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Career Coaching for Physician Entrepreneurs

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Transcript:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. David Yeh 30:16
Oh my god…

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. David Yeh 31:41
Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By

Taking Physician Real Estate Investing to the Next Level with Kirsten Limmer, MD

Meet Dr. Kirsten Limmer, a board-certified pediatrician, PhD in molecular biology, and also an incredibly savvy real estate investor.  She learned that she could save lots of time and money, by designating herself as a Real Estate Professional.  Most doctors are attracted to real estate investing because they hear about the potential tax deductions they can receive.  However if you do not have Real Estate Professional Status,  any losses that are involved in real estate activities are considered passive, and are limited by how much can you deduct on your tax return.

So why don’t more doctors opt for Real Estate Professional Status?  Mainly because you have to keep onerous and detailed logs each year as evidence you are involved in material real estate activities as a Real Estate Professional.   Not able to find an appropriate solution, Kirsten create one on her own.  Now available on iOS and Android, REPStracker is a portable solution to help you streamline the way you document hours for Real Estate Professional Status.  This could be a huge breakthrough in your real estate investing.

Kirsten also happens to be one of my students, and we discuss the obstacles she faced on her journey from turning her app into reality.  Prepare to be inspired!

REPStracker – a better way to document your REPS hours.  The next generation app that will streamline the way you document hours for Real Estate Professional Status. 

TRANSCRIPT

Mike Woo-Ming: Hey guys this is Dr. Mike Woo-Ming welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD. Well, I’m really excited on my next guest. And she really is an example of how as entrepreneurs we find problems,  we are in front of problems that we know is hurting us either through time or money. And we come up with solutions to address these problems.

And this doctor did exactly that. Her name is Dr. Kirsten Limmer. She is a Pediatrician completing her residency at Harvard Medical School earned her medical degree at my Alma mater UCSD. She was at the UCSD School of Medicine, actually has a PhD in molecular biology at UCSD  as well. And as mentioned, she’s board certified in general pediatrics, but…

Probably even more important to you, especially if you’re a real estate investor. And I know many of you are, who are listening to this program. She has created a very cool app that can save you a lot of time and money. It’s called REPStracker. She can talk all about it. Welcome to the show Dr. Kirsten Limmer, Kirsten, how you doing today?

Kirsten Limmer: Thanks Mike. I’m happy to be here. 

Mike Woo-Ming: Well, I gave it this intro, you know, we got the Harvard, we got the UC San Diego here. Molecular biology. What kind of led you to creating this app known as 

Kirsten Limmer: REPStracker? 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. Like you said, I’m an, I’m a real estate investor. I’ve also always had an entrepreneurial spirit.

In second grade, I started a business selling,  earrings that I made out of tiny little origami cranes and started a little side business inside of my second grade class. So always kind of looking for problems and solutions and  , in trying to make innovations out of that.

And you know, being a real estate investor , over the last several years have kind of been more of a hobby investor, kind of dabbled in real estate. But over the last year or so, I’ve become a lot more systematic, a lot more serious about investing and concurrently with the pandemic. I have three little kids who who started homeschooling at home, like a lot of people.

So I had to, to cut down my clinical time, pretty significantly in order to be at home for them. . So kind of, it was, it was kind of a clash of, of two worlds. I was both more serious about real estate investing and I had cut down my clinical time. And what  led me to start to go down the road of was something called real estate professional status, because I knew since I was not working…

As much in the hospital anymore. And I was doing more real estate that I could potentially apply or become a real estate professional in the eyes of the IRS for the, for tax purposes. Now I’m gonna give you a little high level overview of real estate professional status because it’s not like becoming a real estate agent or anything.

It’s, it’s really just a tax designation. And so basically, normally as a real estate investor, when you have profits and losses from your real estate those can only be used against each other. So that’s considered passive income. And so to give you kind of a real world example I have a house in Palm Springs that I use as a vacation rental.

And I put on solar panels a few years ago for, I mean upwards of $80,000 or something like that. So a really decent expense, but because those passive losses can only be claimed against other passive losses. I wasn’t able to deduct the whole thing off of my taxes that year. So that’s kind of a step-wise deduction off of my taxes.

Now what real estate professional status does is it takes that basically that bucket of… passive profits and losses and combines it with active profits and losses. And that could be something like a W2 or a 1099 income. So for, for myself and my husband, who is also a physician it’s that’s considered active income.

And unless I can say that I’m a real estate professional then that would be considered passive income. So now I’m putting both of those in the same bucket and now anything, any deductions or anything like that from our real estate investments, we can use against our W2 income. And that is you know, becomes a really.

Powerful tax reduction strategy when you have a lot of real estate and especially as you know, a dual physician couple so what I found when I was going down this road and, and I should kind of back up and say the most important thing about claiming real estate professional status on your taxes is documentation.

So I’ll, back up even more on that. And say, you know,  with any great power comes great responsibility. So the IRS is not just going to like, swallow that you’re just a real estate professional. And just here I am. And, and that’s it. And, and give me a tax refund of a hundred thousand dollars, please. No. So there, there’s a lot of hoops that you have to jump through and it’s a little outside of the scope of this podcast, but essentially what you have to do is show that you have… spent several hundreds of thousands, not sorry, excuse me. Not hundreds of thousands, several hundreds of hours on your real estate throughout the year.

And that, and that has to happen every year. And not only do you have to have the time logs to prove it but you also have to have the evidence. And so, for example, if you, if you say that you spent half an hour with your tenant on the phone on March 21st, not only do you have to have that, but you sh if, if you get audited, you better be able to bring up that call log and be able to show that you spent half an hour on the phone with your tenant.

So you know, as you can imagine, these, these time logs really add up and you have to be really on the ball to, to, to stay updated and, and keep you protected. And in the case of an IRS audit and what I looked around and what I saw was that most investors were actually using like Excel spreadsheets, Google Calendar, some would like, you know, just like a pen and paper note, pad type thing.

 And like, you know, keeping a little  shoe box full of  their receipts or their, their pictures of all of their evidence. And, and to me being you know, a little bit more on the OCD spectrum, I was like, wow, I can’t do that. Like, first of all, I know that I need a system.

If I’m going to be super meticulous and up to date amount, my hours, I need a system that is easy. I can do on the go. I don’t have to wait to come home and like, sit in front of the desktop. And because I just know I won’t do it if, if day after day with having such a busy life, I know that that I won’t be able to keep track of my hours that way.

So I looked around for an app because, you know, there’s gotta be an app for that. Right. And couldn’t find anything. So there’s, there’s kind of generic time tracking apps, but none of them really fit the needs that I was looking for. So hence, was born REPS tracker.

Mike Woo-Ming:  So, a lot to cover there. And then I’m curious to know, and probably you don’t have the the numbers on this, but…

It sounds like, you know, real estate investors that could save thousands of dollars, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars , you know, becoming a real estate professional or having a real estate professional status. But most of them don’t do it. What’s the reason for that? 

Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. And I think that that’s a good question.

And I think that it’s something that even I kind of took pause about, and that is the fact that it, it is an auditable thing to declare on your taxes. And you know, in the eyes of the IRS, you are guilty until proven innocent. And so nobody wants to leave themselves open for an audit. So… that was really what gave me pause.

And finally, I kind of, you know, that was kind of a limiting belief that I, that I had going into it. And when, how I got over that limiting belief was that I was like, there’s gotta be a system. Like if that’s my only reason why I’m not doing this,  then let’s create a system that will kind of keep me, you know, water tight from, from that, that type of problem.

Mike Woo-Ming: It’s almost like when you thought about like these hours and like just having them on Excel sheets, it kind of reminded me of like doctors who are like tracking CME. Yeah. You can’t just like, okay, well I did a hundred hours of CME and I wrote it down on this piece of paper.  

Kirsten Limmer: So you, 

Mike Woo-Ming: you, you, you found out that there wasn’t any. Solution to this. And you said, you know what, I’m just going to create it myself. What  is the thought process that goes with it? 

Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that’s a great question. And so as you can imagine, it wasn’t quite as just easy as, “Hey, I’m just going to like create it myself.”

There was, there was some.  Forks in the road, some bumps in the road. And I do have to back up and say that this is not my first app idea. This is not my first  kind of venture down the app world. I actually had an app idea, you know, right before COVID and it was just to give you like a really quick it’s it was matching carpools of parents who I would see them . At school, then I would see them at soccer. Then I would see them at a gymnastics. And I was like, okay, I can, I, I should be able to just create an algorithm where everybody, all of these parents have essentially like a GPS tracker and it matches your carpool and then spits it out. Hey, you need to like talk to Susan over there because she’s going to soccer at 3:45  so anyways, I, you know, being very naive, I was like, this is going to be easy. I mean, we have Uber, we have, we have all these apps out there that have GPS it’s super easy. So, you know, that very naive thought actually. So I went and I I talked to an app developer about that app idea and I was just like, wow, blown away by the quotes that I was getting for.

For definitely not the idea that I was coming up with for real scaled down version. It was along the order of like $40,000. Upstarting bare minimum app. So, so I knew kind of going into REPStracker that like anything that you have, that’s like, you know, kind of a grandiose idea, both needs to be scaled down in the beginning.

And also  it’s gonna cost a lot of money. So  I should say with, with that, that last app, I ended up going to a venture capital fund. It kind of went a couple of steps further and then COVID hit. So it was actually a pretty good thing that it didn’t, didn’t go all the way, but so I knew going into REPStracker that…

there was some issues with, with hiring software developers. It was hard to kind of translate your idea to somebody who is a software developer and, and often it’s because it’s hard to find software developers that kind of have the same vision as you and  there’s a cost versus quality versus money type  situation that you get into.

And so if you’re, if you’re hiring a developer, let’s say in like, India, it’s going to be really hard to kind of translate this idea that is,  very americanized idea to,  a software developer who really thinks in code and Java script. And  so it, it becomes a big hurdle to find somebody like that.

 I knew that it was also going to be quite costly off the bat. So you know, I kind of had this epiphany and said, you know, if all these guys can be software developers, I mean, I went to medical school. Like, it can’t be that hard. I’ve got to just, I can, I can create this app on myself.

So then I started watching YouTube videos and and like really trying to like school myself on app development and went down a couple rabbit holes and found actually like this app development, essentially school. So it was like going to med school, but for app development. And they worked on a platform that did not use coding language, just coding logic.

So it was able to kind of take the learning JavaScript part of my whole timeline out of the equation, which was great. And and, and then I, you know took it from there. I enrolled in this school, it’s called Coaching No Code Apps. If you ever want to look it up,  it’s an awesome program.

And I just learned this skillset kind of day by day, step-by-step. 

Mike Woo-Ming: And so what was the timeline from initial, you know, idea to actually deciding to, start developing it, start paying money to, to develop it, to actually then launch it. And how much time did you devote each week or month to this?

Kirsten Limmer: Yeah, that’s a good question. So I started it… So it’s. March now. So I started it in November and I had my minimum viable product, my MVP, out by January 15th, I think. So it took less, it was actually less than less than two months that it, that it took for me to have a minimum viable product that had beta users.

And after that I had beta users use it and, and tried and iterated different versions of it until I was able to get it to a version I felt pretty confident in, launching into the app stores. 

Mike Woo-Ming: what do you think was the biggest challenge in developing REPS tracker?

Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. So for me personally, the biggest challenge was  thinking in coding logic, which I actually, I love thinking in coding logic.

But having three kids at home for most of that was you know, having to go down these. Like long pathways, or if anybody interrupts you, you have to go back to the beginning. So, so having my kids home during this, so actually adjusted my schedule.  I started waking up at like two or three in the morning so that I could just have these few hours of uninterrupted time, so I can really, really nail down my app.

But yeah, I think that that . And also  I spend a lot of mental energy in the beginning. Almost keeping it like secret. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs kind of struggle with this.  “I’ve got this great idea and but I can’t tell anybody cause the people are gonna steal my idea.”

And   if I were to go back and do it over again, I don’t think I would keep it secret. I think that, you know, what I’ve realized is that number one, it takes a lot of time and effort to, to create an app. So, you know, you’re not going to like, tell Joe Schmo about it and then have them just like create the app right away.

 It’s pretty unlikely that somebody’s going to steal your idea. And also when you, when you are a really open and honest and,  excited about something, people will give you ideas that you might not have thought about. And I think it kind of adds to your own excitement and your own momentum.

So, really I think with any kind of future endeavors that I do, I’m going to kind of take that and go with it and really just  try to be open and gauge other people’s ideas on these things. 

Mike Woo-Ming: So a few weeks ago we had on the program Dr. Daniel Erichsen, who also developed an app and is  someone that I know you had a chance to talk to and, and he had his own ideas about apps and whether a physician should get into apps. What do you recommend say as someone who’s now,  been there done that.

Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. And interestingly, since I launched this I’ve had a lot of physicians reach out to me asking me how to, to launch their own apps and, and bouncing ideas off of me.

So definitely those physicians are out there wanting to create their own apps and wanting to go down the entrepreneurial route.  I kind of hear the same thing over and over again, like, wow, it’s so hard. How could you have done that by yourself? And my response is, Oh my goodness, you guys, we went, we all went to medical school.

We all, well, you know, so in college I was a total dumb ass and maybe I’m just speaking for myself. And sorry  you have to edit that out of your podcast. But like, you know, like five years later I was doing central lines. I was intubating for premature babies. So, you know, we can do hard things and, medical school is a hard thing  and residency is a hard thing.

This is not that hard. This is a skill that you can learn and, and you can do it. And if you have an idea that you’re just going to keep on going back to and being regretful, if you didn’t do it, just do it, just do it. It’s not that bad.

Mike Woo-Ming: Awesome. Awesome. So REPS tracker is launched at the time of this recording. Available on iOS.

Kirsten Limmer: Yep. And Google Play now. Yes.  

Mike Woo-Ming: And so just to find it, if you’re a real estate investor, why should they… to get REPStracker, what can they expect after they download it?  Tell us the process. What can they expect to receive?

Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. Good question. So do you mean talking you through the app, going through the app?

Mike Woo-Ming: Yeah for people who are interested and they want real estate professional status? What is the app? What do they expect to receive? 

Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. Yeah. So the thing about REPStracker is  it’s very.. You can essentially individualize it for your own investing. So a real estate agent would log all of their properties and then.. After that every time entry,  the investors will add time entries and tag it onto that particular property that they’re talking about upload as much evidence as they want.

So for example I’m constantly messaging and text messaging, my real estate agent and also my property managers and stuff. And so, you know, I’ll just log like five minutes of texts and I’ll take a screenshot of my texts and upload it onto my little description and it takes me 10 seconds to, to log that time entry.

And so the, and those little things add up. Right? So so  I’m going on my, my own app. Like several, several times a day to log my own entries. And  so people can both log their time entries and also attach all of the evidence that they need in case they’re ever audited against against this, by the IRS, they can attach all of that.

And then REPStracker also keeps it. Keeps track of how much time you have left until you can reasonably claim real estate professional status. So you don’t have to go adding it up or anything by yourself. You just have a little cute little screen that will tell you exactly how much time you have left and how much time you’ve submitted.

And then at the end, if you want to just print out a spreadsheet and keep it in a shoe box, we want to go back to the shoe box method print out a spreadsheet… . Just export everything into Excel or CSV and, and keep it for the rest of eternity, if you want.

Mike Woo-Ming: Well, I’m so ecstatic that REPS tracker is now live and in the world and all the public can use it. And just to give some transparency, I was honored to join you on this journey. To getting this app launched and I had a pleasure working with you, so I’m curious, what’s next for you, Kirsten?

Kirsten Limmer: Hahaha! Okay. Yeah, a couple of, well, a couple of things. So number one, I’m going to start using my own app and really scaling up my real estate! Which I’ve kind of done concurrently. And there’s a lot of other ideas that I can kind of offshoot off of this. So, for one, going along my lines of just being totally transparent and open with my ideas a lot of people are getting really excited about short-term rentals. And short-term rentals has, has a pretty similar kind of tax structure for material participation.

And so starting to kind of build upon these different offshoots of these. These tax structures and being able to use my app for that. And yeah. And I’ve had such a great time working with you too, Mike, it’s been awesome! 

Mike Woo-Ming: So, where can they go if they want to reach out to you? I don’t know if you offer any.. You said a lot of physicians asking you about apps or maybe about real estate investing are you available for to hear from some of these listeners or doctors or… ? 

Kirsten Limmer: No, absolutely. I’m I actually am really happy to talk to people. I think it’s so exciting that there’s so many people out there that want to share their ideas and want to bounce things off of me. And I’m more than happy to talk to anybody who has anything.

That they want to ask about creating an app, about a REPStracker, about real estate professionals status, really anything. So they can go to my website actually that is probably the best way to do it. 

So REPS tracker.com. So R E P S T R A C K E R. Reps, tracker.com. And there’s a little thing that says contact me there.

And it goes straight to my email. Or else you can email support @ reps tracker.com, and that just goes straight to me. 

Wonderful. 

Mike Woo-Ming: It’s been a pleasure working with you and I am so excited again about REPS tracker, any like last minute advice or best advice you could give to listeners out there?

Maybe a doctor who wants to start up an app, or maybe someone who is just getting started in real estate investing and is not sure about that? You know doesn’t really know too much about real estate professional status and is considering it, any words of advice you have for those folks?

Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. Yeah, you can do hard things. Remember that? Remember you probably did a really hard thing yesterday in your job. Believe me, you can start real estate investing. You can start making an app, you can do whatever you want. And you know, if you don’t have an answer for something it’s out there, so just go find it and just start.

Mike Woo-Ming:  Awesome. Thanks for this again, reps track you’re good REPS tracker.com to download an app. So you get a lot of time and money as a real estate investor. And again, thank you, Kirsten Limmer for joining us today. And you’re a perfect example of just, just finding that there’s a problem out there.

Figuring out that their solution, if you can’t find that a solution to it, why not create yourself, but it’s not just about reading about it. It’s not about just like, you know, going into direction. If you have something that you believe it can be a value to a world, nothing better to do, and to just keep moving forward.

By

Wealth Building 101 for Physicians

A high salary does not often correlate to high net worth.

Although most doctors can generate an upper income wage, why does it seem a lot of physicians struggle when it comes to finance? 
I posed these questions and more to Ben Lonsdale and Rod Zabriskie, part of the wealth strategic team known as Money Insights.  Since they primarily work with health care professionals, they shared their experience working with doctors, and identified common mistakes and misconceptions.  

They also shared the same strategies the rich have been using for generations, to preserve wealth, minimize taxes, and diversify through sound stable investments.

After my interview, I’m a firm believer any doctor can retire comfortably, even if you are first starting out , with lots of debt, and few assets.  Whether you are starting a business, saving money for college, or planning  early retirement,  It all comes down to placing a priority in your financial education. What’s your next move?

More Assets = More Multiple Streams of Income = More Financial Stability

LINK MENTIONED:

Get their Wealth Optimizer White Paper and/or to schedule a free consultation HERE

RAW TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

So we’ve got a real cool treat for us today: I’ve got two guests on for the price of one. And I know we talk a lot about entrepreneurship and building your own business. And I’ve been talking to a lot of doctors, my fellow colleagues, about just revenue generation and they want to get started with a business but of course, they’re also concerned about, you know, spending time away from their family and starting up a business because…and I’m the first to admit it, not everybody is cut out to be an entrepreneur.  But the great thing about being a doctor or one of the great things is obviously, we generally have a higher income. But when I speak to a lot of doctors, and when it comes time to investing our finances, about where they’re putting in their money, often times  some of the things that they invested, let’s just say it might not be the most healthiest of vehicles. In fact, I had a friend who was a physician, finance in financial advisor, and she came up to me once he said, I’m done with working with doctors, because they don’t listen to what I have to say. And I say, “Hmm. that sounds like most of my friends.” Well, here’s the good thing guys is I’ve got two gentlemen here who love working with doctors and especially when it comes to investing and some of the things that they have here are some really interesting alternative vehicles that you may or may not be familiar with. So I did my research and I got a hold of these guys. And they’ve got something that I think would be very interesting to share with you. So, I’ve got on the program here, we’ve got Rod and Ben, and they’re from Money Insights. And they have, they specifically work with doctors and helping them move from high income to high net worth. So I’m going to learn all about this here. And they talk about other physician challenges that they’ve had since they almost exclusively work with physicians. I know they also work with dentists and other, you know, high net worth individuals, but because this is their niche, they understand us. Which I was surprised because… Often times, I think, you know, I say we need to have another doctor to help us with that. So I’m not gonna prolong it any further. Ryan and Ben, thank you for joining me on the program today.

Ben Lonsdale 

Thanks for having us.

Rod Zabriskie 

Absolutely.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

All right, guys. So let’s talk about Money Insight. So I’m looking for good insights here. But first and foremost, can you guys talk about how Money Insights came to be.

Rod Zabriskie 

Yeah, so Money Insights. It’s been a road for us. And so myself and my partner Christian Allen started money insights, maybe five, six years ago. And it really was born from this, this need for different ways of doing things. Right. I think the thing that we run into so much is people who have been fed the traditional lines of, you know, investing and 401ks and things like that. And, and we’re not here to say that there’s no role for those things. But what we find is that there are a lot of people out there who want more, who don’t feel like they’re getting what the, you know, with what they’ve been sold on, on that side of things. And so when it comes to investing and moving into more of what we call “alternative investments,” real estate businesses. notes, cashflow investment types of things. We just need a lot of people who are doing that, and for obvious reasons, right, but one of those is to be able to replace their income with cash flow from, you know, different sources and kind of putting their their future in their own hands, so to speak. Having the independence or at least the ability to to become as independent as they want. And so there’s that dream out there, but then there are maybe some roadblocks to getting there. And so some of the strategies that we have, and we’ll talk about today are very specific to smoothing out that road in that world of alternative investing.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

Yeah, you have what’s called the Investment Optimizer. So I’m really curious about what that is.  But like you said, you know, most of us know about, hey, most of the doctors that I know they generally work as an employee for some time. And maybe they’ll meet with somebody who is from the organization saying, “here is their 401k plan, this is what you can do,” maybe you got a choice to like, you know, decide if you want to be more aggressive or not aggressive, whatever it is, you end up just signing something and then it’s gone. And then you don’t hear from them. And then you just hope, you know, that it improves. But you know, as we know, lately, especially, you know, as the, I’m recording this, we’re still you know, hopefully we’re getting out of the pandemic, but a lot of people trusted that guy who is having them sign up for that. 401k. I mean, I know personally, my mother who is probably healthier, she’s retired, she says, I just lost 20 or 30% of my 401k this last spring. So what I like about what you guys do is you have a wide variety of different vehicles that you can go into, I mean, I’m all about multiple streams of income on my podcast about different ways of generating income. At least, you know, if you put all your eggs in one basket like, say, the stock market, you know, throw other eggs that you have, so to speak. So let’s just talk about what is this “investment optimizer strategy” and how to help others build wealth?

Ben Lonsdale 

Yeah. So really what you know, focusing specifically on the investment optimizer, it’s really for, you know, those physicians and those people that that are in your audience. People that are saying, “Hey, I recognize that I need to take control of my financial future. I need to dive in. I need to learn about this. I need to specifically take action and improve my own education around these types of things. And then we really then help them put that money in specifically for this strategy to improve all the investments and actually create a secure, predictable foundation where they can build their opportunity fund. So it’s predictable. It’s tax free. You know, It has protection from creditors and litigation. It’s a powerful Opportunity Fund that also provides a death benefit that they can provide for their legacy that they don’t have to pay for in any other way. And so there’s just a lot of benefits, where they can use this to improve their other investments. They’ll understand this strategy completely. And then also to be able to have all these benefits by putting their money into this very powerful Opportunity Fund.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

Let’s talk about good, this is really cool, but let’s look at money. It’s so it’s in terms of why you guys wanted to work with physicians. I mean, I know Yeah, they’re generally a high net worth, but I’m sure there are other things that attracted you to working with this audience.

Rod Zabriskie 

Yeah, I would say that it was kind of like we were traveling down a road. And then a lot of these positions that we work with, we’re traveling down the road, and we just we just met so that’s I kind of talked through the evolution of of how money insights came to be and doing what we do now. And we just met a lot of physicians that were, again tired of just relying on Wall Street to make things happen and getting into investing in real estate and a lot of it’s natural, right? A surgeon, being a partial owner in the surgical center. For example, the dentist who owns his belt, right? So a lot of that’s natural, and yet again, even beyond that, looking for other opportunities to be in this cash flow investing space. And so more and more as we as we met up with them and introduced the solutions that we bring to the table, there’s just was a really natural synergy that existed.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

Very, very cool. Now, I know guys, you’ve talked about different vehicles that you have access to. I know for some it does require you to have a significant net worth, I think they call it an accredited investor? I believe that’s that’s the term. But why is it that that’s important? In terms of, of this? I guess from what I gathered, there are only so many types of investments that are at least it opens up a lot of investments based upon your net worth. Is that correct?

Rod Zabriskie 

Right. It does. It does. And really the the whole kind of label of an accredited investor has just has a lot to do with the way that specific investments are regulated. So I think the assumption is that higher income people, maybe the assumption is they can afford to lose, right if they make a bad investment choice. And so, you know, the SEC or, you know, the FINRA doesn’t have to be as as looking over their shoulders as if, you know, they do for more for middle America. But when it comes to, you know, the types of real estate type for example, syndications is one category of investments that they would have to be accredited to work with certain operators out there who, who put their deals together. And as long as you’re working with the right operators, then you know, they’re they’re still providing the same level of information about the investment the property the way it’s set up, as it would be, you know, if it was subject to the regulator’s, but really, it puts the, the responsibility where it should be, and that is on the shoulders of the investor so that, that you’re not taking too much for granted as you as you approach and are and want to invest in, in that type of vehicle. But it’s, again, it puts it gives you opportunities that not just anyone can can have access to that, that’s put you know, for higher income individuals.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

And what I like about what you guys are is, is you guys have a conversation with these doctors, especially if those are saying, “Hey, you know what, I don’t know if I am… I don’t know, if I qualify,” you kind of help them through the process to determine what is, if it is, and if not, you know, and they can help determine what’s the best path for them. Is that right?

Rod Zabriskie 

Yeah, and I would say, especially as it relates to the investment optimizer, our whole thing is, is not not as much to, to tell someone what they should be investing in, or how they should approach investing. But really, to take that person and, and their experience and where they’ve come from and the kinds of things that they’re interested in doing. And then we’re going to custom tailor that strategy to the individual and really to where, where they want to go we’ll understand their objectives. And then help them get on a path and and quite honestly, we’re not the people who are providing the syndications or things like that. What we primarily do is build systems and, and processes around that investing to just to make it better to get allow them to earn to make more out of what they’re doing with those investments.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

I love that especially as someone who was approached by these financial investors, when I was graduating residency. It really had me wary because, you know, they were basically telling me what fund they want me to be in. I’m sure they had an ulterior motive at least in this aggressive fund, whatever it is there was and what I like about it, what you just said is you’re just letting them know what is available. And I think a lot of a lot of the problem is is just education. The information that’s out there and what is available.

Rod Zabriskie 

I think to the individual often has things that are at their disposal that we wouldn’t even at their disposal that we wouldn’t even know about. So for example, again, the surgeon who could be buying into the surgical center, and obviously, that’s something that’s just accessible to that person because of who he or she is, and just what they’re doing. We see that a lot. And so again, we’re not trying to take responsibility for the actual investment piece, as much as what our role is, is to, to enhance that investing that they are and will be doing. They’re gonna do it either way and let’s just build a process in the system around them.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

Very cool. So you mentioned different types of vehicles that you guys have access to or help educate us about. One of them is, in real estate, and another one is in life insurance. And I know and no offense guys, but I know some, some are listening on this program and they hear “Life Insurance,” and it conjures up some things in their head could be positive, it could be negative, I’m probably telling you something you haven’t heard for. So let’s just talk about it. Maybe you can kind of educate us about life insurance and why that’s important to use as a vehicle in terms of growing and protecting your wealth.

Rod Zabriskie 

That’s a great question. You’re right. We do hear it all the time. Up to this point, we’ve been talking about the investment optimizer, and other strategies that we use when we’re actually using whole life in doing that, and again, like you said, typically, when people hear whole life it’s not really great things that that are being spoken up. I would agree in the sense of the, the traditional whole life policy you might get from the agent down the street.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

You’re probably listening to Dave Ramsey, no offense. To use a big megaphone, and you know, he’s one of the out there just stamping his whole life insurance. So I’d love to hear your perspective on this.

Rod Zabriskie 

Sure. Yeah. No, he and others as well. And I think what’s the consistency among those people who, who tend to kind of gurus out there that speak against it. They fit into that category of what I was talking about earlier. It’s Wall Street, right? So in terms of, “Well, if you ask him or some of these other gurus, where should I be investing? Well, they say you should be in Wall Street, and you should be doing these things.” And the challenges that when you throw a blanket over everybody and say, “This is what everybody should be doing.” The challenge is that’s not it doesn’t fit really well. And so again, you asked asked earlier about how why have we come to just work a lot with physicians. And that’s one of the reasons why is is because we’re not on that regular path. Right. And so why Whole Life Insurance? And to begin with what we’re doing in the way that we built the insurance policy is very different than what Dave Ramsey and those others are talking about. And so to begin with the it’s just a it’s a different starting point for the conversation because in other words, if you went down to a local agent and you said, Okay, I want life insurance, then they would say, Okay, well, what do you want term whole life or whatever? Right. Whereas in our case, what we’re doing is, is we’re talking about investing, and specifically cashflow investing. And what can we do to improve that opportunity fund that Ben talked about a minute ago? Because there are just some natural inefficiencies that exist and in saving up money to go out and invest in real estate, for example, and once you invest, then it starts kicking off some cash flow and and where do I put that cash flow while I’m waiting and building up to it to go back out and do it again. And so that’s where the, the whole idea of using whole life in this context: That’s the starting point for our conversation. Our whole idea when we, when we build these whole life policies, is to minimize costs and maximize growth of the cash value inside of it. We want to take advantage of those benefits, the facts that have grown, the fact that it goes tax free, it can continue to grow even while we’re investing with it. And we’ll probably get into some more detail here in a minute about that, but it just provides some unique characteristics that we can’t get with anything else. And so, we use it and it becomes a critical piece for our clients in the course of investing in real estate and other things.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

And I understand that it’s not just every insurance company has this you work with specific insurance companies that that give you this benefit. You wanna talk a bit more about that?

Ben Lonsdale 

Yeah. So, we actually, you know, we’re a broker so we can work with almost any insurance company we want. So, we have our choice. And so, we do is we really break them up into into really two different criteria that they have to meet. So, the first criteria: They have to be extremely financially strong, they have to be a rated right these are these are really strong companies. These insurance companies are also what are called Mutual Insurance companies. That means that they are looking to benefit the policyholders. Right. And that’s why, you know, these policies pay a 4% and then they also pay a dividend, you know, to those that have policies with them, which helps grow that cash value tax free. And then also, these companies are really consistent, you know, they’ve been paying these dividends for over 150 years. So once we once we look at that, we really whittle it down to maybe eight or 10 companies. And then at that point, then Rod and Kristen and I… we go in and we look at the different kinds of policies they have. And do these policies meet the kind of criteria that our clients need, who are actively investing. So are they very efficient? Do they have extremely low cost? Is the capital growing pretty aggressively over time? And are they very liquid? So so it is it’s really important to be able to pick the right company and then also to have it be structured correctly like Rod talked about, that’s completely completely different than what you know people have seen or heard about in the past. So good question.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

I know with insurance companies and I get this you know, a lot of times you… I know this is this is comparing things, but let’s say like, and he In California, we’ve got earthquake insurance, okay. And so you pay for this type of insurance. But then if you read the fine print, you know, you don’t get any type of credit protection in terms of like if, “we’ll pay out as long as this, this, and this occurs,” and it never fulfills the criteria. So a lot of times when we’re investing in it, we don’t know if our credit is being protected. From what I understand, that is something that you really strive for when you’re looking at these companies to make sure that we’re protected correct.

Ben Lonsdale 

Yeah, so I would clarify that to say that the the actual idea of cash value life insurance being creditor protected, it exists really at the state level. And so each of the states has laws on the books, that allows cash value life insurance to be protected. Now, I will say that it differs from state to state that are states that would protect 100% of what you have in your cash value, no matter how large that policy is, right, you can have millions in that cash value of your policy and it’ll be protected. And then there are other states who have less protection, they’ll put limits on its or their things like that. So what we do is we just understand at the state level where that protect protection exists. But either way, even if it’s not written in and, you know, protected by code, there are ways that we can, put wrappers around it to make sure that it is protected. Because at the end of the day, like you said, the insurance… in this case, it’s really easy to know whether the insurance is going to pay out or not, right, that person’s either dead or they’re not. So it’s a little more clear cut, but, but even from the standpoint of that kind of creditor protection of the cash value, it’s important that the Opportunity Fund is not only efficient and growing and tax free and those things but that it’s there when you’re ready for it.  So that becomes a big piece if, you know a lot of you, I’m sure are concerned about lawsuits and kind of this this target you have on your back so to speak. This can become a piece where where you don’t have to worry as much about it being accessible to frivolous lawsuits or creditors.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

Yeah, definitely you want you want peace of min. When you are in this arena, they do look for the ones who have the bigger pockets. So yeah, yes, it’s good to hear that. So, before we got on the call, you said you guys said something that was really interesting to me… I’m all about letting your money work, work for you, and you brought up something where you say you can create value in two places using the same dollar at the same time. Maybe you can kind of clarify that to me? What do you mean by that creating value in two places?

Ben Lonsdale 

We have a lot of resources on our website, we have lots of great webinars on our website. So they were we can dive into that more. And we’ll talk about, that website and URL today. But to kind of break it down for you in a really basic way is where as you put money into that Opportunity Fund in the policy, you’re gonna, you’re gonna grow basically this bucket. And when it’s time to then utilize that money to make an investment, you’re not going to ever move that money, you’re going to use the insurance company’s general fund. And so you’re going to use their money using leverage, your money stays in that original policy continued to grow compounding, but then you’re going to be able to then put it into another investment, where it will also spin off a return. And then like Rod mentioned earlier, as that cash flows back, you’re going to funnel it back into the policy, and then you know, you’re going to re up, and then you’re going to deploy it again. And so that’s how that money really in two places at once. works.  We get asked about this. It almost sounds like magic when you say it, right. But again, it’s the whole idea is, it’s leverage, right? So if you think about the whole idea, you know, if I own my home, right now, I want to take a HELOC against my home and take that money and maybe go buy a rental property with it. I’m creating value in multiple places using that and so it’s, so this is just fits into that same category. Like Ben said, I have my account, I’ve built up some value into it. I’m going to take a loan against it, use those funds to go and invest. And then as I’m funneling that money back, then as I’m creating that cash flow from that investment, I am quite literally creating value in multiple places at the same time.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

So let me drill down guys, because I want to get some specific for our listeners, you talked about investing. How exactly do they use these policies as an investment vehicle?

Yeah, it’s a great question. We have clients that across the gamut so we’ve talked about real estate, right? Physical real estate, rental properties, commercial properties syndications. We also have people who are investing in their own business using these policies. So for example, a physician who needs to buy a piece of equipment, using a loan from the policy against the policy to go and do that that’s creating additional value inside of their business, right. or investing in somebody else’s business, right, these these opportunities come up and, and again, by doing that creating cash flow hard money lenders who, you know, have people approached them for loans and, you know, loaning the money out at, say 810 12%. This is a great way to facilitate that as well. So when we talk about an opportunity fund for investing, it can really fit anything you want, right? There’s no there are there is no limitation as to what you could use it for. But those are examples of the types of investments that people that our clients we see using the the investment optimizer for.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

Very cool, very cool. Now I’m going to take myself back a few years. I tend to do this as you guys are talking. When I was in chemistry, I learned that there were different forms… bear with me, guys, different forms of, I guess, chemical. So you had a gas, you had solids and you had liquids. And I thought those were the three things you had. But then when I realized when I talked with investors, they said oh you know, this is liquid you… No, I was liquid. And then when I found out is there different forms of liquidity that I wasn’t familiar with so mentioned, I think, Ben, you had mentioned that, you know, that the investment vehicles are liquid, you know, I know about our savings and our check. You were able to get money easily that we can find alternative deals. So how liquid is liquid some of these deals?

Ben Lonsdale 

No, that’s a great question. And great example. Is it liquid or is it more of, or is it more jello?

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

Is it fleshy or is jelly?

Ben Lonsdale 

And in this case, in this case, it is it’s liquid, it’s, it’s liquid, and it’s available. And, you know, it’s available to these to these investors. And, in fact, you know, in the fact that it is so liquid and it’s available to them as easy as a phone call, you know, we can even, you know, facilitate, they can call us and they get that they get that capital in a matter of days. And not only that, There’s no underwriting process. There’s no amortization schedule, they have complete access to that money. And then they have complete control of it, once it comes from the insurance company to them. And, in fact, in in one of our webinars they can see on our website, is we actually show a comparison between, “Hey, what if I put my money into a savings account? Or if I put it into this opportunity, you know, the investment opportunity optimizer Opportunity Fund, and what would that look like, over time as I made, you know, investments?” And the difference is pretty it’s pretty substantial. And so yeah, we invite you know, invite your, your your listeners to look at that, watch that webinar, because it would surprise them.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

Guys, this has been great, you know, as you can tell, you know, these guys are pretty laid back there. I thought I was laid back… But Ben you’re almost comatose! *laughter*  What I like about it you know it’s different than I know most of at least for me… Sometimes when I deal with financial planning I you know, I talked about it it was more about them trying to get me and persuading me to use something that I didn’t really know a lot about and unfortunately there are people out there who kind of pray for doctors knowing that you know, they make income and they try to get them into some type of vehicle that sounds sexy and but you don’t really understand it, you know, we’re not talking about some Bitcoin/CBD vehicle that I’m sure many of us have been have been exposed to. Just solid things that just work over time, you know, paying out dividends, year after year, this is what they they have to provide for you. How do they work with you?

Ben Lonsdale 

Sure, and I would say that our, our process is very much education oriented. We’ve talked about the webinars that we have, and things like that. And so we do really try to get the information in the hands of people so that they can first of all understand it. And then once they, once they see kind of what it is and and want to have that conversation, then we’ll get on a call and talk through and like I said earlier, it’s all about understanding their objectives, and building a system around that person and their family and the goals and those kinds of things. So that with whatever investing that they are going to do anyway, that we can just build something that helps them do things, you know, a lot better, a lot more efficiently. And so, so we’ll engage in conversations will will send additional content, like Ben said, webinars and or or white papers or or whatever… it puts them in a position where they can learn, because it’s important not just to understand in terms of deciding whether or not they want to have an investment optimizer, you know, strategy and use it, but how to use it, right? be in a position where, where when they are out there, analyzing deals and putting things together and making things happen, that it becomes a core piece of what they’re doing. And so that’s our goal, from an educational standpoint, is to empower that level of understanding so that it becomes a tool that they can use and just make things better along the way.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

Right. So if you guys want to get started with it, we do have a URL where you can go to you guys have that.

Ben Lonsdale 

Yeah, it’s moneyinsights.net/bootstrapMD and we built this site. So it just has a lot of education has that white paper that Rod talked about, and this white paper in the end in these webinars, we really dive into the details so they can actually really understand a little bit more, a little bit more of a deeper dive about our strategies. And then also on that site, they can also set up just a totally, laid back, no commitment, consultation with with Roger and I to just go over what their goals are and how this would fit into that. So yeah, and again, that’s moneyinsights.net/bootstrapMD

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

You guys this has been an education and I really appreciate it because I know for many of us I know specifically, you know, for myself and just talking to colleagues, we get no information education on financial literacy, literacy. You know, I have my own practice, I had to learn business and on my own school of hard knocks, and then in terms of finance There’s I mean, this is not just just pertaining to medical students, I mean, college in general, you know, my son just graduated college, nothing in terms of different types of vehicles, even the simple things like, you know, 401k and savings and things like that, you know, little or none, you they get that and you know, it’s unfortunate many people are still in this country, working paycheck to paycheck. We know, what’s going on, especially with the pandemic, even things like for doctors, where they’ve lost their income, because it couldn’t keep the hospitals they were shutting down the hospitals from that allowing them to do elective surgeries. Did you want to say something before we end the call today?

Ben Lonsdale 

We’re just grateful to have had the chance to visit with you. Thank grateful for your interest and just, you know, in terms of spreading the word and and helping Is this physicians because we understand I mean, there, there are unique challenges that physicians face in terms of, you know, getting started late and feeling this pressure to, to make up for lost time. And unfortunately, it often turns into taking undue risk and and you know, misplacing some of that. And so we don’t want to see that we want to be an advocate and a resource to, to help people to, to, you know, do it the right way to the best way possible. And not put as much emphasis on, you know, the, the return and that kind of thing, but by creating streams of income and things like that, that’s, that’s gonna allow you to get ahead a lot more quickly and a lot further than then if you just just focus exclusively on that return.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

One thing I did want to mention too, is because I know people are listening to this, you know that it sounds great, but I’ve gotten better school loans. I got to worry about how I’m dealing with that. But you guys work with doctors? You You, you kind of know that most doctors have medical school loans as you know this right? Correct.

Ben Lonsdale 

Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we see that and you don’t ignore it, right? We don’t pretend like it doesn’t exist, you just build it into the system and, and build a process around all of the factors, right, the whole idea of, “Hey, we need to build toward retirement.” But don’t forget, we have these these student loans that we need to make sure we take care of as well. And so just just understanding the pieces and and putting together something that is all inclusive and and takes everything into account.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 

Yep. Off the broad Ben, thank you for your time. Again, guys. The website to go to is moneyinsights.net/bootstrapMD. Once you go there, you’ll get access to the white paper people to watch webinars and then you could set up a consultation with Rod or Ben, you could choose which one you like better I guess! *laughter* These guys know their stuff, they work with docks they understand us and just helping you you know, that’s what this reason I do this podcast is yes, helping other doctors realizing that there is light at the end of the tunnel. You guys are working hard. You’re saving lives. You’re you’re doing the greater good. Now let your money work for you that against you. And this is what money insights provides for us. So thanks again guys. And always stop looking backwards. Keep moving forward.

Narrator 

You’ve just listened to the Bootstrap MD podcast for more valuable resources as well as Past recordings of our show, check out our website at bootstrapmd.com. Now let’s get to work.

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