was used to ebook. Being a marketer and selling eBooks online, but no, it didn’t seem as authentic as a traditional book would be. So that’s what Amazon did. They came in and they made it to a point where my mother-in-law who’s 70 something years old legitimately can go in and purchase an ebook… and instantaneously do that and for a very attractive price point. I think that one of the advantages was that if you suggested a book to me, Mike, I was just reading… Dan Sullivan’s book who not, how who not? How, and then I just, he just sent me this one, right? So this is the newest one gap in the game.

So let’s say if you had just read Dan Sullivan’s book, and you said, Hey, Ty, just read this amazing book for me. I would want it because I appreciate you. And. I know that you’re a man of authority, I would’ve instantly want to go in and buy that book. Amazon has given us that opportunity to be able to go in and pick up our phone and just literally in 30 seconds type in the book and hit click. And we now have access to it. So we no longer have to jump in our car, go to the mall or go to Barnes and Nobles if we can even find one now, because of Amazon and make that decision. So they’ve shortened the that gap between the customer wanting it and the customer getting access to it, which is a beautiful thing on all sides.

Mike Woo-Ming: Now, I know people are, who are listening here. They may be, have written in a book, but most of the people haven’t, or they may have had that book in their head. I had like my first book that I wrote and it took me like six months to write it. And then I didn’t come with my second book until 10 years later.

And… You tell me you’re making money with writing, but how long does it take to get a book written? And I think there are people that still don’t understand that I can get my book, but it’s gonna take me too long to write a book. What would you say to those folks?

Ty Cohen: So just to make you feel a little bit better, right? So I was talking to a customer who dude, it’s been 30 years, it took her 30 years to finish her. It was a memoir, so 30 years. So you’re actually in good shape there at 10 years. But so one of the things that we’ve been able to master it and help our students, and these are people that are traditional right.

That may have a little bit of publishing experience, but for the most part, most of them are folks who have never written anything before haven’t ever even thought about the possibilities of writing a book. So we’ve been able to show them how to take an idea if they have an idea or find an idea, if they don’t have an idea, it really go from idea to finish book in less than two weeks.

So for my idea or no idea, to finish a book in less than two weeks. And having that book totally created having it edited, having it formatted and published on Amazon and available to the marketplace. So that’s the thing it’s like speed of implementation. So that’s why we’ve been able to master that coupled with what Amazon offers allows anyone to just be able to go in and every book available to.

Mike Woo-Ming: Now I was actually having a pleasure of attending one of your workshops. And we’ll talk about that because I believe you still have these workshops. And really, I found there was two sets of people. There was one who wants their story out there, get their book marketed. And then there were people who were more like the publisher side, because here’s a little bit of the secret sauce we’re going to reveal here is:

You don’t write all of your books.

Ty Cohen: I don’t write any of my books.

Mike Woo-Ming: So tell me how that works.

Ty Cohen: So besides the first two, but I uploaded it to Amazon 16 years ago. I haven’t written anything after that. There’s so many people that are out there that just love writing. And there’s ways to go in and hire those people for very little. We call them ghostwriters. We call them freelancers. Outsourcers, there’s a ton of different names on there’s sites where you can go in and you can find these people in droves, like in droves. So there’s sites like upwork.com or the, do you have one is google.com. So you can literally go in and say, “Hey, I’m looking to have an idea or a book created.”

You know how to herd cats. We’ll give you an example, right? We’ll give you a funny example here. And you can go in and say, my budget for having this 50 page book created is $150, $200. You set the budget and we sh we show you how to set a structured budget so that you get attractive bids. And then you’ll get people literally from across the planet that will come in and bid.

Mike Woo-Ming: I just want to clarify that too. That’s not $150 a page.

Ty Cohen: No, it’s not $150 a page.

For 50 pages, 100%. So 50 pages. And it’s good quality. So one of the things that we stress is you want good quality. So whether you’re writing it yourself or you’re having an outsourcer, you go in and you vet these folks, you can vet them just by looking at their ratings because other people have hired them and using.

Dozens of other people that have hired them. And it’s very similar to you go on Amazon and I want to buy some hand sanitizer. Normally what’s the first thing that we do. We go in and we look at the reviews, right? Because we want to feel comfortable in the fact that we’re buying something. That other people have rated highly, right?

You typically will never go in and buy something. That’s got a half a star or two stars, three stars. It’s gotta be four or five stars. And usually multiple stars. So when you use these freelancing sites like Upwork, the same thing applies here. You’ll find people that will come in and bid on your projects that have amazing feedback.

They’ve written tens of thousands of pages! They have degrees, very journalist majors, and they just have the experience and more importantly, a very great at researching and they love writing. So for them, it’s a win-win because one of the questions that I often get as well, listen type, why would these people come in and write content for me for a couple of hundred bucks and allow me to sell it?

Why don’t they just do it themselves? And that’s something that I’ve thought about when I first got started with it. And the answer is simply that they’re not entrepreneurs and not that you have to be an entrepreneur to do this. The answer is simply that they just don’t have the desire. The answer is simply that they over-complicate it.

And we see that a lot people overcomplicate the simplicity and things. And then the answer is simply that they just don’t know how to. They don’t know how to do it, or if the answer is simply that they are doing it for themselves. And then the other answer could be, and you could choose any of these, that bay are doing it, but they’re on year two of that 10 year journey of writing that book because they want to make it so perfect for themselves.

And they’re looking to publish it. So there’s a variety of reasons as to why people who have the skill and whoever the ability to do it, won’t do it. We see it all the time. Listen, my son is an amazing basketball player. Incredible! He could possibly be in the NBA. And I’m not saying that just because he’s my son.

But he has no desire to do. As much as I want him to go in and get the multimillion dollar contract, he has no desire to do it. And we see that you probably see that in your field, your industry with people who are just, they have the ability, if you have the scale, they just don’t have the desire. So that’s it. And also to a very similar question that you get to is.

They don’t own the content. You don’t have to put their name. So people ask about that. Do I have to put their name on the book, but it’s you own the content, correct? 100%. So you own the copyright, right? Which gives you the legal authority to say, this is my book, I own the copyright to it. You own the byline, and a byline, is simply the name that you’ll put here to author’s name, right? Or you could put a pen name if you want to. We’ll talk about that in a minute. So you own the resell rights, which gives you a right to take back content and resell it and make a profit from it. So byline, byline rights, copyright resell. So now when you come in and you hire a ghost writer or a freelancer to write your content for you, all of that is discussed. So once you pay them, you own the content. You own those three rights right there, but you can pretty much use to do anything with, so you can go in, you can give it away if you want it to.

Not that you would do that, but you can go and you can sell it for whatever price point you want. Now, the thing with Amazon. And in order to qualify for about 70% commission at royalty commission, you have to price your books between $2 and 99 cents and $9 and 99 cents, which coincidentally are the best price points, right?

So you want to price it in between those two price points, $2 and 99 and the 9.99, because those are price points that sell rapidly right there. Then what I like to call no thought price. Someone sees a book priced at 7.99. You’re not going to put thought into it, it’s not do I pay my mortgage?

Do I buy groceries? Or can I afford this 7.99 book? So you can go in and you can buy it, but he had, so that’s a great question. So what do you do as far as depending if you want to go in and put your name? I personally, don’t put my name on any of my books and I’ll tell you the reason why I don’t do that because I published books and under different niches, I published both fiction and nonfiction, and I don’t want to be seen as the Jack of all trades.

So if I’m publishing a book, a romance novel event, I’m publishing a book on how to buy houses or book on how to homeschool my children or how to grow Japanese tomato garden, Japanese tomato. You look at that offer and you’re like, wow, this guy is doing everything. Which one is he truly good at?

So you can use a pen name, which about 50% of my students actually choose to go in and use a pen name because they do publish multiple pieces of content. And then there’s the students who come in and they’re writing their own. Or if you’re hiring a ghost writer to write their content and they just want to have their name on it, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

So they can go in and they can put their name on it. And both ways are totally legal. Both ways are totally allowed by Amazon. And as a matter of fact of Amazon, you can have multiple pen names if you want to. So you can have maybe Jane who wrote this book, if you want it to, and then you can have Betty Sue who wrote this book, if you want it to.

And they both are under your publishing.

Mike Woo-Ming: Now I want to get back to something that you mentioned, because again, I know I know what some of the questions that you’re going to get. You said Amazon, that seems like a lot of money that they’re taking 30%. Yeah. But when you think about it though, Amazon is the largest website.

In the planet and that’s what we don’t have, we know maybe you’re going to have it in the next few years talking about right now, in terms of shopping online, that’s the place to go, right? They’ve got the credibility, they’ve got the name and there was no cost to joining Kindle publishing, right?

Ty Cohen: It is not. And think about it. One of the examples that I like to use is if you’re going to open up a hamburger, and you have a choice between opening it up just anywhere and your neighborhood and opening it up in a neighborhood where you have folks who traditionally have been known to love to buy hamburgers.

Every hamburger stand that’s in that area is totally booked out, right? Like meaning if there’s lines, right? The prices are just amazing. They get great reviews. They have that customer base in that area. You prefer that area where there’s traditionally been people who love to buy hamburgers, right? You want to go with marketplaces and that’s what Amazon gives us versus trying to look.

We both sold eBooks at a pass on our own websites and what you have to have. In order to do that is you have to have a customers. And I think you talked about running ads, right? So you would have your website and then you have to go on Facebook or Google or whoever it is. And you’ve got to send customers to vet product.

One of the advantages with Amazon is you can go into you publish that book to Amazon. And Amazon has this built in loyal customer base already. That’s purchasing. My wife just bought something earlier off of Amazon, a couple of hours ago. I just got reminded, but I have to go in and buy something. I’m going into buying some supplements earlier.

So over later when we finish this interview, so it’s like do I go to the grocery store? Do I go to CVS? Do I go to Walgreens? Or do I just pick up my phone or just go on Amazon? And right. So they give us this unfair advantage here by being able to publish content to various. And then having this built-in customer base of people that have a ton of credit cards.

I want to ask you a question, Mike, I wanna flip it real quick for you. How many of these do you have listed on your Amazon account? This is a credit card right here. How many credit cards do you have listed? On it? Let me ask you a question before I even get there. Do you have an Amazon?

Mike Woo-Ming: Yes.

Ty Cohen: Have you ever purchased off of Amazon?

Mike Woo-Ming: I haven’t today? But generally every other day, this month?

Ty Cohen: Have you ordered anything off of Amazon?

Mike Woo-Ming: Yes. I have an account, my wife has, actually we got two accounts. My wife has an account. Yeah. I like Amazon delivery. Delivery person. They probably hate us because we have this long driveway and it’s gated and it didn’t really turn it around, but they have to drop off our package at this one spot. They don’t get credit for it, but yeah, they’re there they’re almost every other day.

Ty Cohen: Yeah. Yeah. And just like here. If I look out I’m on a col-de-sac I live in, so I can easily see three or four houses here and Amazon, they stay in this circle. They stay in this circle here. And typically what happens is if you’re like my household, we don’t have just one credit card listed with Amazon.

So I got my personal card and then I have my business card. And sometimes people will have a spouse will have their card, right? The other spouse has a card. Maybe the kids might have a card. So Amazon has done a masterful job in being able to really build up this loyal customer base that orders multiple times.

And it’s not just books or things that are not books, the same thing. I’ve got so many Kindle books that are on my phone. So I have a Kindle app on my phone. I’ve got so many books that I have not even read because Amazon has made that process of buying books. Easy. Mike tells me about a book I go in and I type it in, even if I don’t even have it in my schedule to be able to read this book for three or four months dowb. So it’s craziness if you think about it.

Mike Woo-Ming: And to answer your first question. I there’s probably about five or so cards, but 20 expired cards, but I even have an Amazon credit cards. Yeah. I’m in their eco. But let’s talk about it. Cause could, cause you mentioned the books 9.99, but yeah. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but I know you and your students are making a lot of money with this. You want to show some of the numbers?

Ty Cohen: Yeah, actually. So I do, and I’ll give you some of my students numbers, right? Because sometimes. When you give numbers that are out there, it becomes a little bit unbelievable.

And I don’t want people to think that this is something that’s beyond the believable. So I’ve got a student Michael Joshua, this guy publishes children’s books. And I’ve got an interview with him on YouTube and in our community. He generates $10,000 a month just publishing children’s books. I’ve got another student. Her name is Caroline Trainer. She’s over in the UK. She purposes romance novels. I’ve got a student name Andrew Young. This guy’s 20 years old, he just turned 20. So he makes about $10,000 a month publishing books around public speaking. So here’s the beauty of this. So he took, he reluctantly took public speaking classes in high school because he was really introverted and he wonder why his dad says, Hey, listen, take debate class. Take the bait class. That’ll get you out of your introversion. It’ll get you used to talking to people and debating. He ended up taking that class and his sophomore year. And loved it so much, he took it again. And Ben also started publishing Amazon Kindle books around the art of debating and public speaking.

And now he’s doing over $10,000 a month selling. So you can do this with both fiction nonfiction. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, as long as you follow our market research process. So that’s the one thing that’s mandatory. So the first thing that we teach people is to conduct market research and that.

So that you’re not guessing about what actually will sell. With a scientific sense of degree there, that the topic that you’re going to publish has more certainty and selling van had you not done your market research. So it goes back to anyone that started a business before you go in and you started traditional brick and mortar business or any type of business.

Hopefully, hopefully you’re going to find out if there’s people that actually want the product or service that you’re buying, you don’t start manufacturing, these B12 vitamins and everyone on a planet. Has like this allergy to be 12, because that wouldn’t be a great business to start there. So hopefully you go in and do some market research, and that’s why we have students that are so successful because we teach that aspect of doing the market research first and making sure that you stick to exactly what we show you how to go in and and do,

Mike Woo-Ming: And in your training, you really go down in this, but just to give a to better understand is what you’re talking about is like niches that people will want people will want, but people will want continuously, because I think the thing that, what I really love and I mentioned we’ve been talking about what I call RGA or Revenue Generating Assets in that you’re creating this thing one.

And it’s continuing to generate revenue for you over and over again. And it reminds me of with the mad and John Madden recently passed away. Time, the game comes out you had to purchase it 20, 19, 20, 20, 20, 21. And because they know their market and they know that it can be sustainable.

So when you’re looking at niches, you want to look at things that are going to be sustainable. If you came out with a book, I don’t know, you’re probably may or may not remember Y2K?

Ty Cohen: Yeah, 100% had everyone on a tip of seats. Wondering what’s going to happen at new years.

Mike Woo-Ming: How many books do you think they sell on? Like how to beat Y2K? I’m like, okay. In 2022, probably it doesn’t sell anymore.

Ty Cohen: Yeah. Not at all. Yeah. And that’s the other thing. So we teach people… how to avoid the fads, right? So you don’t want to go and publish a book around fidget spinners.

I don’t know how old your kids are, but yeah. So fidget spinners, right? It was all a rave for maybe about a year, maybe 18 months. And almost any… dude. We could go into grocery stores and you would see shelves of fidget spinners. Yeah. You could go into target and you would see fidget spinners. You can go into the Dallas store and you would see fidget spinners.

Now you would have to hunt. You would have to literally probably go into 50 stores before you able to find a fidget spinner because it was this fat, it was this thing that, you know, yes. It sold really well, but it was short-lived. So we teach people how to avoid. The fats, but short-lived ideas, and instead going and publish content that’s evergreen. And the beautiful thing about it is there’s so many different topics that could be considered evergreen. If you look at something like there’s so many health topics that could be considered evergreen, right? A relationship and dating. Material can be considered evergreen.

If I want to learn how to become a better husband, there’s probably a book that was written 20 years ago. That’s still relevant. And I can go in and read bad. Instantly become not instantly budgeted. You get the idea, become a better husband. If I wanted to go in and be a better dad or we were having our first kid, I can go in and read a book on how do you raise your first child?

So those are the types of topics that we teach people to publish. Evergreen content thast is going to be around for the next 10, 15, 20 years. And again, fact or fiction, so we can go in to publish a romance novel. My son, Tyler. His first books when he was 15. And I think you actually got to meet him at arts media.

So you got to meet him now. Tyler, he’s gotten a lot bigger since you attended a event, because I think that event was right before COVID. I think it was in February. That was in February, but just before COVID. So now he’s on a football team, the big guy, right? A manly man. But guess what he publishes and you may already know the answer to this because you were at the event, but I won’t spoil it, but he publishes romance novels.

So he publishes romance novels. And it’s because not because he just loves sitting around and reading romance novels. That’s the first stable too, but it’s wherever money is. They asked at one point they asked one of the world’s greatest bank robbers at one time. This was back like in the sixties or seventies. Why do you rob banks? And his answer was because that’s where the money is. So luckily now we have to help around design. You don’t have to go robbing a bank. You can go in and you can publish content, right? That is already in demand. That’s evergreen. That’s going to continuously sell you, upload it once as you alluded to, and it continuously sells and you follow this process and you can publish. That leads you to the money.

Mike Woo-Ming: And the thing is too is like there’s always money. You can leave on the table. Yeah. Because when I went to your event, it was like realizing Amazon is a global company. And with that there’s Amazon cause. I know you not only get paid for English, but you have Spanish and French chairman and all these different language. So you get your books and you tell your students to get them translated, correct?

Ty Cohen: Yeah. Yep. So we get them translated. So now the process is once you get a book that’s selling well, so the first step what we like to teach our students is, and this is how you go in and you can create multiple streams.

Yeah. All right. There’s a few ways. So you can create multiple streams of income by simply just publishing additional books because each book becomes another stream of income. But the other way is once you get a book, if I publish two books, I’ve got both of these books and coincidentally, this is my newest book, Kindle Publishing Secrets.

And we can give your your listeners, your viewers, a free copy of this, if you want at the end of this thing. But if I publish both of these books and one of them tends to like really sell. Really so well, what we teach our students says, the next thing you want to do is you want to go in and have it translated into Spanish.

So using Upwork, using Google the same freelancing sites that I shared with you earlier, you can go in, you can find someone that is highly proficient in Spanish that does translations for a living and they can translate your book for a couple of hundred bucks. And now you’ve reached an additional market that traditionally would have been outside of your reach because they don’t read English or they’re not comfortable in reading English. So that’s, once you get a book that’s selling well, using our processes, we doing tell you, say, we say, Hey, go translate this thing into Spanish. And then the next thing that we do is we’ll say, Hey, go in and have it converted over into an audio.

And now you can sell it on Audible. So now if you go over to Amazon and you pick up this book, you’ll see in the same books listing on that same page, you’ll see the English version. You can see the translated Spanish version and you can see the audible version. So the audio book version of it and that doesn’t cost a lot to have done either.

So once you have your book translated like I said, that’s a couple of hundred. To get it converted over into an audio format. That’s a couple of hundred bucks and now you’ve created two additional streams of revenue out of one. So out of that, Kindle.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. And it’s true because my, my wife she, sometimes she she makes fun of me. Cause I said, Hey, I just read this book. She said you don’t really read it. You listened to it. But. I don’t have time to, to read, or I when I read I’ll fall asleep easy, but if I’m going to one of my clinics, or like I said, I’m driving to Las Vegas in a few days, I’m going to load up a few Amazon Audible books. And now you’re getting an audience that you may not have been able to reach before.

Ty Cohen: 100%. I’m like you. So I’m always super busy. I like reading, but I just don’t have the time. So another thing that I’ve found is that my retention. Has changed. So I’ll read and then I’ll start to wander. Now think about the podcast interview.

I’ve got to do whatever it may be pick up the kids from school. So now my focus is wandering, but I can go in and I can download. The app from Amazon and Amazon owns Audible. Coincidentally if you’re watching or listening to this and you’re wondering, are these two different companies, if then I can go listen to my audio book.

So my wife and I would drive him down to the beach later on this afternoon. So we’ve got a three hour drive. We’re driving down Animoto beach. Guess what I’m gonna do? So like you on your drive to Vegas, I’m going to go in, I’ve got a couple of books already that are already in my account that I’ve been meaning to get to.

So this gives me three hours now to go in and listen to an audio book and I can knock that out. So the way Amazon has put everything together, I think it’s been brilliant because they didn’t own audible. Audible was a separate. When years ago they went in, they purchased audible and they said, this is the perfect add on.

So now we can give people another outlet to go in and publish to just like publishing to KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing. You can also publish to Audible.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. And everything kind of cross promotes. Cause now I have it like where, if I’m on the audible, I’ll get this message to say, Hey, do you want to get the digital book as well to accompany it? I recently listened to a guy, really bright guy. And when he wants to retain things he has the audio book and the Kindle version together, listening to it and reading it. Yeah. And he’ll retain more information.

Yeah.

Ty Cohen: Happy coincidence. I’ve actually tried that a couple of times and it definitely works a hundred percent.

Mike Woo-Ming: So this is amazing. And again, I know you’ve got a few things coming up. You not only you have the book, but you’ve got a training program. Would you like to talk about it please?

Ty Cohen: Absolutely. So we’ve got the book and anyone who wants a copy of his, you can go in, this is my new book called Kindle Publishing Secrets.

Les Brown has actually wrote the forward to this book. So many of you guys may have heard of Les Brown before. Great motivational speaker. And I gave him a early copy of preview copy of his book and he loved it so much. He said, you know what, let me write the forward to it. So he did that and you guys can go in and get a free copy before it even hits the stands.

So this is not available on Amazon yet, but you can get a copy by going here.

Mike Woo-Ming: This is one you wrote? You didn’t hire somebody.

Ty Cohen: This is what I actually wrote. This is the one I actually wrote in here. I talk about the entire Kindle publishing process, and how myself and my students do so well with Kindle publishing. And a lot of the things that we talked about here on this podcast, but I go into much more detail in the book.

So you can go to Tycohen.com. And get a free copy of his book. You can also go to Kindlecashflow.com and get a free copy. So even one of those websites, Ty Cohen, T Y C O H N a.com or Kindlecashflow.com and get a free copy. Coming to our live event, our three-day event.

So with COVID, what we’ve done is we’ve gone virtual, right? So we’ve done these virtual digital events and people love them. So we get people from across the country, across the planet that come to these events. We actually had a couple of people at our live event that came in from like London. I think it was like Bangladesh and Canada.

So we had a very wide audience that came to the live event that you were at, but you can attend our virtual event for free. If you guys want to go in and grab a ticket by going to KCFlive.com/mike. And that’ll get you a free ticket to our virtual event or three-day event. That’s coming up here.

Mike Woo-Ming: Wow. Wow. So that, that’s gonna be great. And let you guys know it is intense content. You’re going to get so much out of it. Thank you, Ty just for sharing with this and just opening our eyes and ears to what’s possible or what you can do with it.

We didn’t go into your backstory, but I I know your history came from a kind of a rough area and just made you became a self-made multimillionaire and it just so honored to know you and calling my friends. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Ty Cohen: Likewise, Mike, this is beautiful. And I think for anyone who’s looking to supplement their income or create these additional streams of revenue. This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to do it. Come into our community and you’ll see that there’s someone. Has a similar background as you who has a similar profession, or that looks like you talks like you, regardless of where you come from.

We’ve got over 20,000 people that are in our community that come from over 126 countries, Mike. So it’s a very eclectic community. We help one another. It’s a family environment and you guys are welcome to come in and join us. So this has been beautiful. Thank you, Mike.

Mike Woo-Ming: Thank you, Ty. Thanks for everything. And again, if you’re who. Is looking to generate revenue. You’re busy working in your practice, but you’re you want to do something on the side or a side hustle. And that’s one thing tied to before we go, this doesn’t take a lot of time or does it?

Ty Cohen: No, it doesn’t it. So it’s what I like to call it. It’s like at your pace. Because we teach this online. You get access to a, an online community, you get access to the online membership area. So you go in at your own pace. We’ve got our videos broken down and very short bites. So some of the videos are five minutes. Some might be seven minutes. It might be 13 minutes.

So you’re able to go in, consume the information, apply it and get results. Continue to move forward. And in terms of monitoring your books you can do it or you can hire somebody to do it, but it’s not a 40 hour a week job, not at all. You know what, Mike’s I published books 12 years ago that I don’t ever go back and look at.

It’s awesome. Honestly, it sounds weird saying that now this books, I have a, we’ve got a. I’ve got a plaque that we’re sending out to one of our students actually, let me grab this. I want to show you something really quickly. I think you’ll be very cool.

So this is Linda Allen. So we send these milestone plaques. We like to call them milestone, plaques out to our students. I don’t know if you could see that. Can you? Yeah. So Linda. Got started with Kindle publishing. Very same training, but I’m sharing with you guys here and she’s generated over a hundred thousand in royalties so far.

She got started over 10 years ago. She got started over 10 years ago. She published books that are celebrity based and what I mean by bad is the books that talk about the lifestyles of celebrities and you can actually do that. So one of the celebrities that she published a book around was the singer Jennifer Hudson.

So Jennifer Hudson, she fixed, she was a winner on America’s got talent, or one of those shows. American idol where you got, it shows you how much. So she ended up publishing those books and generating over a hundred thousand dollars over a 10 year span, right? 10 year, time period. And the beautiful thing about this is she works in a medical field.

She’s a nurse. So she hasn’t looked at her books and yeah. But she continues to get these checks every single month. She gets these deposits into our bank account every single month. And we’re honoring her. She’s over, she’s actually at about 111,000 and that’s one of the plaques that we’re sending out to her.

There’s so much that you can do with this and you don’t need a ton of time to.

Mike Woo-Ming: This is awesome. Good. Again, thank you so much. Thank you for sharing it again. Just another revenue generating asset that you can start, and it’s not just about thinking about it, but it’s about implementing it and following a mentor, like you’re somebody who’s actually been there and done it is the quickest shortcut to success, and it’s all about keep moving forward.

Have you heard of the phrase “House Hacking”?  It’s essentially where you purchase a property and live in it while renting out the other rooms. This can be done with a single family home, or an apartment complex. It’s also a great way to get started investing into real estate without spending (and saving) a lot of money!

Today’s guest is Dr. Ayush Gupta, a pediatric ER physician and is the founder and CEO of MD House Hacking, who helps medical professionals reach financial freedom through house hacking and real estate investing., Fresh out of his medical fellowship, Ayush wanted to get into real estate but didn’t have a lot of money.  You’ll learn how house hacking was a perfect solution for him, and why he believes most doctors should consider it.  He has now taken that money and invested more properties, and now teaches others how to do the same.

If you think you need a lot of money to get into real estate, you’ll think again after this very lively interview!

MD House Hacking – Financial Freedom for Medical Professionals

Financial Freedom for Medical Professionals

Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys, this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another edition of BootstrapMD. Now, anytime we talk about real estate, it seems to be one of the most downloaded episodes that we have at BootstrapMD. So I’m really excited that I have my next guest on he’s a pediatric emergency medicine physician in New Orleans, born and raised in India.

You moved to the US in 2012, completed his residency and fellowship and residency and fellowship. And then he moved to New Orleans where he realized the importance of creating other income. And what started it was of COVID a lot, which really caused a lot of people to reevaluate where they are in terms of building in their net income building in their revenue.

One year later, he created MDHousehacking, which is to help other perfect medical professionals achieve financial freedom through house hacking. Now, if you don’t know what that’s about, we’re going to cover all of that. So excited to have him on the program. Please welcome Dr. Ayush Gupta. How are you doing my friend?

Ayush Gupta: Good, Dr. Mike, thanks for having me on your show. I’m super excited about it. I’ve listened to a lot of your podcasts and I’m thrilled to be a part of yours.

Mike Woo-Ming: Wonderful. Like I mentioned at the top, real estate is really a topic. A lot of medical professionals want to know more about. And I always like to first start off by learning about your financial journey, for physicians, we historically have been known as bad investors.

We don’t get any type of financial education in medical school or perhaps, very… very topically. I’ll hear something from, ER, doctor told me to invest in some type of stock or something like that. But other than that, we really don’t get any education. So where did it start for you?

Ayush Gupta: This is so true when I talk about it on my portal, on my podcast as well. It’s the same thing. As physicians, we get zero financial literacy and I probably came from the similar background. My father was a doctor in India is a doctor, but then really learn a lot about finances from there started from zero actually. Once I moved to New York for residency and then fellowship, nobody really spoke about finances over that.

I was heading towards of a similar life, which most of physicians and non-physicians high-income owners do bait. They finish their studies, they go buy a house and then they settled down. They have kids. And they have to pay the mortgage and car rent and everything. So it’s not a bit with COVID. It’s just started when everything was shut down.

You can’t really go and do a lot of stuff. Either, you could take your mind and brain to watch Netflix and Tiktok, or you could take it to learn about other streams of income. And that’s how I think I got into it. Started with a couple of courses, find out mandate mission. That was a real estate at that point.

And and as I said, I was just fresh out of fellowship. Didn’t have a lot of savings and have a lot of money to go into real estate. And I think that was one of my limiting beliefs that you need a lot of money. Now. I know we can do deals without any money. So that’s when house hacking started. I listened to some podcasts at that point who mentioned house hacking and read a lot about it.

Thought it’d be perfect for me to do that in New Orleans. And I think now I’m almost two years into it and I love it. And it has grown a lot from where it started.

Mike Woo-Ming: So you said you started it during COVID or at the beginning of COVID. At the time were you renting? Did you have a house with a mortgage? Where were you at?

Ayush Gupta: At the time I was renting a nice two bedroom, two bathroom place for $2,300 a month. And I was right before COVID I was looking at houses as well, like a single family house. Like I was telling you to go live in a, but yes, I was renting.

Mike Woo-Ming: And that was in New Orleans?

Ayush Gupta: Yes, sir.

Mike Woo-Ming: Okay. So you took a couple of courses and I looked, and I think I was listening to a podcast. You did first probably through Peter Kim is probably where is Leverage and Growth Summit people. You’re just a good guy. And then you took Kenji and Leti’s course. I believe correct. Yeah. And and if you’re not familiar, they talk a lot about single family homes and I don’t think they talk a lot about house hacking. So first off, what is house hacking? How would you define it?

Ayush Gupta: Yeah, great question. You’re right. They don’t talk a lot about that. Househacking is basically living in a portion of a house and renting out other portions.

There are various ways to do it. You can live in a four bedroom house, live in one room and rent out the other rooms, like example in a residency, I was living in a three bedroom house, but we were renting out all three rooms. If you own that house, You can have, you can live in that room and rent out the other rooms to other medical students, residents, and fellows, or even guests, and that can pay for your mortgage.

Currently, my house hacking situation is I live in a four unit apartment. And I live in one of the apartments and the other three are rented out. What how’s hacking does it it provides you a great strategy to get in because it’s your primary residence. So you really don’t have to put that much money down as compared to investment property, where you have to put 20 to 25% down.

So you can get in for a physician loan for 0% or a conventional for 5% or FSA for 3.5%. They’re very easy to get started. And then then if you, and if you do it right, and if you have all your numbers, correct, you basically, you can either live for free or even get some extra for living which is a great Saturday

Mike Woo-Ming: Now I don’t want to get too much into your personal life, but were you by yourself at the time when you’re renting? Married? Girlfriend? Significant other at the time.

Ayush Gupta: Yeah, it was I was by myself stood by myself. I live with my girlfriend right now and I think one, I think how… I love this question because I get this alot from people who are a little far ahead with the families and they’re like, oh, I have kids. I have I have two kids. I have a wife, we have this patient, we want a backyard. And I think those things can also be done with in hockey, but a lot of people that I know they, they do. You can Airbnb a part of your property.

You can do a midterm rental. You can also have a big space for yourself and a smaller unit for somebody else to offset some of your extra expenses for the month. It has been done for forever. People have been doing it forever, so there are different options.

Mike Woo-Ming: And again, I’m going to take you into your initial thinking of doing this, because I think it’ll inspire a lot of people who are listening this cause they can see how you were in your shoes. So imagining at the time you were renting where you month to month at a time, or did you have a long-term lease you’d had for break the lease?

Ayush Gupta: I didn’t want to believe actually. I started looking at it and in January of of 2020, but my least in until July, so I don’t know.

Mike Woo-Ming: And so why did you decide to do that versus going in and doing like what the majority of do is get a single family home.

Ayush Gupta: Oh, so many reasons. First. I said, I’m starting out. I was out of fellowship. Didn’t have a lot of savings. Didn’t have a lot of down payment when you do what majority of the people do. Just imagine I’ll give you a quick number example. If you buy a $500,000. You have to put 20% down if you’re buying as an investment property.

So that’s a hundred thousand dollars to come out of pocket. Excluding the closing costs, any kind of rehab renovations, you have to do the same thing for house hacking. If you buying a $500,000 house, you can put in 5% down, you can put in 0% down to 5%. Don is twenty-five thousand. That is $75,000 of leverage you can use from the bank.

That’s number one. Number two was done my first real estate venture. I want it to be a safer house. Hacking is easy, easily by far the safest way to get in to a real estate investing. You can get in, you have to live somewhere, I was paying 2200 or 2300 for rent. The worst case scenario for me was even.

Out of the three units, two units rented out. I would still be paying less than that. I would still be creating equity in the property. So that was, I think it’s extremely safe. That’s number two. Number three is like how you can leverage the other things by living in the house. So for example, you can use a heat.

Like I love using my heater for the house. Once you increase the value, you use your heat lock, you pull it out, you can’t do that. You can, but it’s very tough to do that investment property. Your lenders are very tough in getting a healer and that kind of jumpstarts you to other investment. Now, after my first house hacking, I was able to do a lot of other things and that’s because of the leverage that house hacking created for me.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah, that’s what I love about real estate and what a lot of people don’t know. It’s really the leverage. We get scared about debt, but it’s when you have things like a heat lock, you already have that equity in your home. And that just opens up, really. To other different types of investments.

So you’re renting at the time. You’re looking, you decided you wanted to go the house hacking route, which way did you go? Did you go through a duplex fourplex? W what would you thinking? Did you, was this in you’re in New Orleans?

Ayush Gupta: Correct? Yeah. I live in a nice neighborhood, very close to where I used to live. Very safe. It’s a four unit apartment buildings, so it’s a fourplex. And I probably live in the nicest of the four, but all four are beautiful. I think my, my tenants know me, one of the things that I get a lot is like, what if I want to be like not known to my tenants, but I can tell you as physicians, your tenants respect you a lot. They know you, they respect you. They don’t call you out for anything. There are systems in place that I have, even though I live over here in which I don’t have to do anything. I’m an ER physician. I cannot come and change toilets in the middle of the night and I would not never want to get into real estate for that reason.

So there are all these systems in place. I think there was a long answer to your small question, but yeah, it’s a fourplex in New Orleans, in a very good neighborhood.

Mike Woo-Ming: How long did it take you to find that perfect place?

Ayush Gupta: I would say around, around three months I looked at some of the properties and but that’s the advantage of house hacking as compared to buying a real estate investment out of state.

You know the area really well. Like I knew my area after doing maths and looking around calculations and looking around the neighborhood. I knew if a property opens up in this neighborhood, it’s going to do well as compared to if I’m buying something in Texas, but I don’t know the neighborhood that well. And it’s a lot of, and I have to put in 20% now. So that’s why I think this is another advantage of.

Mike Woo-Ming: So let’s talk about funding. You said you didn’t have a lot of money to, to invest in. And you mentioned things like a physician loans, just so for the people in the audience, because physician loan gets thrown around. But in actual fact, there really is no such thing as a physician loan, but maybe.

Ayush Gupta: Yeah, it’s a special kind of, it’s like a portfolio loan, like a lot of banks you go to, they will have multiple types of portfolio loans, like a VA loan, a physician loan. They might have a building like you have to build something, you have a builder’s loan.

So a lot of portfolios, but physician’s loan is one of them. What it does. As a physician, a lot of us have debt when we finish our residency or fellowship because of med school. Once you start using the debt to calculation, calculate a DTI or debt to income ratio, a lot of banks are like I don’t think you’re going to qualify to buy a $500,000 house because you have such big debt for med school going on.

What physician loan does is they don’t calculate your med school debt. That’s the number one thing. Number two thing is if you are paying less than 20% down on a house, you have to pay something called PMI. It’s like a mortgage insurance physician loans always excludes that for you. And a lot of times you can buy a big investment property with traditional, but they do allow you to buy two to four unit apartment building using a solution.

Obviously you have to shop around, but I think that’s a very good way to start. Like it was asking me how I did not have any funds. Yeah. That was perfect way for me to get into a very expensive property by putting no money down.

Mike Woo-Ming: You said you put it around 5%. Was there other expenses you had to do in terms of rehab for your place?

Ayush Gupta: Yeah, absolutely. So I did put in 5% down. My vision for this property was to make it a million-dollar property and cash out, refi it. So I did do another hundred thousand of renovations after putting in the 5% I staged it. But I use a lot of private money. Okay. I, yeah, that was that was again, leverage that I used because I knew that this property had value in it too. So if I use that, I can pay them off back. No private money, actually, I connected with some friends. The difference between private and hard money is like private money is doesn’t check on your credit at all. It is based on one legal document of promotionally note, hard money is more like longer term has more points up front than private money.

Mike Woo-Ming: And again we can always edit this later. What type of load were you getting in terms of, was it a 30 year fixed? What did the physician let off?

Ayush Gupta: For my the prop. So I ended up getting, going for an FHA loan, which was very similar to a physician loan. But it was because there’s limits to an FHA loan.

So for example, for 4 units in New York, you can get an FHA loan for probably 800, 900,000. But in New Orleans, you can’t. I think the limit was six 50. My property was over that price. So I had to put in I got a 30 year fixed mortgage using an FHA loan instead of 3.5, I had to put 5% down.

Mike Woo-Ming: Okay. Gotcha. Another thing too is because there’s just so for clarification with anytime somebody thinks of multifamily, they think more. Often it’s a commercial loan but in this case it’s not right because you have as many doors, is that correct?

Ayush Gupta: Correct. There’s like big multifamily and the like smaller, multi-family smaller. It’s two to four up to four units. More than four units is when starts getting a little more on the commercial side. And then you have to go through. The value of the prop value of the income, your net operating income, the cap rate, rather than over here, when you look at the comps around the neighborhood.

Mike Woo-Ming: Okay. So you got qualified, you got the house now it’s time to look for roommates. So tell me that process. When I hear house hacking, the first thing is. I hear them saying I want to live rent-free so that’s what I’m going to charge is what was your thinking in terms of pricing and then how did you find your, how did you find the tenant?

Ayush Gupta: Yeah, good question. So I had to change all the tenants in the house to get the rents up because when I caught the property, the rents were way lower than what the market trends was. The way the, my formula for finding the rents was looking at the comps around the neighborhood. So they’re like places around for two bedroom, two bath, two bedroom, one bath, they close where I live, which was available for rent.

I would just go and check them. And while I was doing rehab, I was like, oh, my property is going to be way more. Well done then their property. So that would help. The second thing obviously was Rentometer. I use Rentometer a lot for calculating brands. And then I have a pro version of it, which you can actually narrow down the miles, the amount of months out and look at all those things and actually click on those photos.

That was very helpful to those two things I use for rent calculation in terms of tenants. I use Hemlane right now for property management. No blood, anybody, but I, this is the things that I use. So what you can do I think as a lot of physicians, they think “I don’t know how I’m going to be to the tenants. I don’t want them to know that I’m there. I don’t have time to show.” I had the same belief. Honestly I was very skeptical about walking in and showing units. And the first time I showed a unit to somebody, I was like I don’t know about this, but I can tell you as physicians first fall, once you tell somebody who’s coming to see your property that you are the owner. The perspective change is complete. They are like, “Oh, wow.” I don’t have just any random folks, this is an owner who’s actually believes in his property. Second thing is once you tell them you live next door, they know that they can’t like do a lot of things that they would do in the there’s an absentee owner.

So that was very helpful. I put it on a lot of portals online and for each unit I had 50 to 70 applicants. To apply for the housing and to live over there at one time I had to like, just be like no, I cannot. I just, the first person gets it. That’s it. And all my tenants are great. I love them.

They know me personally. They can, they, if they want, they can text me, but the agenda go through the property management if they need anything. Yeah, I think it was a great process as physicians. We have this leverage this persona outside that these guys are going to be honest, they’re not going to be just like any other landlord. So I think that is where house hacking is so powerful for any physician who wants to try to do it.

Mike Woo-Ming: And so your property management is taking care of all the, the toilets and all that.

Ayush Gupta: Yes, sir. Yeah, so they they do all the documents over there. Any tenant communication is through any management stuff is through that. I do have two VAs virtual assistants who helped me through a lot of like social media helped me through real estate. So I think the system, once you create systems, I think it becomes very powerful and you can leverage it.

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah. Just as in any business, that the key to success is having the system. So in that, just as we do in medicine, you’re an ER medicine, we have a checklist to follow. As long as we follow that checklist, for most of the parts that most of the time we’re going to be successful. Can we say you’re living rent-free?

Ayush Gupta: I do live rent free. I actually make a good amount. I make around 1500 bucks on top of it a month apart from living. Used for other purposes and actually saving for buying the next puppy. So it was always like these coming in and having to do the next one with that. Yeah.

I can tell you, there are some people who have a single family home that would love to get 5,000 a month on their returner.

What two years ago I was paying 2300 for rent. And even before that I did residency, I was paying 1300 and rent fellowship, the same amount of money. I think going back to one of your first questions about teaching and we don’t get education about it, I wish. Real badly that somebody taught me this when I was in residency or fellowship, or even in med school that, Hey, this is a strategy.

This is something that works very easily. It’s easy to get into. You really don’t have to imagine. As a resident, you save a thousand books. That would be, that would mean the world to you. So that’s what I think I’m like way passionate about I bet nobody taught me this and I can help people.

Mike Woo-Ming: So it sounds like that’s why you started MDHousehacking. So tell me about the site you created and what’s the mission.

Ayush Gupta: The mission actually is to help medical professionals, whether it’s students, residents, fellows, physicians, nurses, techs, anybody who want to get into real estate in a safe way, do not have a lot of money and do not have a lot of time and want to get into real estate. There is a lot of competitive markets out there. There’s a lot of people who are trying to buy this properties using 20% down. But! There are people who don’t have that much money, the people who are very scared of getting to real estate.

So I help people walk through all those limiting beliefs, help look at their properties, have them go through the numbers for house hacking as compared to just buying a short-term rental or a long-term rental. And and show them the power of it. A lot of people don’t take into account that while I was one, I’m not paying $2,000 a month, that adds up that is like $24,000 a year saved into doing other activities that you actually can enjoy or the other investments.

So that’s my mission. That’s my goal to help people create awareness about this. Have younger professionals start on it earlier than.

Mike Woo-Ming: Perfect. Perfect. So you mentioned you, you’ve got this additional income doesn’t sound like you’re going to rest on your laurels. You said you’re investing in other projects. Is that more real estate? What’s next for you? Yeah,

Ayush Gupta: So I have now I have what of another four unit that I have, and then I have a short-term rental. So I do have these two properties. I’m part of this the group and I think I’ll plug a GoBundance and I think that has changed my mindset a lot.

Yeah, it’s it’s a good, it’s a group. We have some physicians over there from around the country. But it basically talks about like overall 16, it’s like health, authentic relationship, horizontal income, accountability, and it talks about contribution and adventure. So basically when I make my goals for the year, I think about all of these things, six things that I want to get better at.

So when I talk about investment these days, I might not have that much property that I think I’ve good right now. But I also put investment in this other aspect of my life, which I didn’t do before. That has helped a lot. Like fitness is great. I love fitness health, I think. I think that’s where I wish I can talk to more people about it that creating passive income is great and everybody should do more and have more than one source of income. But you need to do a lot of other things as well to get into,

Mike Woo-Ming: And I know you’re an attending physician, so is that some things that you tell to the. Oh all

Ayush Gupta: the time. It’s even to a fellow attendings too. Like I think what has happened now, like two years into it I just had a dinner with two of them yesterday and a lot of them are.

They’ve seen what’s going on. They’re seeing that, how I’m creating other sources of income and they want to come partner. Now they want to come talk to me. They want to just hear a lot about it. And I think that’s the event is when I was starting out, nobody over here was investing in the real estate.

Nobody was doing apart from like the usual, having a financial advisor come in. Having a portfolio, which is everybody does it. Now. People are seeing the advantage or the benefits of doing other kinds of investments. So yeah, educating as many people as I can.

Mike Woo-Ming: I love it. The website is MDhousehacking.com. We’ll also have a link in the show notes. Ayush thank, you for sharing more about your journey. It was really great to having you and best of luck in the future.

Ayush Gupta: Thank you, Dr. Mike, you’re doing a great job interviewing everybody. I love your podcast and I’m so glad that you invited me. I’m looking forward to hearing more episodes of the podcast!

Mike Woo-Ming: And thank you for joining us on this journey about educating our fellow colleagues and not only talking about passive income, but although those six areas that really can really make a big difference in your life.

So thank you everybody for listening and as always keep moving forward.