Podcast
180: Money Goals: Get Specific to Get Results
Having concrete financial goals is super important. That might sound obvious, but I’ve noticed that a lot of women tend not to have concrete financial goals. We often have goals like going part-time, being able to retire, and wanting to travel more. While these are all awesome goals, they’re actually pretty vague.
How do you know when you’ve actually reached your goal? This is why having a concrete number in mind is one of the most useful ways to set goals for your financial freedom. I’m giving you the easiest ways to set yourself up for real success when it comes to identifying and achieving your financial goals.
Tune in this week to discover the value of having measurable goals, whether in relation to income, savings, or anything you want more of in your life. I’m sharing one simple question you can ask yourself to get clear on the actions you need to take in relation to achieving your goals, and how to make prudent decisions around your financial goals.
Learn more about Live Wealthy, an exclusive coaching program designed for successful women who want to be confident.... and be rich.
What You'll Learn from this Episode:
- Why you need concrete figures around your financial goals.
- How to set more measurable financial goals for yourself.
- 3 things to consider as you start setting financial goals.
- The filters I use when I’m setting financial goals.
- Why you need to become comfortable with risk as you begin intentionally growing your wealth.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Follow me on Instagram
Disclaimer: The content in this episode is not financial advice and is provided for educational purposes. Please consult with your licensed financial advisor for professional advice. Wealthy Mom MD does not advocate for the purchase or sale of any security or investment.
Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.
Hey, everyone, welcome to a new episode. So I literally just got off a coaching call from my program, Live Wealthy. And there’s been a few things that have been coming up and I was like, I really need to do a podcast episode on this and use my life as an example.
I always think examples, whether they’re true or not, are so helpful in solidifying concepts because otherwise it’s all theoretical, right? And so one of the things I’ve been talking about a lot inside my program is how important it is to have concrete financial goals. It sounds obvious, but what I’ve noticed with a lot of women is that we don’t always have concrete goals.
We have goals like, well, I want to be able to go part-time. I want to be able to retire. Or I want to be able to travel more. And those are all super vague, but they sound awesome, right? Because it comes down to, well, how do you know that you reach that goal? And it really comes down to kind of a concrete number.
And so I want you to think of financial goals in two ways. And I think this is the easiest way, obviously, there’s multiple ways to think about it. But how much income do you actually want per year? And I think sometimes thinking about how much income you want per month might make it sort of easier to wrap your head around.
And by when? By when do you actually want this? And then a third thing that I think is really important is what are you going to do with this? Or why do you want this much money? Because remember, money is a tool, right? So it’s a tool to help us live the types of life that we want, whether it’s to travel more, whether it’s to be able to send your kids to private school or pay for college, right? It’s a tool to help you reach those types of desires, wants and needs.
So I think this is really important to really think about that. And I think it’s really easy to focus on the money goals. But again, I also want you to focus on the non-money goals. So let me give you an actual example from my life.
Now, of course, I have money goals, like an income goal. But I also have priorities when it comes to that type of money. For example, I have not been practicing clinically, like going to a job, for a few years at this point. And so at this point, I have tasted what it’s like to have relative time freedom, flexibility, ability to do what I want and when. And that is something I’m not really willing to compromise on.
I’m willing to compromise it to a point, but really not a lot. And, to me, that includes not just having, for example, a regular job where I’m going to have to have a limited amount of vacation. I would never do that, even if that meant making a lot of money. And I’ve had offers to do that.
And I will tell you, like for a day or two I kind of had this, like, oh, I should do that because that money will be so great for XYZ. We could have more money for investments. It could help us do a down payment. Definitely that desire really kind of got a little, I don’t want to say out of control, but just kind of almost clouded my judgment, okay?
And ultimately, I decided that I do not want to work full-time. Even if I could do that in three or four days a month, I just don’t want to be beholden to having to work a certain amount of hours, having limited vacation, having to ask for time off. That is not something I ever want to do ever again. So that’s a really important priority or filter that I have when it comes to making decisions financially.
And so one of the questions that I think is really important to answer when you’re presented with an investment opportunity, or just even what are the decisions I need to make now and what actions do I have to take to reach those financial goals?
And basically, it comes down to this simple question. Based on my current financial goals, does this investment, does this decision, does this action, kind of all the same thing, does it make sense? Does it actually help me reach that goal? And does it make sense with my current lifestyle priorities or other priorities that you might have?
That question alone is going to pause and slow you down so that you actually think about it. One of my clients was telling me how she gets a lot of emails for deals. We’re talking about mainly real estate syndication deals. And it’s so easy to have FOMO, especially if there’s a deal that a lot of people are going into and they’re hyping it up a lot. So easy to have FOMO and be like, well, I need to invest in this right now. This deal looks great.
Again, this question will help you pause and think about it because there’s a few parts, right? When you’re evaluating a decision to invest in something, yeah, the returns are important. And even if it’s a very, I don’t want to say attractive, because if it’s so attractive why wouldn’t you invest in it? But still, you want to put it through that filter of does it actually help me reach those goals in a way that I want to?
Now, one of the parts of my lifestyle priorities is, besides time freedom and flexibility, is also traveling a lot. And it’s so funny, because I know I talk about traveling a lot on this podcast. And if you know me personally, it’s something that is really important to me. But I go through phases of whether I want to travel.
I’m actually in a phase right now that I think will last until the end of the year anyway, where I actually don’t really want to travel a lot. It’s annoying to go to an airport, even though I have Clear and PreCheck and all the things that make things easier to get through an airport and onto the flight. But it’s tiring, too.
And also, I’ve realized I don’t really want to be away from my family so much. I used to travel a lot for work, and I would rather do more travel for vacation. Like I already have two trips planned this fall for speaking engagements and I’m happy and thrilled to be able to do that. But I’ve decided I’m not going to say yes to any other engagements for the rest of this calendar year.
I’m excited to take the only vacation planned with my family, which is not till the end of the year, December. And so I’m thinking maybe I need to have a little, even if it’s just two nights to get out of town with my family to spend time with them. But because I do love to travel, and I like to travel in style generally speaking, having the income to do that is one piece.
But this is also why I love credit card points, because it allows me to basically pad that income need or actually take away some of those income goals because I am able to get a certain amount of travel through credit card points. I actually added up how much free travel I’ve gotten through credit card points this year and that’s actually like almost $40,000, which is kind of insane when you think about it.
Now it would have been, I wouldn’t even say more, but I probably could have gotten more out of it, meaning like more travel opportunities if I chose not to fly business class to France, for example, or choosing to stay at really nice hotels in Paris. I could have used a lot less points, leaving me more points to do some other travel.
But my priority is to fly very comfortably and stay in nice hotels. But if that’s not one of your priorities or needs or wants, because you would rather be able to actually take more trips, then you’re going to use points differently.
This is why personal finance is personal, because not everyone’s going to have the same goals, right? And so I think that’s really important. So I really don’t like when there’s these cookie cutter generalizations of how you should invest or how you should spend your time, because we’re all going to have different desires.
And then another thing I want to say about this decision making process is that your goals are going to change. I would say just count on your goals changing over time.
Now, one of the skill sets that’s going to be really important with making these decisions is your ability to make decisions quickly and then take action quickly, meaning not too much time between the decision and taking action, these are the things that are really going to move the needle.
And it comes down to a few things. You do have to learn about the investments to see what’s available and educate yourself so that you do make prudent decisions about what you invest in. But then a critical skill set is to have the ability to manage the discomfort with risk and decision making, okay? And mindset around fear. And yeah, being scared to invest in something new.
And what I’ve seen a lot with my clients is that we all want certainty, myself included. We all want certainty that a deal is always going to work out and that you’re never going to lose money. And so what I’ve been offering to, not just myself but to my clients, is like I would just assume that you’re going to make some decisions that result in outcomes that you did not want.
And for money it kind of basically comes down to losing money or maybe the money payout taking a lot longer than you think. Because, of course all of us want a guarantee that that’s never going to happen, but it’s just not possible. Even with the stock market because I find a lot of clients think investing in index funds is safe and have relatively low risk, but even that, there’s nothing risk-free, okay?
And then I find a lot of people stalling and making decisions because they’re scared to lose money. But I also want to say that is risky. I actually want you to consider that it’s riskier not to invest. And so I think the work in terms of feeling better about risk and decision making is actually to just accept that it may never feel great.
Actually, everyone I know, when they invest in something, pretty much, I mean we all have different thresholds, there’s a certain level of discomfort involved with every decision, with every evaluation of risk. I don’t think the goal is to ever feel 100% sure about a deal working out. Because if that’s where you think you need to be, you’re probably never going to get there and you’re going to slow down your wealth creation dramatically.
Now, one thing I want to point out is I think it’s really easy, and maybe I have actually done a disservice to you, that everything can be solved with mindset and that you should do your best or only work on mindset. And that’s only part of the deal, right? It’s okay to make a decision to change a circumstance if it makes certain thoughts easier.
Let me give an example because I know that sounds really vague and abstract. So, one thing about my business, and if you own a business you know business is not guaranteed. 90% of businesses fail and it’s not a consistent income, like a paycheck. And I go through periods where I’m really stressed out about my ability to make money or feel pressure as the main breadwinner of my family. Matt does have a job and he contributes.
But I’ve noticed that recently I’ve had a lot more stress and pressure and feeling like I have to make money in the business, which are not great thoughts to have. It actually is detrimental to my ability to make money in my business. And I’ve worked on my thoughts a lot. I’ve gotten coached on it, yada, yada, yada.
And I’ve just decided recently that I’m going to change some of the circumstances because I do not want to spend so much brain bandwidth on stress and fear that actually takes me away from my ability to make money and to, frankly, be better at business and be a better coach for my clients.
And then also, what I’ve decided is that I never want to lose the ability to work as a physician. And the longer you don’t see patients, the harder it is. And especially with, I’m assuming, surgical specialties including anesthesia, the longer you’re out of practice, the harder it is going to be. Is it going to be impossible? No, but the barriers are going to be higher.
Now, outpatient, like dermatology, I think is a little bit easier because I’m not doing complicated procedures where there could be really consequential outcomes. And I haven’t seen a patient in person since the end of February 2020 and I haven’t done clinical work since the end of 2020. So it’s been a good two and a half years. And it’s interesting, at some point I made a decision like I’m never going to go back, I’m retired.
I would even say that because I thought it was cool to say that or I felt good about that. And I did feel good about it at that time. And so here’s another point I want to make, you are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to make a new decision. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that you made the wrong decision. We are always changing and evolving.
And so what I’ve decided is that I want to work clinically part-time. There’s so many permutations, like I could do locums a few times a year. We decided as a family that that wouldn’t work for our family because being away, because most locums jobs I’d have to travel to literally be away for maybe weeks at a time. We just decided that doesn’t work for our family. Although, in terms of being able to work only just a month out of the year is obviously very attractive. But in terms of logistics, it doesn’t work.
So I went through a few permutations. At the time of this recording, I don’t have a job contract signed, but I am talking to a bunch of practices, including some telederm practices. And what’s going to help me guide the decision is going to be some of the questions I just mentioned before, which is like, does it help with financial goals? 100%, because one of the things I realized is I need capital to be able to invest more, right? And so I want to have access to capital faster.
So having that income is going to help. Also, it’s going to help me calm my mind around my business. And then also my son is starting private school and he has some needs, like therapies that are, unfortunately, cash out of pocket. And unfortunately, my health insurance does not cover any out of network services. It also doesn’t count towards my deductible, which sucks, but that’s my current insurance circumstances.
And so I never want to feel like I can’t afford it. I never want to have to think twice about being able to pay for the support that he needs, or me or Matt, frankly.
And again, I didn’t want to lose the ability to see patients. I didn’t want to have to have so much time lapse that it’s going to be hard. Now, thankfully, it hasn’t been hard, it hasn’t been difficult to revive my licenses. I was really scared of having to reapply all over again, which is such a slog and so unnecessarily.
That’s a whole nother conversation. Like why do we need to have specific state licenses? I know there is that, I forget what it’s called, but there’s that sort of agreement between many states where it’s much easier to get a license, thank God. And thankfully, I’m still board certified until the end of 2025 because it’s a 10 year cycle for dermatology. I think that’s how it works for other specialties.
So I’m in the process of getting all that together. I feel great about this decision. And I definitely have a lot of fear and discomfort. And my fear and discomfort is basically, what if I hate it? What if it sucks? The great thing is I can always quit again. There’s a plan B.
I don’t think it’s necessary to have a plan B, but I have also just accepted it’s normal to have some trepidation around this decision. It’s something new. But also, one thing I’ve also had to remember is, of course I can do this. Of course I can find the right environment, the right practice where it’s going to be enjoyable to practice again.
And I’m actually, to be honest, what surprised me is that I actually am excited to practice again. I am such a different person now. I have all these coaching tools, I think I’m going to be happier as a physician. And I actually think I am a much better physician for my patients because of the tools that I have gained over the years.
So that’s what’s going on in my life. And using that as an example to talk about how to think about financial goals, your non-financial priorities and the timeframe. And again, you can always change your mind. You might decide you need less money, you might decide that you want more money, and you might decide you want it sooner. And that’s all fine and there are multiple ways to get there.
But it’s hard to make decisions, it’s hard to make informed decisions when you don’t know where you’re going. And if you’ve heard some of my prior podcasts where I talk about goals, I want you to think about goals as it gives you a direction. And the timeframe informs what decisions you need to make, what actions you need to take in a timely manner, okay?
So goals are guideposts. And also what goals aren’t are ways to beat yourself up if you don’t reach the goal. Because let’s say you have a goal of $10,000 of non active income in five years. If you reach it in seven years, who cares? But you wouldn’t have made those decisions if you didn’t have that income goal and timeframe goal, okay?
So I hope this was super valuable to you. I know it’s been valuable for me to go through some of the decisions that I’ve been making lately, including which deals and investments to actually do. All right. I will talk to you next week.
Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at wealthymommd.com. See you next week.
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179: 5 Steps for Auditing Your 2023 Goals
Once September rolls around, it can feel like it's all downhill until the end of the year. This is the time of the year when any goals you have that you haven't yet achieved start getting put aside because it feels like December is right around the corner. It's time to revisit my episode about conducting a mid-year money audit and apply these lessons to anything you wanted to achieve in 2023.
This mid-year audit isn’t about beating yourself up for not achieving your goals yet. However, auditing your goals gives you a timely reminder of what you wanted to create, why you wanted to pursue your goals, and also shows you that there’s plenty of time left in 2023 to make sure you complete everything you set out to do!
Tune in this week to audit your progress so far in 2023 and decide what you can achieve over the remainder of the year. I’m sharing my five-step process for auditing your goals, showing you why it’s never too late to start setting goals, and giving you the advice you need to start deciding on exactly what you want to achieve in the closing stages of this year.
Learn more about Live Wealthy, an exclusive coaching program designed for successful women who want to be confident.... and be rich. On Sunday, September 17th 2023, I’m holding an open house. So, if you want to get a behind-the-scenes site tour of Live Wealthy, click here!
What You'll Learn from this Episode:
- My step-by-step process for auditing your money and your goals.
- The important differences between being interested and being committed.
- How to overcome the mental obstacles standing between you and your current goals.
- Why it’s never too late in the year to start setting goals.
- My favorite time to start setting goals.
- The unhelpful thoughts your brain will offer you as you assess your progress on your goals.
- How to see the success you’ve already created, and what’s possible for the future.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
Disclaimer: The content in this episode is not financial advice and is provided for educational purposes. Please consult with your licensed financial advisor for professional advice. Wealthy Mom MD does not advocate for the purchase or sale of any security or investment.
Hey, if you’ve been curious about my Live Wealthy program, the money coaching program I specifically designed for women physicians, you’ll have the opportunity on September 17th, Sunday, at either 12 pm or 8 pm eastern. This is your chance to find out everything about the program.
I’m going to do a behind the scenes site tour of the program, you’ll actually see what the program looks like. I’m going to answer all of your questions and you’ll get to meet current members who will talk about what they have accomplished since joining the program.
So, if you have been curious, if you have been thinking of joining, this is for you. To sign up, go to wealthymommd.com/open, O-P-E-N. I will see you there.
Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.
Hello everyone. So, at the time of this recording, actually the Monday before this comes out, my son started kindergarten today. It is such a big transition, and I don’t think I realized what it was. I think I may have talked about this on the last podcast or two podcasts ago. How when I was not a parent, that basically all of us who are parents now but when we weren’t we thought we were better parents than the actual parents. And now we know that is not true.
But the reason why I’m bringing this up is because pretty much everyone is back to school. I think where I live, the northeast, is the latest. And in fact, Jack’s school is even later, it started the week after Labor Day. But what I realized is it is already mid-September, which is kind of crazy, right? Because I don’t know about you, but I feel like once September rolls around when school starts, after Labor Day it’s kind of all downhill, right?
It’s starting to get cold. I live in the northeast, actually last week it was in the 90s but generally speaking things are going to be cooling down significantly. And I don’t know what is happening, obviously some type of global warming, but it has been going from really hot to really cold very quickly here in the fall in the northeast.
So the reason why I’m saying everything goes downhill is that whatever goals or things you were so hyped up to work on this year, this is when they die. And when I say this is when they die, it’s like they get put aside. For many of us they were put aside when the summer started, frankly, or even earlier than that. But they really, really go to die around now because things just get busy.
Then in October, if you celebrate Halloween with your kids. I haven’t yet, but I think this year I’m going to have to do some kind of costume thing. Then we’ve got November, where everyone is getting ready for Thanksgiving, then there’s Black Friday. And then December, it’s like forget it, it’s done.
So that’s why I wanted to redo or rather have you guys listen to this episode about doing a mid-year audit, specifically about money but I want you to apply this to anything that you are thinking of actually doing this year.
And I want you to ask yourself, not why have I let it die, because that’s just a question that’s going to create thoughts that beat you up. But it’s more like, hey, I had these goals, I had these things that I really wanted to take action on and work on, there’s still plenty of time left. In business speak there’s more than a quarter left. Q4 doesn’t start until October, so you’ve got more than a quarter. That is a lot of time. That is enough time to get some serious momentum in before the end of the year.
And so I hope this podcast is going to sort of, I don’t want to say relight the match under your ass, but just kind of get you thinking about it and reminding yourself, hey, these are some things that I said I wanted to do. Maybe it’s as simple as recommitting, it could just be as simple as reminding yourself that you had a goal.
I don’t know about you, but I forget my goals all the time. One of the reasons it’s so important to write them down and have some kind of periodic reminder to just read the goals that you had. I’m not being sarcastic, this is a thing for me anyway.
And so if you’re listening to this on the week of September 11th, if it’s past, no worries. But if you are listening the week of September 11th, maybe it’s actually the day it came out. I’m speaking in future tense, so September 14th, Thursday is when this episode comes out. And you have been wanting to work on your finances and you haven’t joined my program, Live Wealthy, I really want you to come do my live class this Sunday the 17th.
We’re doing it twice, 12 pm and 8 pm. And whether or not you join Live Wealthy, of course I hope you do, it’s so much fun and it’s amazing. But even if you don’t, attending is going to put back that laser focus on the money goals and dreams that you’ve been thinking about, maybe even before January, right?
Because I am going to show you and talk about the program, but I’m also going to be showing you, if you didn’t know already, why it’s so important to start taking steps. Why it’s important to work on this. Like part of me is just like, “What is the whole point of money if it’s not going to be a tool that you use to enjoy your life?”
And so that’s your invitation. Go to wealthymommd.com, that’s my main website. You’ll see a link up top that’s a banner, you just click on it and it’ll take you right to the sign up page and I’ll see you this Sunday.
All right, get ready for a mid-year audit.
It’s 2020 and it has been quite the year so far. Most of us were not planning for a global pandemic. Well, the good news is we still have about six months left. It’s not too late to get back on track. And if you didn’t make goals, it’s not too late to make some.
Now, before I walk you through a five step process to do a mid-year money audit, let’s just take a moment to even talk about goals. Why make them? Why bother? I know some of you resist making money goals or any goals in general. You’re tired. We’ve spent our whole lives achieving so much. More goals? I hear you. I get it.
One thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that it’s not even so much about reaching the goal. I know it sounds trite. It is about the journey. It’s about who you become. Goals force you to get out of your comfort zone and to grow. Otherwise, you kind of stay the same. That’s how I look at goals, including money goals.
All right, so let’s get started. Here are the five steps in general, and then I’ll take a deeper dive. Number one is that you need to remind yourself what the goals are or create goals if you haven’t. Step two is to examine the data. Step three is to identify what you’ve done well. Step four is to identify what isn’t working. And step five is to create a plan going forward.
Step one, first you need to remind yourself what the goals are. If you made them back in January or maybe the end of the year – Personally, my favorite time to kind of think about goals for the following year is actually October or November before things get crazy with the holidays. Dig them out, they might be buried somewhere. Hopefully, you wrote them out because that’s such an important step when you’re creating goals, is to write them out and not just think about them.
If you haven’t made goals, this is your opportunity to do so. Like I said, I recommend you write this out. Don’t just think about it. Maybe your goals were something like maxing out your retirement accounts. Maybe you don’t even think about those as goals because they are automatic for you. But those are goals.
Maxing out your 401k, or 403b, or your Roth IRA, for example. Maybe it was to buy rental properties. Maxing out your health savings account. Maybe it was to pay down debt, et cetera. Write them all down.
Step two is what I like to call examining the data. I want you to put your objective, scientific hat on right now. This is not your judgy brain, your scientific brain. Meaning what has been done? What hasn’t been done? This is not the time to judge yourself. We’re simply gathering data points so you can objectively see if you’ve made progress or not.
Let me give you some examples because sometimes our brains will offer up thoughts like, “Well, I haven’t made any progress.” Is that true? Maybe you bought a book. Maybe you read a book. Maybe you opened up that HSA account and put some money into it. It all counts.
Step three, now I want you to take off that scientific hat and ask yourself, what have you done well? I want you to notice how our brains immediately want to point out how we aren’t on track, what we’ve messed up, or maybe you want to start feeling bad about what you haven’t done. This is automatic.
I like to always start with what have you actually done well? Force yourself to ask that question. And you’ve definitely done something well, I promise.
Step four is to identify what isn’t working and what you can learn and what you can improve, but not from a judgmental place. Not from a, oh, I’m so bad with money and more of the same, but from a, what can I learn from this place. How can you create a strategy around all of these things?
Step five, create a plan going forward. We still have about six months left in the year. You know, a few things I’ve learned about goal setting, I think I heard Brooke Castillo say this. We overestimate, or we tend to overestimate what we can do in the short term, like in a week, for example. All of us grossly underestimate what we can accomplish in the long-term, like six months, a year, and a lifetime.
Let me give you an example from my life on how I did this mid-year money audit. Like many of you, I had to remind myself what the goals are because life got busy, lots of things happened this year. Even I kind of forgot what our goals were.
One of our goals from last year, actually for the end of 2019, was to buy a rental property. And some of you may know that was a goal of mine, but it didn’t happen in 2019. And it’s so easy to go into, “Oh, I didn’t do that. I messed up,” et cetera. I just want to offer that those types of thoughts, that type of thinking is just not useful because it doesn’t have you do anything about it.
It doesn’t help you examine why you didn’t accomplish that goal or why you didn’t take action towards it. Now, I said earlier it’s not so much about reaching the goal. It’s about who you become and how you grow as a person and how you deal with the obstacles that come up. I will say, if you pick a goal, that’s “too easy” , it's not that there’s anything wrong with that. It just doesn’t require you to grow and do something new.
For me, for Matt and I, buying a rental property, our first one was going to be something new and it was going to take something, especially for me since I had a lot of fear around real estate. I’d keep saying, “We’re going to do this,” but I would keep not doing that. And so I saw that as an opportunity to take a look under the hood of my brain to see why I keep not doing this.
And honestly, the reason was fear. I built up all this fear in my mind that it was going to be hard, that it was too complicated. And then when I got coached and coached my software around it, I realized that yes, they were excuses superficially, but that my fears were sort of out of proportion to the reality of things.
And what I found interesting is that once I actually committed, not just sort of say, “Oh yeah, I want to do this,” because a lot of us make goals like that from a place of, “Yeah, that would be nice,” but truly commit and take action from that commitment. Once we actually started, I realized that it really wasn’t that hard.
Dr. Letizia Alto, a friend of mine and one half of Semi-Retired MD, even says that real estate is not med-school hard. Us physicians can do hard things. Real estate is not one of those hard things. That was kind of a long-winded story, but I just want to share it with you because I know many of you are also afraid to invest and maybe you’re also afraid to invest in real estate.
When I put on my objective scientific hat around examining the data, examining to see if I had made progress with buying a rental property it’s so automatic for my brain to say, “You have not made any progress around this.” Is that true? Was that true? Of course not. We had made tons of progress.
It’s funny, our brains look at the goal and whether it was done or not. And if it’s not, then we kind of go into what I call all or none thinking where it’s like, “Well, the goal wasn’t met so you haven’t made any progress and you’re a failure” type of thing. When I was able to sit back objectively, there was a lot that we had done to get closer to that goal.
So, for example, we had met with an investor agent. We had taken the Semi-Retired MD course Zero to Freedom with Cash Flowing Rentals. We had started just networking and meeting other people who were also investing in real estate. All of these things count.
And then the next step I talked about, step three, was to identify what you’ve done well. And pretty much I’ve mentioned them already. I had read some books, done some courses, talked to some people, et cetera.
Step four, identify what isn’t working. I talked about this a bit earlier when it came to sort of my personal goal about real estate. What wasn’t working was mainly mental issues, meaning fear, not taking action. These were some of things I had to really examine and get coached on and coach myself around.
And what I’ve learned with all goals is that each of these sorts of mental obstacles, they are opportunities to create strategies. Meaning when my brain goes into fear mode – And here’s the thing, everyone feels fear around something new or something different. It’s the normal human response.
The problem is that most of us think that when we do feel fear, we think it means something’s gone wrong. We think it means it’s like a signal that we shouldn’t do it, that there’s actual danger. I think it’s easy to think that when you see people who are doing things that you want. For example, Leti and Kenji, it’s really easy, even for me, to look at them and think they must not be scared. They must not be feeling what I’m feeling.
That’s simply not true. All human brains will offer up fear when something new is happening. It’s a normal thing to happen. The strategy I created was to honestly write down on a piece of paper when I start feeling scared about investing in real estate.
I wrote a few things down and I’ll share some of them with you. I wrote down, “It doesn’t mean something has gone wrong. It’s just my brain being my brain.” And I also wrote down some alternative beliefs to anchor me. Things like “Fear means I’m doing it right. I can still take action.” Things like that.
Step five, create a plan going forward. We ended up buying our first property by the time of this recording. And so we met that one goal. But since we still have six months left, I thought it was time to work on some other real estate goals.
Even though we bought the property, there’s still work to be done on the property. We’re going to rehab it and we’re going to hopefully do a cash out refi so we can put that money into another property. I guess I made a new goal to acquire a second property within the next six months.
Now it’s your turn. I also have a bonus money audit for you here as well. Make sure you do an income tax audit as well. What I see all too often is people getting really upset when they’re slapped with a large unexpected tax bill. This should never happen. All of us should be doing mid-year tax planning, whether you just gather some information so your accountant can do it for you, or whether you do it yourself.
Simply here are the steps to do a mid-year tax audit. I don’t want anyone to ever be surprised at tax time. You need to gather all of your income so far in 2020. For most of us, that’ll be gathering pay stubs, et cetera. And then you have to make best guesses at your income for the rest of the year. I know it’s not always possible to fully know, but you have to take your best guess. And it’s better to overestimate rather than underestimate.
And then you simply plug in the data into a tax projection calculator. I’ve linked you one that I like in the show notes. You also need to get the information, not just the income, but also the taxes you’ve paid. Because if you’re a W2 employee, taxes are taken out automatically. If you’re an independent contractor, you have to save or put money aside for taxes, and you should be making quarterly payments.
Once you do this projection, you’ll get a good idea whether you are on track or not, meaning whether you need to put more money aside or whether you need to put less money aside. If you’re not on track and you have a lot of taxes you’ll owe if you don’t make changes, well, guess what? You’ve got six months to course correct.
I recommend this process for what I consider simple personal income taxes, where you have sort of standard W2 or 1099 income. If you own a business, whether it’s an S Corp or a pass through entity, I personally recommend you work with a CPA. Yeah, you can do it yourself, I guess I just feel like it’s probably not worth your time to do this, and you’re probably not an expert.
I have an accountant. I also have a bookkeeper for my business. This is something my CPA does with me every summer. I am never surprised at tax time. The goal is to “break even” or maybe owe a little. I know many of us love getting refunds. I don’t. I’d rather get the money beforehand. A good CPA will also run different scenarios based on what’s happening in your life and business and the circumstances of the world.
I hope this was useful for you. I hope that you truly do make some time to assess your money goals for the year and to create some new ones.
Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at wealthymommd.com. See you next week.
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178: Insurance: What Physicians and Entrepreneurs Need to Know with Larry Keller
I've spoken before about the types of insurance you need to protect your money. This week, I've got my agent for life and disability insurance, Larry Keller, on the show to discuss the nuances of insurance and why you need it right now, especially if you plan on having children.
Even if you’re single, if you intend to have children at some stage in your life, you need life insurance. It’s cheaper now than it ever will be in the future, and if I hadn’t been insured when I was, I’d be paying a whole lot more than I am now. We’re also talking about disability insurance, which is something most people tend to overlook, but it’s definitely worth considering, especially if you’re moving into the world of entrepreneurship.
The last thing you want is for your loved ones to have to pick up the pieces if something unexpected happens. Tune in this week to discover everything you need to know about getting properly covered. We’re discussing why even people who aren’t working need life insurance, and why disability insurance is super important for entrepreneurs.
Learn more about Live Wealthy, an exclusive coaching program designed for successful women who want to be confident.... and be rich. On Sunday, September 17th 2023, I’m holding an open house. So, if you want to get a behind-the-scenes site tour of Live Wealthy, click here!
What You'll Learn from this Episode:
- Why insurance planning might not be fun, but it is important.
- Everything you need to know about life insurance.
- Why we often overlook disability insurance, even though it's super important for entrepreneurs.
- The big problem with delaying getting life or disability insurance.
- What to consider if you’re thinking about getting disability coverage or life insurance.
- Why, even if one person in a family isn’t working or earning, they’re still worth covering with life insurance.
- What disability insurance looks like for entrepreneurs.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Follow me on Instagram
- Lawrence Keller: Website | Email
- 139: How to Protect Your Money
Disclaimer: The content in this episode is not financial advice and is provided for educational purposes. Please consult with your licensed financial advisor for professional advice. Wealthy Mom MD does not advocate for the purchase or sale of any security or investment.
Hey, if you’ve been curious about my Live Wealthy program, the money coaching program I specifically designed for women physicians, you’ll have the opportunity on September 17th, Sunday, at either 12 pm or 8 pm eastern. This is your chance to find out everything about the program.
I’m going to do a behind the scenes sit tour of the program, you’ll actually see what the program looks like. I’m going to answer all of your questions and you’ll get to meet current members who will talk about what they have accomplished since joining the program.
So, if you have been curious, if you have been thinking of joining, this is for you. To sign up go to wealthymommd.com/open, O-P-E-N. I will see you there.
Welcome to the Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.
Hey everyone, so today I have a special guest. So a few episodes ago I talked about some of the top insurances that you really need to consider and get. And so for those of you listening and you did not have adequate life insurance and maybe you were considering disability insurance, so I wanted to have Lawrence Keller, we call him Larry on the show.
So he was actually my agent for my life and disability insurance. And we’ve known each other since, apparently, since I was a resident. I almost forgot that. So he has seen my whole pivot from dermatologist to life coach full-time. So that’s kind of fun that we’ve known each other that long.
So I wanted to have him on to talk about some nuances. So we do get into the weeds a little bit, so if you get lost, don’t worry. I don’t expect you to understand everything, but there are a few things that hopefully I’ve highlighted for you during this episode.
But really, the bottom line is if you are a woman and you plan to have children, you need to get life insurance now, even if you’re single. You may choose to have children without a partner. Regardless, if you plan to have children and you’re a woman, get life insurance.
It’s pretty inexpensive for a woman, we’re talking about term life insurance. And you’ll find out why that is the case and why waiting until you become pregnant or after can increase your premium dramatically. And I’m going to share my story where if I didn’t get insured when I did, my premium would have more than doubled.
And we’re going to talk about disability insurance. And mainly I talk about it in the context of physicians and dentists et cetera, but for those of you listening who are not and if you’re a lawyer or also a coach like me or an entrepreneur, you definitely want to listen.
It’s not something we think about a lot and it’s really something you should consider because no one thinks they’re going to get disabled or die. We know that’s going to happen at some point, the dying part anyway. But we don’t really think about that. And mainly because of what I do and what I know in terms of finances, I’ve already started thinking about like, what is my business succession plan? Like, what happens if I can’t coach? What if I become disabled?
Now, I have created a coaching practice where I can easily hire other coaches to do the group coaching for me inside my program, for example. Obviously, I wouldn’t be able to coach my one on one clients and I would have to transition them to somebody else. But if you are an entrepreneur and you’re listening, it’s something you need to think about, right?
Estate planning is for your personal stuff, but then the business side has that as well. I don’t know if it’s called business estate planning. Maybe it’s called business succession planning, but something I really want you all to think about.
And this isn’t fun stuff to think about, obviously, but it’s so important. The last thing you want to happen is for your loved ones to have to pick up the pieces and not have enough money for them to move on. And I think it’s a tragedy when I see that. I hate it, it’s so awful and can be prevented by getting insured, okay? All right, listen on.
Bonnie: All right, Larry, welcome to the show.
Larry: Thank you so much. I am very glad to be here.
Bonnie: We’ve known each other for a while. I think we first met when I was just starting a blog, right? Isn’t that right?
Larry: It was even before. It was just when you were finishing residency.
Bonnie: Oh yeah, yeah.
Larry: You were in California and then making your way back to the northeast.
Bonnie: Oh my god, I kind of forgot that. So that was 2015-ish. Time flies.
Larry: That definitely sounds about right, yes.
Bonnie: Yeah. So you knew me pre-blog, and now a lot has changed in that time, obviously.
Larry: Yeah, all good stuff. All good stuff.
Bonnie: So the reason why I wanted to have you on the show is to talk a bit more about life and disability insurance. I just did an episode a few episodes ago where I just kind of went over the basics and why people should consider it. I’m always surprised, I just assume people know to get this but, as I’m sure you know, people might know but it’s just like one of those things you’re like, oh yeah, I’ll get to that. And they never get to it until it’s too late, right?
Larry: All the time.
Bonnie: So my goal is to kind of put it out there, educate people, and maybe a reminder like, hey, I haven’t gotten this yet, maybe I should do it. For example, Matt, my partner, does have a small life insurance policy that, actually, I think you did. And then we decided to get additional because he was marked as a smoker back then, which obviously totally messed up his profile or whatever you call it, even though he had quit.
But I guess since he had quit in a short amount of time, after a certain amount of time had passed we were able to get some more insurance.
Larry: Yes.
Bonnie: Yeah, but it took him like six months to fill out the paperwork because he was like, I don’t want to do this right now, yada, yada.
Larry: It’s never fun.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Larry: Someone has to lead you down the path to a certain extent. Once it gets going, it’s easy. But I mean, think about it, how many people are super motivated to go out and say, what happens if I get too sick or hurt to work? What happens if I pass away? They’re not exciting topics, but at the end of the day it goes back to offense is something that’s great to talk about, but defense is what wins championships.
So in my world, even being a certified financial planner professional, I always look at it as the defense first and then we go on the offense. And the truth of the matter is, if I wasn’t in this industry, I can’t tell you that I’d be different than any of your listeners. Like I’m going through my day to day, whether I’m an entrepreneur or whether I’m a physician, I’m dealing with stuff at home, I’m dealing with my personal life. When do you find time to fit it in?
And unless you’re really specific in terms of, I want to make sure that I get this done, it’s too easy to push off and put on the back burner, and you’re right, it just doesn’t get done.
Bonnie: Yeah. And then that includes estate planning too, right? One of the things that doesn’t seem urgent until you die.
Larry: Yeah. I mean, I always tell people when it comes to disability insurance, either you always think that it’s never going to be you and by the time you realize that you need it, you probably can’t get it. And it usually will be the result of either a diagnosis, or I say this tongue in cheek, or you got lucky and it wasn’t you, but it was a friend or a family member. And basically your takeaway from that is this could have been me, now let me get myself adequately set up.
Bonnie: Yeah. Okay, so let’s dive in. So what I wanted to talk about today is basically life and disability insurance. I think it’s pretty obvious why people need it, but maybe not. I was wondering, is there anything different about life insurance for higher-income earners?
Now, my audience is mainly women, and that’s who I coach. So I do also want to touch upon the difference between men and women. I know some of them, but I figured you know a bit more than me. So, first question, anything different for high-income earners except that we should buy more life insurance?
Larry: Yeah, I mean, if you have a high-income earner or you have a dual executive couple, or a physician and an attorney, they’re both working and if that’s the case and they’re both earning substantial incomes. If they’re not using both of their full incomes to either save or spend or meet their goals, you probably don’t necessarily need as much.
But let’s say you only had one person in a couple working and one stayed at home. A lot of times this never even gets talked about. Because they are at home and they’re not bringing in a paycheck doesn’t mean that they’re not worth anything. In fact, they’re worth a substantial amount.
So I always look at it as if I had a couple, A and B, and B is staying home and A is a powerful executive and they’re out there working. If something happens to the stay at home spouse, if the kids are young the working spouse now either has to work less, has to hire someone, they can’t work to the same extent that they used to.
So we really need to get life insurance to allow this person to work less or potentially take time off. And the only thing that’s really going to allow that is money. And if you can’t self-insure, that’s where the insurance companies come in.
Now, thankfully, as you know, for the most part term life insurance is a pretty inexpensive proposition. And the premium rates for females based on age, assuming you have a male and a female and the age is the same, the premium rates for the female is going to be significantly less. So they can buy a lot more coverage for less money, assuming that they’re approximately the same age and approximately the same health, qualifying for the same category.
Now, one negative, and I know you preach this, for females is if you’re even thinking about becoming pregnant, you want to buy your life insurance before it ever happens. And it’s not that we’re going to charge you more because you’re pregnant. We make certain assumptions as to a weight gain, as to how many pounds someone might gain during pregnancy. However, if you run into a situation where you’re diagnosed with diabetes –
Bonnie: I was.
Larry: Gestational diabetes, that can become a significant issue. And suddenly you go from, if you qualified, potentially the best underwriting classification with the lowest premium rates, to now you’re in, if the company offers it, the third best category, which is standard plus non tobacco. And if they don’t offer that category, now you’re in the standard non tobacco category.
And percentage wise, the difference from the first category to the fourth category is a doubling. And that’s sticker shock.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Larry: You know, hey, and if I don’t know and then someone says, oh, but I didn’t tell you, I had gestational diabetes, that’s why my rate is so much higher. And I’ll know that after the fact. Had I known, I wouldn’t have shown that person the best category. I would have shown them the third or the fourth best category to manage their expectations because no one likes to get a surprise like that. A pleasant surprise is okay, but not having to pay more as a result of it.
Bonnie: Yeah. So this is an interesting point, right? Because it’s already something that people kind of put off, and then to have the foresight as a woman to be like, well, I do want a family someday, especially if she’s single and not dating someone, so it’s not on the immediate horizon. They’re not thinking, I should get life insurance.
Larry: No.
Bonnie: Except for me, I got it before I even met someone, but I’m an unusual cookie, right?
Larry: Yes, absolutely. I mean, here’s three times that I’ll tell you that someone should absolutely have it. So number one is there’s a family history. So there’s a family history of diabetes, I don’t have it, but maybe my siblings do or my parents do. If it hasn’t hit me yet, I’d like to buy a policy before it hits me to lock into the lowest premium rate.
The second one is I have someone that I care about, that relies upon me. So if I’m working and I’m paying a mortgage, and my spouse is at home working and they’re not deriving any income, well, yeah, I should have life insurance to take care of them to make sure they can make the mortgage payment because they probably can’t do that on their own without me.
Another one is, if you’re an entrepreneur, or you’re a physician, or an attorney, or a dentist, and you’re going to start your own practice and you’re looking to get a loan from the bank, I will tell you no one thinks of this. As they went to the bank maybe they had a couple of competitive quotes.
And then lo and behold the bank says, we’re ready to approve your loan and you’re clear to close on such and such date. But by the way, Bonnie, before you do that, we need you to take out a life insurance policy that is going to be collaterally assigned to us. So in the event you pass away and you can’t pay this back, we get our money back.
So what does that actually mean? Let’s say my death benefit is a million dollars, the loan that I’m taking from the bank is 250,000. It just means the first 250,000 goes to the bank. The balance goes to my beneficiary. Now, as I pay off, that loan, less is going to the bank and more is going to my beneficiary. And ultimately when I pay the loan off, I should go back to the bank and have them sign a release to get rid of that collateral assignment because they are no longer owed anything.
Bonnie: That’s such a good point. So are you saying that this is pretty typical of banks to ask for a life insurance policy?
Larry: Very typical.
Bonnie: I mean, it kind of makes sense.
Larry: It makes complete sense, especially among physicians and dentists. And a lot of the times but not all of the time, the same bank might ask for disability insurance where they are either the named beneficiary or, again, we’re using a collateral assignment for some type of monthly benefit.
So if my monthly payment is $5,700, the bank will literally say, Bonnie, you have to have a disability insurance policy that’s going to pay at least $5,700 either directly to us, or you can collaterally assign that to us.
Now, a trick here is you really don’t want to use your personal individual disability insurance policy to assign that to the bank, because that’s money out of your pocket. Ideally, that’s money that is going to help you maintain your expenses, other than the loan, in the event you’re disabled. So you can buy what’s called a disability business overhead expense policy.
Bonnie: Oh yeah, I’ve heard this.
Larry: It’s really if you’re self employed or if you’re in a small practice you would actually pay this through your practice, take an income tax deduction. Because you did that, when the benefits come in they would be taxable, but because you’re using it to pay your business expenses, it’s deductible again and the net result is a wash.
You can go one step further. You could say I’m only doing this to protect the bank so I can get the loan. I don’t really care about the rest of my expenses. Certain policies you can buy a standalone business loan protection policy. As long as it’s a minimum amount for a minimum term, it’s pretty inexpensive.
So a very popular combination for someone taking out a loan in a professional capacity would be a term life insurance policy coupled with a business loan protection policy. But if I was doing real planning, I would say you should also do that, but now you should have your personal disability insurance policy, you should think about a business overhead expense policy for everything aside from the loan.
And then you can get a little bit more interesting. So let’s say I was a plastic surgeon. And these days so much is driven by social media and I had a social media person in my office, they did everything for me. And I’m the surgeon, but they’re getting me my patients. Well, if that person becomes disabled or dies, my influx or my funnel of new patients could stop pretty quickly.
When that happens, my income starts to go down. So I can literally buy a key person disability insurance policy to cover that individual, which would allow me time to find somebody else and not have a significant financial loss as a result of it. And the same thing is true, I can buy a life insurance policy.
Bonnie: Yeah, I probably learned this from you, Larry, this sounds familiar.
Larry: Yeah. There is key person disability insurance, key person life insurance, but again, that’s going to be really more for your business person that has employees. A lot of cases, let’s look at a life coach, let’s look at a solo attorney, let’s look at a physician that’s doing locums. They are the business.
Now, they may or may not have expenses. If they have an office, obviously, they have expenses. If it’s locums, most of that is going to be covered anyway. So now it’s if something happens to me and I’m too sick or hurt to work, regardless of what you do, it sounds glamorous. I need an own occupation disability insurance policy that protects me if I can’t do what I’ve been trained to do.
And that’s the way it’s always been marketed, primarily to physicians and dentists and attorneys. But at the end of the day, if you’re working for the income, you’re nothing more than a highly educated, maybe highly motivated money machine.
And if you don’t have enough assets where you could say, I don’t need to work anymore. I’ve hit financial independence. I’m good, I can self insure, you need to have some means of income coming in. And one of the most effective ways of doing this is buying disability insurance, right? So it’s so simple, but it’s so often overlooked.
Bonnie: Let’s talk about, I know in the physician sort of sphere, disability insurance is talked about a lot. But I don’t seem to hear about it in other careers.
So just to give you an example, Matt, he does get a certain amount of disability insurance through his job and he could have opted for more. We decided not to because I think it was actually, it may have been income replacement. I don’t remember, but it was good enough that we felt like we didn’t need more for him.
Larry: Yeah.
Bonnie: So why does it seem to be, I’m not even sure popular is the word, but why does it seem to be more talked about in certain professions versus the life coach industry, for example?
Larry: Yeah, I mean, it’s almost like what I’ll call the red pen theory, right? So if I called you when you were a PGY1 and I’m like, Bonnie, Larry Keller here, I’m not sure if you’re aware but all the top dermatologists, they all use a red pen, and it happens to be with this specific company. It’s not even on your mind. You’re like, that’s great. Go away, I have other things to do.
And then someone else calls you, maybe six months later, oh, Dr. Koo, I don’t know, are you using the red pen? I’ve got to tell you, the top dermatologists, they all use that red pen. It’s almost like a magnet for gaining patients. And you’re like, no, I’ve got to tell you it’s not really on my radar. Thanks for checking in.
By the time I call you again or someone else calls you again, you’re like, oh, you’re calling me about that red pen, right? I know, the top dermatologists, they all use that. That’s like a magnet for patients, right? And now you’re kind of preset for that message.
So why is it that we go after physicians and dentists and attorneys? And I’ll emphasize physicians and dentists a lot more than attorneys. In theory you guys see bad stuff happen every day, right? You’ve got your emergency medicine physician, you’ve got your anesthesiologist, you’ve got your pain management physician, you’ve got your surgeon. They’re all for the most part trying to solve problems.
So in a patient encounter, you know what to do. But by the same token, you almost have to disassociate your own mortality or morbidity from that. So in the back of your mind you’re like, I see this every single day. The dentist, they’re working in a really small area, they’re bent over, they have shoulder problems, they have neck problems.
Now, again, like I said, the time that you finally know you need it, it’s probably too late. And it doesn’t mean you’re uninsurable when the insurance company says, Bonnie, nice try, we don’t want you. But there are something called exclusion riders where the insurance company says we’re willing to insure you, but we’re not going to insure something you have already.
So let’s say you have a little numbness and tingling in your hands. And I get you a policy and I say to you, Bonnie, great news, the insurance company has approved you. We’re going to cover you for everything except for your hands, wrists or forearms.
You’re going to come back to me and you’re going to be like, really? You know what I do for a living, right? I’m like, oh yeah, you’re a dermatologist. You’re like, yeah, I use my hands, wrists and forearms all the time. And I’m trying to understand this, but you’re telling me if an accident or a sickness prevents me from using my hands, wrists or forearms, short of something like a trauma or a laceration, you’re not going to pay me? I’m going to be like, no, you got that correct. Why would I ever buy that?
And I’d be like, well, Bonnie, if you look at the medical dictionary, pull out every page that talks about a hand, wrist or forearm condition, it’s a bunch of pages. But look at what’s left, that’s a significant amount of pages. So I know you’re not happy, no one likes to be told that they are not perfect.
If it’s not a chronic condition, we might come back and tell you we’re willing to reconsider and potentially remove the exclusion rider in the future if you remain asymptomatic and treatment free. But it’s not, hey, I’m not going to take my policy because my hand, wrists and forearms aren’t covered. You’ve got all these other things to worry about too.
Bonnie: Like TBIs, like brain injuries.
Larry: Yeah, that would be absolutely covered. A lot of things you’ll find about would be like the back and the spine, right? So if I’ve got a disc herniation at L5, S1 and I did an MR. Now we’re going to say it’s something that’s degenerative. Well, degenerative means we’re never taking that exclusion rider off. And we tell you, again, laceration or fracture, you’re okay.
Really, what’s the alternative? There really isn’t much. You either accept the risk and decline the policy, or you transfer the risk and you just know that what you had before you met the insurance company is likely not going to be covered.
So you see the physician, you see the dentist, the business owner, a lot of times they make even more money. They’re entrepreneurial, but part of the way we as agents position the sale to the physician and the dentist and the attorney is, hey, this policy is own occupation.
If you’re a trial lawyer and you can’t work as a trial lawyer, you can work as an estate planning attorney. You can draft documents and you can review contracts, and we’re going to pay you your full benefit because you can’t do exactly what you were doing immediately prior to your disability due to an accident or sickness.
Entrepreneurs do so many different things, do they actually need the own occupation definition? And the answer is it depends upon how they feel. So there’s a lot of policies, and I’ll flip into the language here.
Bonnie: Also, we can talk about mine because, obviously, when I got it, it was for me being a dermatologist. And I no longer practice and I’m a life coach. I actually asked you recently, because my annual premium was coming up and every time I see that leave my bank account I’m like, ugh. It’s $7,000 a year, my premium.
Why don’t you tell the audience what you told me about keeping it versus getting rid of it?
Larry: Yeah, so the nice thing is once you are approved by the insurance company for a coverage amount, even if your income goes down due to a job change, the policy by itself is what’s known as non cancelable and guaranteed renewable. They can’t take it away, they can’t change the premium rates.
You can get rid of them, they can’t get rid of you. You can potentially make changes. You could extend the waiting period, which is the number of days that you need to be out of work, either totally or partially if you have that rider, before benefits become payable. You can reduce the benefit amount. You could potentially remove the cost of living adjustment rider which increases your benefit after disability has lasted for a year, if you have that.
But a key takeaway is that the definition of total disability is always based on the duties you are performing, not your job title, immediately prior to your disability. So if you said, hey, I bought this when I was Bonnie Koo dermatologist, had you become disabled at the time you were performing the duties of a dermatologist, full benefits would be payable.
If you then decided to become a life coach, full benefits would continue to get paid plus whatever you earn as a life coach because that was not an occupation that you had at the time of claim.
Then we look at it and we say, well, what if I have more than one job? I am a life coach, but at the same time I am a dermatologist and maybe in my mind I want to transition out of dermatology and solely work as a life coach. Then what happens? Well, now you want to have a partial or residual disability benefit, which takes away the all or nothing.
And typically, what we would say is, well, Bonnie, we get it. You had two different jobs, one was a clinician doing dermatology and dermatologic surgery. One was really working as an executive and a life coach. And if you’re disabled and you can’t do job A, but you can still do job B, now we say, well, what percentage of your income have you lost? We’re going to pay you benefits proportionate to your loss of income.
And there’s some general rules like, hey, as long as you lost 15 or 20% or more compared to your pre disability income, that’s the threshold. And again, it’s got to be due to an accident or a sickness, not that I just feel like I’m changing my job duties around. We’ll tell you, we guarantee we’re not going to give you less than half of your benefit for the first six or the first 12 months of a claim.
If you lose more, we’ll give you more. And if you lose so much, more than 75% or 80%, we’ll give you everything for that month, because really how much are you doing if you’ve lost that much?
Now, for your clinician audience, which will be MDs or DOs, Berkshire, which is a guardian company, about five years ago they introduced a unique definition. And they call this the enhanced medical specialty definition.
So let’s go back to our same example. I’m Dr. Bonnie Koo dermatologist, but at the same time I’m Dr. Bonnie Koo life coach. And you’re disabled at a point where more than 50% of your income is derived from hands-on patient care, where you’re interfacing with a patient to diagnose and treat them.
Well, initially, we would say, well, she’s got two jobs. She can’t do one, she can still do the other. She’s not totally disabled, she’s partially disabled. But with this definition, Guardian says wait a second, we’re going to take a step back. If more than 50% of her income was derived from hands-on patient care prior to her disability, we’re going to deem her totally disabled, pay her her full benefit because she can no longer do hands-on patient care.
Now you can balloon up your life coach practice, even to the point that you no longer have a loss of income. And rather than getting a partial benefit, Guardian would give you your full benefit.
The same thing is true of a surgeon. So we would say, hey, you know what? You’ve got surgical duties, you may do chart reviews, but if at the time of disability more than 50% of your income was derived from invasive or surgical procedures, and typically invasive or surgical procedures involves making an incision that’s routinely done by you, typically involves anesthesia and respiratory assistance, and you can no longer do those procedures, we’ll call you totally disabled and you’ll get your full benefit.
So a good example might be, yeah, let’s go for it. An orthopedic surgeon that also has a large IME practice. And it happens to be more than 50% of their income.
Bonnie: What’s IME?
Larry: Independent medical exams. So they’re just doing exams for insurance companies, checking out the patient and writing up their findings. But it’s not doing surgery. And something happens to them and maybe they are now diagnosed with an essential tremor. They can’t do surgery anymore. If they had two jobs, that of a surgeon and that of an IME physician, we would say, you had two jobs, you can’t do the surgery, we’ll pay you partial benefits.
But under Guardian’s definition they would say, hey, if more than 50% of your income was derived from invasive or surgical procedures, you could still do the IME work, you can do that 100% of the time now, and we’ll still give you your full disability insurance benefit rather than a total benefit.
Bonnie: Okay. Just using me as an example. So I have a policy through Principal, if I can’t work as a dermatologist I will get my full benefit, even if I am a successful life coach and able to make money?
Larry: Correct.
Bonnie: So I’ll still get my full benefit with my current own occupation. And it sounds like there are different nuances in terms of what policies will pay you based on the type of insurance. I’m not going to summarize everything we just talked about.
Larry: Yes.
Bonnie: Now, let’s talk about my case right now, because I haven’t practiced medicine in, oh my god, it’s going to be three years soon. I stopped during the pandemic, which was early 2020. I didn’t realize it was that long. And I am 100% a life coach/entrepreneur. So what does my insurance cover now?
Larry: Now you’re going to be covered as a life coach and entrepreneur. So the insurance company is always going to say it doesn’t matter what you were doing when you bought it, we use that to determine your occupational classification, which impacts your premium rates. But the definition of total disability is always based on what you were doing immediately prior to your disability.
So let’s say, we’ll go out on a limb, you bought this when you were a dermatologist, that’s all that you were doing. You’re not disabled, but you say, you know what, I’m done with dermatology. I want to become a professional chef. I’m going to be the next Giada. And we would never insure you as a professional chef.
Bonnie: Really? Why?
Larry: No guaranteed salary.
Bonnie: Oh, I see, I see.
Larry: You’re playing with knives. But because you bought your policy as a dermatologist, you keep all the same terms, you keep the same benefits, you’re still in your own occupation.
Now, if you’re disabled, and you can’t work as a professional chef, assuming that’s what you were doing immediately prior to your disability, full benefits. If you could somehow go back to clinical dermatology, that income would not be used to reduce your benefit in any way, shape, or form.
Bonnie: I’m just guessing insurance policies had these things in place because most physicians probably didn’t change their occupation, right?
Larry: No, most did not. So let’s say you were a straight up entrepreneur. And you said I know that I need disability insurance, but I don’t really have any special physical skills. I’ve got mental skills, but my job is pretty basic. I meet with people and I talk. And if I can’t do that, really, what else am I going to be able to do?
So you can elect a lesser definition. So own occupation will read something like this, you’ll be deemed totally disabled if you’re unable to perform the material and substantial duties of your occupation. And the material substantial duties are just the things that you do day in and day out that really can’t be taken out of your occupation.
Bonnie: Like me talking. If I can’t talk, I can’t coach.
Larry: Yeah, if you can’t talk, you’re done. In fact, there’s another provision that says if you lose your ability to speak, you’re done. And if you can’t get that back, we usually say loss of sight in both eyes, hearing in both ears, arm and a leg, both arms, both legs, one hand and one foot, we’re going to presume that you’re disabled and it doesn’t matter what else you do.
If you can be a life coach typing stuff out on a computer and never speaking and making more money because people feel bad for you, it doesn’t matter, full benefits are going to be payable. So the first one is the own occupation, one that says if you can’t do the material and substantial duties of your occupation period, you’re totally disabled, full benefits.
Bonnie: How are they determining what the material and substantial, because I feel like for medicine it’s probably pretty outlined. But are they going to know what the material and substantial duties of a life coach/entrepreneur are?
Larry: You’re going to tell them that.
Bonnie: But why would they just believe what I say? I’m just curious.
Larry: Yeah, well, you’re going to have your billing for your clients. So you’re going to show them that and you’re going to say, hey, my typical day is I get up at whatever, on a good day I go to the gym. I hit my computer, 7:30 or 8:00 I start responding to emails. I’ve got group coaching. I’ve got individual coaching. And now if you look at my schedule, I have this accident or sickness, I’m under the care of a physician, my physician and I have had a discussion of what I can or what I cannot do.
If I can still work in a similar capacity but I have to reduce my hours and now I’m coaching fewer people, that means I’m going to bill less. That means my income is going to go down. Maybe I’m not totally disabled, because I’m doing some but not all of my job duties. Or I could do them all, I just can’t do it for the same number of hours.
So that’s where that residual or the partial disability benefit comes in. So if you look at it as an entrepreneur, you might say I don’t really need an own occupation policy that’s going to allow me to be disabled as a life coach and go do something else. That’s probably not going to happen. I don’t want to pay for that.
So you might opt for a lesser definition that we call a modified own occupation, or it’s also known as a loss of earnings policy. The only difference is it’ll say, Bonnie, we’ll call you totally disabled if you’re unable to perform the material and substantial duties of your occupation and you are not gainfully employed.
So if you can’t work as a life coach and you choose not to do anything else, now you’re not gainfully employed, you get everything. If you choose to work and you say, well, I can’t be a life coach for whatever reason, and this is substantiated in my medical records, but I’m going to do something else, now you are actively employed. If your policy doesn’t have a residual or partial benefit to make up for loss of income, you would literally get no benefits at all.
So the best type of policy is going to have an own occupation definition that allows you to work in another occupation and still get your full benefit. Or if you’re an entrepreneur and you say, I just don’t need that, my job is pretty basic, then you want to make sure that your policy has a loss of earnings definition that’s going to cover you if you choose not to work and you can’t do what you were doing. And it’ll pay you benefits proportionate to your loss if you return to work in your job or in another job at a lesser capacity.
Now, a big one and, again, this is getting into the weeds. But entrepreneurs don’t think about this. So let’s say you were out of work for a year. Couldn’t work as a life coach, you really couldn’t do much at all. Well, these people are probably going to go to someone else.
And they’re going to say, Bonnie, I love you but there’s no way I’m taking a hiatus for a year, and I don’t even know if you’re ever going to come back. In the meantime, you’ve been so great and my coaching experience has had such a positive impact on my life, I’ve got to go find someone else.
So they do that. Thankfully, you recover. You come back to your practice, I mean, it’s just you. You send out an email and letters to your coaching clients about your triumphant return. You’re thrilled about this. And you don’t get a lot of response. So then you send up a follow-up email, hey, I just want to let you know I’m back. When can we schedule your session?
And now they know that you’re following up so they say, I guess I’ve got to tell her something. Bonnie, thanks so much. You’re awesome. My life changed so much as a result of you being my coach, but in the interim I’ve met someone else. And now your heart sinks.
Bonnie: I’ve met someone else, it just sounds funny.
Larry: And you’re like, you know what? It’s going to take me time to go get new clients. So I’m not sick physically. In fact, my doctor says I can work as many hours as I want, I can do everything I used to do. I just don’t have any money because my former coaching clients have all left.
And, in fact, even referrals that I was getting from my existing clients and my other centers of influence that were giving me clients, that’s all kind of dried up. So I’m about as well rested as I’ve been. I feel fantastic. I’m making no money.
Well, ideally, your policy should have a recovery benefit. Very often this is built into the residual rider and it says if you were totally disabled and now you’re going back to work and you are experiencing a loss of income due to your prior disability, we are going to continue to pay you proportionately the same way we did when you were working on a limited basis.
And I see a lot of people will miss that in their policies, especially if it’s something that’s optional. So a great example is specific to Principal, and they’re going to be changing their policy next year.
But specific to Principal in the state of California you can buy a recovery benefit, it’s an option. The longest recovery benefit is three years. If you’re like, hey, you know what? Three years isn’t going to cut it, if I go down at my prime it could take me 10 years to get back to the income level I was at before, then I would say don’t buy that policy. Look for one that’s got an unlimited recovery benefit. So there’s definitely some nuances.
Bonnie: Basically they should call you and talk about their situation with you.
Larry: They should call someone.
Bonnie: There’s just so many nuances. I know the basic ones that everyone should basically have. I think this is such a great discussion. I know sometimes it can be dry if this is new to everyone. But now that I’ve been a coach for a while, and solely a coach, a lot of my friends are entrepreneurs and coaches.
Some of them actually are physicians who became coaches, and I don’t even know if they had a policy in place before. But they don’t think about this. And no one thinks they’re going to become disabled. Now, we talked about earlier how life insurance is less expensive for women, but disability insurance, it flips.
Larry: Yes.
Bonnie: So that’s an important point.
Larry: There is a potential workaround to this. And this is what’s known as a gender neutral or a unisex rate structure. Now, it doesn’t mean you have to identify differently than what you are. I had a conversation and the person said, but this is what I am. I’m like, this is the rate structure. We’re still saying that you are your gender, it doesn’t matter.
And what this is, it’s kind of a hybrid rate between the male and the female.
Bonnie: I think that’s what I got. I think I had the unisex policy.
Larry: Yes, that’s exactly what you’ve got. And typically it’s the result of an employer/employee relationship. And it doesn’t mean you’re in a big practice. So currently, some of the companies, let’s just take a very small law firm, you have one female attorney and you’ve got one paralegal, and you’ve got two people just in the office doing general administrative duties.
Well, I might say to the attorney, look, if you buy a policy for yourself, it’s going to be X dollars. But if you buy a policy for yourself and two other employees that work for your practice, not as independent contractors, they’re W2 employees, and you can offer it to them, or you can pay for it for them. And it’s probably better if you pay for it for them.
Your policy can be what I’ll call the real policy, maximum benefits, benefits to age 65. And for the other people, currently, it says the premium prior to a discount only needs to be $200 annually.
So here you are, I’ll make it up, your premium is a couple thousands dollars a year, and now you can buy two policies for two out of your three employees. If you want you can do all three, and it’s $200 a year. You’re going to pay it through your business, at least there, so that’s going to be income tax deductible. And now your premium goes down by 40 to 50%.
I would take that deal all day, every single day. If the employees leave, you don’t have to continue their policies. You can say to them, hey, if you want, I was paying for this policy for you. If you want to continue it, you can. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to. You still retain your unisex rate and your discount.
Now for physicians, they don’t really do that so much anymore. But for entrepreneurs and attorneys and executives that’s available. You might also find I’m in a big company and if I work for a very large company and it’s not medical, you could probably get a unisex rate there as well. And it might even exist and you don’t even need to do anything to do it.
So, like you said, what does this all mean? It doesn’t mean anyone has to work with me, it just means find someone that’s qualified that does this every single day because I can tell you if a discount exists, I will find it. If there is a way to make a discount to reduce costs, I will find it.
Unlike medicine, unlike coaching, where you can charge different amounts based on your experience and people are either going to pay it or they’re not going to pay it. And someone might say to you, well, Dr. Koo, your rates are really high. And you could say, I’m a certified life coach for physicians and I’m a physician myself. Yeah, my rates are high because I’m really good at what I do and I know exactly what you’re going through.
In my world, there is no difference in the cost of a policy if you go to a newly minted insurance agent or an experienced insurance agent. The rates are the rates. Other than that, the only way one person can beat somebody out is to either know of or have access to a discount that the other person doesn’t. Otherwise, if we quote the policy the same way with the same discounts or no discount, the premium rate is going to be the same.
It’s kind of like the iPhone, it is what it is. So I look at it as like, well, why would I go to someone that’s inexperienced, when I can go to someone that is experienced and it’s not going to cost me any more. And my overall experience as a potential client is probably going to be a lot better. And it’s not that they don’t know what they’re doing, but whether it’s medicine or coaching, the one thing that can’t be replicated is experience.
Bonnie: 100%. All right, so I know we covered a lot. So for those of you listening, in case you’re like, this all sounds like stuff I need. I have no idea what Larry just said, which is totally fine.
Larry: Totally fine.
Larry: Larry, how can people reach you?
Larry: So you can always email me. I will tell you, if I am awake I will probably respond to you within a couple of minutes.
Bonnie: This is true, by the way.
Larry: Yeah, unless you’re emailing me at like three o’clock in the morning and I’m fast asleep. So it’s L Keller, L-K-E-L-L-E-R, @physician, no S on the end, financialservices.com. I am absolutely keenly aware that not all of my clients need to be physicians. The planning is the same, the process is the same. You can always call 516-677-6211.
If you’ve received quotes and you’re trying to figure out, is what I’m getting what I should be buying? Are there ways I can tweak the quote to better meet my individual needs and goals and budget? Just use me as a resource. That’s what I’m here for. Thankfully, when you’re in the industry for a long time, it’s different than being a hand surgeon when you start, right?
When you’re a hand surgeon in the beginning of your career, it’s anything you can get your hands on. And then as time goes on, you’re like, I’m not good at that, I’m excellent at this. This is what I like, this is what I’m good at, this is where I’m going to use my efforts and my talents.
Bonnie: Perfect. And then we’ll have your information in the show notes. Click on the link in the podcast and it’ll go to my website and the information will all be there. So I think it’s just important to note that they don’t have to be a physician to work with you. So my entrepreneur friends can call you and you can help them.
Larry: Yes, I absolutely can help the entrepreneur friends. They’ll be looking for, for the most part, same things, same discounts, same process, no problem at all.
Bonnie: Yeah, a lot of my entrepreneur friends do have employees, so I think that, I don’t want to call it group, but basically some kind of group discount is going to be available to them.
Larry: Yeah, the technical term is we’ll go multi-life.
Bonnie: Multi-life, I know there’s so many terms here.
Larry: Yeah.
Bonnie: Okay, is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you think they need to know?
Larry: I would say, this is on the physician side, self-prescribing is not good. Prescribing for your spouse is not good. Part of the underwriting process is answering medical questions, and behind the scenes the insurance companies do a prescription drug check.
Bonnie: I was shocked at how much they knew about me. They were like, why don’t you take Cipro and blah, blah, blah? I’m like, I don’t remember. And then I remember on one of my annual physicals they noted a mole. And they didn’t say anything was wrong about it but they were like there was a mole, you need to go to a dermatologist and get a skin check.
And being Korean and my risk of skin cancer is extremely low, especially since I didn’t grow up as a farmer or surfer being in the sun all day. So I just thought it was hysterical, but at least I was a dermatologist so it was very easy to get that done during my office hours.
But yeah, they really sift through your history with a fine tooth comb.
Larry: Yes. So we do our prescription drug check, that’s routine. We will routinely request medical records. If your physician or practitioner tells you that you need to get something done and you don’t get it done, we’re going to want to make sure that that is done before we’ll consider you for insurance. If you were recommended to get a colonoscopy and you just haven’t gotten around to it, we’re going to want to make sure that you do get the colonoscopy and we see those results.
If you plan on taking up any hazardous activities, so I would say deep scuba diving, jumping out of planes, rock climbing, mountain climbing, racing motocross on a track, you want to make sure that you buy your policy before you partake, or almost think about partaking in any of these things.
Because once you have your policy, again, I’ll use the technical term, it’s non cancelable, guaranteed renewable. We can’t take it away. We can’t make any changes. You can get rid of us, we can’t get rid of you.
So you want to make sure that once you have your policy, you can increase your benefit, that’s going to be contractual, as your income rises, if you qualify to have an increase option rider on there. But don’t give the insurance companies a reason to put on exclusion riders or limit coverage if you do not have to.
And here’s another big one. Someone is in the middle of underwriting, so what does this mean? They applied for their disability insurance, they applied for their life insurance, everything is moving along. We’re doing the prescription drug check, we’re getting medical records. And lo and behold, in the middle of this process someone decides to go get a sleep study. Well, no good can come of that.
If you’re diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea and you’re given a CPAP prescription, we’re not going to insure you anytime soon. So make sure that you kind of have your house in order before you start seeking out help, or I was just curious, I’m going to go see someone. Just make sure that once that process starts, let things simmer down, get your approval, put your policy in effect and then you can go seek physicians out.
Bonnie: And go skydiving or rock climbing.
Larry: Yeah, do all that stuff. Because they’ll ask you if you intend to do it, so, obviously, you want to be truthful on your application. But if you have no intention of doing it and five years later you wake up and you’re like you know what would be pretty cool? I’m turning X number of years old and I’d like to jump out of a plane. Maybe I’ll survive, maybe I won’t, but I’ll give it a shot. That’s okay, at least you have your policy locked in.
Bonnie: That’s hysterical. I have gone skydiving once. And I actually think, I don’t remember, I feel like they asked me that. And I did say I did and then they were like, do you ever intend to do it again? I was like, absolutely not. I don’t remember, it’s been so long ago it’s vague.
Larry: Yeah, then you’re okay. If you told them I plan on doing it March 15th for the Ides of March celebration and you’re applying in January, they’re either going to exclude for that or they might even tell you we’re going to wait and you can apply after you do that.
With disability, if it’s something they can exclude for, they’ll do it. Then once you do it, you survive, you tell them you’re not doing it again and they would potentially remove that exclusion rider.
Bonnie: That’s funny. All right, so I think what I really want to sum up here is if you’re a woman, get life insurance if you’re thinking about getting pregnant. So I remember I got a million dollars before I even had a partner. And then once I did and knew that I wanted to become pregnant, I got another million, I forget exactly what I got. And thank God I did because I did develop gestational diabetes.
Larry: Yeah, so now your rates are looking stellar. Like you got a sale price. It is a big, big difference. And then disability insurance, again, buy it before you become pregnant because if you buy it when you are pregnant, we’ll insure you, but we’re not going to cover pregnancy or complications of pregnancy.
If you have no complications and you deliver and then you go back to work, the companies vary here, 30 days or 90 days or more with no restrictions, then we’ll remove that exclusion rider for future pregnancies. But, again, if you don’t have to have the exclusion rider, it’s better to not have it at all rather than having it and trying to remove it. Not that having it and removing it is a difficult process, but why have to go through more work?
Bonnie: Exactly. And then one thing I wanted to iterate in case people don’t know is that the younger you are, the cheaper these policies are. So basically, don’t wait until – Well just don’t wait because you are the youngest you’re going to be today.
Larry: The youngest and the healthiest you’re going to be. I mean, when someone calls me and they’re my age and they’ve been a physician for a very long time, I almost say, where have you been all my life? You almost have to go out of your way to avoid people like me to not have coverage by the time you’re in your mid 40s or early 50s. And physicians and dentists, you guys are marketed to so early in your careers that I can tell you it all goes back to by the time you know you need it, it’s probably too late.
I’ve had three surgeons recently, a little bit younger than me, that reached out, none of them are insurable. One was an issue with Covid and continued fatigue. Another one has positive markers for arthritis. So do your homework, no one’s going to force you to do anything. Do your homework, get your quotes, figure out what you want or need. And then from there, you decide how you want to move forward.
And anything, whether it’s disability insurance or life insurance, to a certain extent, is customizable based on your individual needs and goals and budget and your philosophy.
Bonnie: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being here and being an incredible resource. Again, we’ll link in the show notes how people can reach out to you if they want to have a conversation or want their policy that they’re about to get reviewed to get an expert set of eyes, because Larry has been in this industry for quite a few decades.
Larry: Yeah, 32 years, right out of college. So, in my mind I’m still young, maybe some days not so much when I look in the mirror. But yeah, thankfully I started early, so I’m still young with a lot of experience behind me.
Bonnie: Yeah. All right, well thank you so much for your time.
Larry: Thank you for your time, as usual. Enjoy the afternoon and we will chat again.
Bonnie: Yeah.
All right, due to some legal stuff I have to read you some disclosures for Lawrence Keller, you totally can just skip over this but legally I have to say these things. Okay, this material is intended for general public use. By providing this content Park Avenue Securities LLC and your financial representative are not undertaking to provide investment advice or make a recommendation for a specific individual or situation or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity.
Lawrence B. Keller is a registered representative and financial advisor of Park Avenue Securities LLC PASOSG:355 Lexington Avenue ninth floor New York, New York 10017. 212-541-8800. Securities products and advisory services are offered through PAS, member of FINRA SIPC.
Financial representative The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, otherwise known as Guardian, New York, New York. PAS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian. Physician Financial Services is not an affiliate or subsidiary of PAS or guardian. AR insurance license number 1057229, California Insurance license number 0C37340 2002-148357 expires on 12/2024. Thank you for listening.
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177: 4 Ways to Save and Invest for Your Children’s Future
How can you use your money to set your kids up for the future? Today’s episode is all about how you can save and invest for your family if that’s something you can afford to do. Saving to pay for your kid’s college tuition is a wonderful gift, but lesson number one here is not to start saving and investing for your kids at the expense of your own financial planning.
If you’re looking for a simple way to save for or invest in your child’s future, I’ve got you covered in today’s episode. I’ve created a relatively easy system around saving for my son’s college, and I’m sharing my tips with you today.
Tune in this week to discover four ways you can start saving for your child’s future. I’m discussing your best options for saving money on taxes, helping your money grow, and giving you all the considerations we need to make when we’re investing and saving for our kids.
Learn more about Live Wealthy, an exclusive coaching program designed for successful women who want to be confident.... and be rich.
What You'll Learn from this Episode:
- Your options for banking products when saving for your kid’s education.
- How to save and invest for your child’s college tuition without paying taxes on the returns.
- Extra state-specific considerations that could save you money.
- The details of my specific savings and investment plan for my son’s college tuition.
- An amazing way for entrepreneurs to save on taxes by employing their kids.
- Some common mistakes to avoid that will slow the growth of your money.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Follow me on Instagram
- Saving for College – TD Ameritrade
- Coverdell Education Savings Account
- 14: Demystifying All Things Roth
- 22: The Misunderstood Gift Tax
Disclaimer: The content in this episode is not financial advice and is provided for educational purposes. Please consult with your licensed financial advisor for professional advice. Wealthy Mom MD does not advocate for the purchase or sale of any security or investment.
Welcome to the Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.
Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode. I am back from almost a month of traveling. I was in Paris for 10 days. And as soon as I came back we, the family, went away for about five days. We went up to Boston, visited my sister-in-law and some friends who live up there. And now, I guess I’m getting ready for my son to start kindergarten, which is in a few weeks.
And I will tell you, before I had kids when I would hear about parents feeling nervous about kindergarten, I’d be like, really? It’s only kindergarten. And now that I’m a parent, I get it. And anyone who’s listening who’s a parent, I think we can all relate that we thought we were better parents before we were parents. It’s kind of funny and ironic. But anyway, that’s where we are.
So yes, I am feeling nervous and excited. We enrolled Jack in a totally different type of school. It’s an outdoor program. I’ve had to buy all this gear that I never even heard of. I’m not even talking about going to REI, like brands that I’ve literally never heard of.
And it makes sense that there are clothing lines specifically for kids who are outdoors every day, because obviously they’re going to go through a lot of wear and tear. And so it’s been interesting and expensive.
And so I’ve been looking for hand-me-downs because I don’t really want to pay that much, considering I’m going to have to get multiple rain pants for Jack because we might lose some and some might just get beyond repair, right? So that’s what’s going on over here.
All right, so today I wanted to, speaking of kids, talk a bit about what’s available for your kids in terms of saving and investing money for them. So the big caveat here is that do not do this at the expense of your own financial life or retirement. Meaning, so here’s the thing, many of the clients I work with are thinking about this mainly in the context of paying for college.
And I think it’s a wonderful gift to be able to pay for your kids’ college and maybe even graduate school. But please do not do this at the expense of your financial independence because there’s a saying, and it’s true, they can always take out loans for school, there is no such thing as a retirement loan, okay?
So again, this is a nice to have, a wonderful thing to do for your kids. And again, do not do this at the expense of your own retirement. Okay, now that said, I do some of these things and so I’ll tell you a bit about my experience and sort of the ease around doing it. So I’m going to go over four different ways to do this.
So the first thing is opening up a regular brokerage account for your kids. Now, many of you listening probably have a regular taxable brokerage account for yourself. And in case you’re not sure what that means, it just means a regular account where you invest in stocks, et cetera that’s not inside a tax protected account like a 401K or 403B or a Roth IRA or regular IRA.
So you can do this for your kids. Now, they have different names because they’re basically a custodial account, meaning that you are the custodian. You have full control over the account until your child becomes of age. It’s not necessarily 18, it actually depends on the state. So some states it’s like 21, sometimes it’s 22, it just depends. But let’s just use 21 as an example, and you’ll have to look up the rules for each state.
Now, the account has an acronym. It can be called a UTMA or a UGMA, and that’s state specific but they’re basically the same thing. It stands for, actually I forget. Something like a uniform trust minors account, but basically a brokerage account for kids.
Now, I have one for Jack and ours is at TD Ameritrade, you can open it wherever you want. And so the common custodians, when I say custodian this time, that means in the context of like the bank, right, is TD Ameritrade. Although at the time of this recording, actually, it’s probably going to be Charles Schwab. Charles Schwab bought TD Ameritrade and I keep getting notifications to open my Charles Schwab account because it’s all getting transferred there.
So let’s just say Charles Schwab, Vanguard, Fidelity, I’m pretty sure they all allow you to do this. So you just open an account, it’s pretty simple. Enter a few things, enter their information, their meaning the kid. And what I’ve been doing is I haven’t really been contributing much of my own money. Maybe a little bit, I can’t remember, Jack is almost six now.
But whenever he gets money gifts, and grandparents tend to be, at least ours are pretty generous with their birthday gifts. So I just literally just directly deposited that money into his account. And what’s great is I can literally do a mobile check deposit like you can for your regular checking account. So I’ve just been doing that and investing it on Jack’s behalf.
Again, when he becomes of age, let’s say 21, he gets full control over it legally. I guess technically you can just tell them they don’t have it, but I don’t know why you would do that. So that’s what we have for him. That’s number one.
The second thing you could do is the typical sort of college accounts you may have heard of, 529s. And there’s something called a Coverdell ESA as well, I’m going to talk about both of them. So these are tax protected accounts. I want you to think about them as a Roth IRA specifically for education and related qualified expenses.
I probably should have talked about the Roth IRA first since I’m comparing this to a Roth IRA, but that’s okay. So, a Roth IRA is you put after tax money in and then it grows tax free. And then when you take out the money, it’s tax free. So you only pay taxes on the money once, your earned income.
Okay, so a 529 and Coverdell ESA is basically a Roth IRA for education. So you contribute money to your 529, I’ll explain more about what I mean by what these accounts are. You invest it, typically there’s pretty much a limited list of funds. And hopefully 10, 20 years later you have a nice sizable amount there and then you can withdraw the money to pay for your kid’s college.
Now, 529 plans are state specific. And what I mean by that is, let’s say you’re like, okay, I want to open up a 529 for my kid, how do I open one? You don’t just go to Charles Schwab or TD Ameritrade like I was mentioning before, you open up one through a state. It does not have to be the one in your state, which I know can be confusing. Like, okay, why does every state have one?
It’s because some states will give you a little bit of a tax break if you open one, but each state has different rules. So, for example, this may have changed because this information is a few years old, but you just look at the rules for your state.
So when I lived in Pennsylvania for a minute, they also offered a tax deduction, it was very minor, like in the scheme of things it’s like you’re saving 300 bucks, right? But still, hey, $300 in taxes you don’t have to pay, all the better, right?
They allowed you to use any state 529. But some states will say we will only give you the tax deduction if you use our state 529, okay? Now, every state has different types of funds you can invest in. So if you live in a state that does not give a tax break, or you live in a state with no income tax so it doesn’t matter anyway, then I would say here are the sort of top most popular 529s, and I’ll tell you why in a second.
So the New York one is pretty popular, Nevada and Utah. And the reason why is that – So New York, that’s actually where Jack’s 529 is. They invest in Vanguard funds and the expense ratios for the funds are pretty low.
Nevada also uses Vanguard, and at the time of this recording at least, when you open one through Nevada, it actually will show up on your Vanguard account. So if you already have Vanguard accounts, like for example I have a brokerage and a Roth IRA at Vanguard, when I log into that I will see the 529 there. Versus with Jack, even though they’re invested with Vanguard funds, I have to log into the specific New York 529 account.
Now, Utah is popular because I believe they also offer Vanguard but they also offer access to, and I can’t remember, the name escapes me, but certain funds that otherwise are only available through a financial advisor. I believe the name is called dimensional funds, but I don’t want you to get too confused or overwhelmed about which state to use.
So here’s the algorithm that I’m going to recommend to really simplify this process for you. So, first of all, look up does your state offer a state income tax deduction? If the answer is yes, what are the rules? Do you have to use that state’s plan? If the answer is yes, then use that state’s plan. Simple, right?
Okay, if you do get a state income tax deduction but they don’t care where you have it, then your choices are New York, Utah or Nevada. If you already have Vanguard accounts in your name, just open the Nevada one. I’m all for simplicity and it’s simpler if that account is just automatically on your Vanguard dashboard, right? It’s one less account to log into.
And if you don’t have a Vanguard account, then just pick. Just do literally eeny, meeny, miney moe. It really doesn’t matter, okay?
Now, if your state does not offer a state income tax deduction, I would, again, pick one of those three, Utah, Nevada, New York. Again, it doesn’t matter. Just literally pick one, it doesn’t matter. Okay, so that’s sort of the algorithm for that.
Now, what is a Coverdell ESA? So the Coverdell ESA, or ESA for short, I think it stands for educational savings account. It was around before 529s were invented and it’s basically similar, but the contribution limits are very, very low.
Now, I wasn’t even going to mention a Coverdell ESA because there’s really no point in opening one because of some recent changes with the 529, but I just wanted to mention it for completeness. But very low contributions, like 2 or $3,000 a year. There are income limits.
So I just want to mention it just so I covered everything, but I would just say forget about it. Now, I have one for Jack, we don’t contribute to it any longer. I’m not even going to talk about it now.
Back to the 529. Now, 529s are very attractive because, like I said, you put money in, it grows tax free and as long as you withdraw it for a qualified educational institution and qualified expenses, it is withdrawn tax free. And so that’s very attractive, right? So if you start a 529 very early, it has 18 plus years to grow, right?
And here’s a fun fact, you can actually open one before they’re born, it would just be in your name as if you’re opening your own 529. So if you’re someone who really likes to plan ahead, if you’re listening and you don’t have kids but you know you’re going to, you can open one in your name. I actually did that, I think a year before Jack was born I think because New York gave a tax deduction. And the taxes in New York are so high, so I was like, why not? It wasn’t a lot, but I opened one.
And here’s what I want to say about what if your child does not go to college, right, because then you have all this money socked away. Because that’s a question that I get a lot.
Number one is you can change the name of the beneficiary. So let’s say your kid ends up not going to college or for some reason it is not used, you can give it to a niece or another family member, or literally anyone. So that’s an option. So basically, you’re gifting it to somebody else.
You could also use it. Now, I’m not suggesting you’re going to go back to college or grad school just to use it, but there are some interesting institutions where you can use it at. Let me give you a few examples.
So there’s actually a website where you can search eligible institutions. But just a quick search here, like you can go to culinary school, for example, if you wanted to learn how to cook. And there are some study abroad programs.
And your kid may not go to college, but you might be having him go to private school, like K through 12. Now, you can use it for that. I would say when Jack was born, that actually wasn’t the case. They just added that pretty recently. But most people would advise against doing that because then the money is not going to really grow, right? And so it doesn’t really make sense to put after tax money and use it for K.
I’m not saying that you should never use it for private, like a secondary school. But maybe wait until they’re in high school, right? I think that just makes sense.
Now, what are the contribution limits for a 529? Now, the contribution limits are basically the gift tax limit. And for 2023, the limit is $17,000. Now, many people get really confused about the gift tax, and it makes sense because, first of all, the name makes it sound like the recipient pays a tax. But that’s actually not true.
I have a whole podcast episode on that, episode 22. So we will link that in the show notes. But if you have a podcast app, just search for gift tax and you will find the podcast episode. I don’t want to spend too much time on it. But basically, the annual contribution limit for a 529 is the gift tax limit of $17,000.
Now, there’s a special law, or provision rather, that you can actually front load a 529 five years at a time. So 17,000 times five. So that comes out to $85,000. Now, even better, if you’re married you and your spouse can actually both do that. So you could potentially pop in $170,000.
Now, if you are in a place where you can do this, amazing. But if you’re not, don’t worry about it. But let’s just say as soon as your child is born, you front load that account with $170,000 and let it grow for, let’s just say 18 years. In fact, I’m going to just do a quick calculation here just to illustrate how much it could be.
And what I’m doing here is just using a simple compound interest calculator. And I made some assumptions. I basically said years to grow 18. The interest rate of 10% compound interest. Now that’s going to grow to some obscene amount, like a million dollars, and obviously you probably hopefully do not need that for your child’s education. And again, this is going to be for, I guess, K through 12, college and graduate school.
So actually, potentially, if your kid goes to private school through graduate school, you could potentially be spending a million dollars. But most of us probably aren’t going to do that.
Now, this special rule where, again, I said you can front load five years of the gift tax limit, so at the time of this podcast in 2023 the gift tax limit is $17,000, times five. Now, what that also means is that you can’t contribute again to the 529 for another five years. But you probably wouldn’t want to. Plus there are actual contribution limits.
And so this is a state by state thing, so some states won’t let you contribute beyond, let’s say 200k. But they typically range between around 200 to 500k in terms of contributions, which means the money you put in, not the total amount in the account. Most parents I know that contribute to 529s have not front loaded, or maybe they just front loaded a little and they make annual contributions here or there.
The great thing about 529s is that you can have family members also contribute. So grandparents, uncles and aunts, that could be a great way for them to gift money to the child. Jack gets invited to birthday parties, I have not seen any parent give out this link, like, hey, we would appreciate a contribution to the 529, but I guess you could do that too, technically.
And I believe there are a few credit cards where, I think it might be Fidelity, whatever you charge, there’s a cashback that goes into the 529. But I don’t recommend that because I think credit card points are way more valuable.
Okay, let me just summarize because I know I threw a lot of information at you just now. Okay, I want you to think about a 529 plan, an educational account for your kid, as a Roth IRA for your child. You put taxed money in, it grows tax-free. And when you withdraw it to use for qualified educational expenses, tuition and there’s some other things on the list, and it has to be at a qualified institution that the IRS recognizes, then you can withdraw it tax-free.
And if you contribute early on, like when your child is born, especially if you front load it, it can grow to a very sizable amount by the time you need it for college. You can use it for private school K through 12, but generally speaking, I probably wouldn’t recommend doing this because then you’re just drawing on the money that could grow for college. And let’s just face it, college expenses are insane. Like totally insane.
I can’t even imagine what it’s going to cost for Jack. When I went to medical school, and I went to a private school, I went to Columbia, the tuition was $40,000 for medical school. College tuitions are insane now. Actually, I was having lunch with a friend and she told me that her kid’s private school college is $80,000 of tuition a year. To me, that’s insane. I don’t even think Columbia is at that amount right now.
But I do think we’re going to have a little reckoning, hopefully a big reckoning with the amount colleges pay. I think it’s crazy. And so I just can’t imagine it’s going to keep increasing. It’s obviously increasing way faster than inflation, like there has to be a cap at some point, right? Because the way it’s going now, by the time Jack goes to college tuition is going to be like $500,000 a year, which, who can afford that?
Okay, now let’s move on to a Roth IRA. Now, your child can have his or her own Roth IRA. Now, just like a regular Roth IRA like you might have, your child needs to have earned income, okay? And earned income is not chores, like a real job, okay?
So they could be babysitting. They could be mowing other people’s lawns. If you have a business, you can employ them, but it has to be for legit work. You can’t pay them like $500 an hour to clean your office, right? That’s just not what you would pay a normal cleaning person, right?
And I think the litmus test is like, would you pay someone else that amount of money for the job your kid is doing? And if the answer is no, then you’re probably overpaying them, okay?
Now, I also have a podcast episode on Roth IRAs and anything with the name Roth in it, because there’s Roth 401Ks and Roth conversions, and I have found that it’s very confusing. And so podcast episode 14, so one of the earlier podcasts, it’s from 2020. Listen to that and you will understand all things Roth.
Back to a custodial or kids Roth IRA. So, again, most of you with kids, this will probably not apply until, let’s say high school, because that’s usually when kids get a job if they get a job, right? And so babysitting or, like I said, mowing lawns or shoveling snow, or maybe they get a job at the local bookstore.
When I was in high school I worked at a bookstore and at a pharmacy and at a library. Not all at the same time. The library I do remember paid me $4 an hour. I think the pharmacy paid me 6 or $8 an hour. And the bookstore I can’t remember. But anyway, all those earnings can go into a custodial Roth IRA.
And just like a regular Roth IRA, you can’t contribute beyond the earned income. So let’s say your child makes $2,000 during the summer for whatever work they’re doing. Let’s say Jack ends up doing that, he’s six so clearly he’s not mowing lawns. But let’s say when he’s 16 he mows lawns and he makes $2,000 a summer, which is probably a lot but let’s just roll with it.
That means the max that he could contribute to his Roth IRA is $2,000, right? He can’t go beyond $2,000. Now, here’s something I want you to consider, because if your child is making $2,000, I’m pretty sure they are not going to want to put that whole $2,000 in their Roth IRA, right?
Kids are working so that they have some spending money, right, to go to the movies, to hang out with their friends, et cetera. But money is fungible, so you can just contribute the $2,000 for them, and they can keep the $2,000 for spending money.
Basically, what I mean is that it doesn’t really matter where the money comes from, but the earned income has to be legit and it has to stay, or rather if it’s $2,000 like the example I just gave for Jack mowing lawns, you can’t contribute more than $2,000, okay?
Now, it’s up to you how you want to do it, but I’d probably recommend that they have some skin in the game, right? Because I think this is such a great teaching opportunity of compound interest and finances and all that stuff, right? So maybe it’s something like, hey, if you put 25% of your earnings into the Roth IRA, I will pop in the rest. So that means you’re doing 75%. I’m just thinking out loud, but I think that’s probably what I would do with my son, you want them to have some skin in the game.
Of course, you could just do it for them. No judgment, it doesn’t really matter. But I just think as a teaching opportunity it would be, I think, just a good habit for them to just assume that they should always be investing a portion of their earned income. And again, you can open this anywhere that allows you to open up a custodial Roth IRA. Vanguard does it for sure.
Now, the last thing I want to talk about is this, and this is more in the context of paying for college but, obviously, it’s applicable for lots of other things. So let’s say your kid is in college and college is stupid expensive. Let’s just say you’re spending $50,000, just to make the numbers nice and round, a year in tuition.
Now, obviously, if you’re cash flowing that, meaning you’re paying it directly out of your income or whatever, savings, your money is going to be taxed at a much higher rate. Most of you listening are high income earners, you might even be in the top tax bracket. And so if you are, you’re paying quite a high percentage on your taxes.
Now, you have to remember the federal tax brackets are graduated, and so this is a common misconception. And so the tax brackets, let me just look this up real quick because they change every year. So it starts at 10%, and tops off at 37%. But if you’re at the 37% tax bracket, which is an income of close to 600k or more, that doesn’t mean all of your money is taxed at 37%.
Now, that’s a common misconception. Only part of your income is taxed at 37%. But let’s just say for the purposes of this illustration, your percentage tax is, I’m just going to say 40% because that’s a blend of federal and state, okay?
Let me just backtrack a bit because I’m probably confusing everyone. Let’s just say you make a crap ton of money and you are paying 40% taxes on your income between federal and state. I know it’s a tragedy when that happens, right? Okay, so that means for every dollar you make, you get 60 cents, okay?
So contrast that with your kid. Let’s say your kid makes 30k a year. Now, not only that, but you’re paying your child $30,000 a year salary for working in your business. Now, this is really powerful and here’s why, your business pays your child $30,000, which is a deduction on your business, right? And then that $30,000 is income for your child. But since they only make $30,000, they’re paying a lot less in taxes, okay?
And so that top tax bracket for federal is 12%. Let’s just say it’s 15% for federal and state, versus your 40% in the illustration I just gave you that you’re paying. And what that basically means is your child gets to keep a lot more of that money in taxes versus if you made that same $30,000, right? Because your $30,000 is part of you making multiple hundreds.
And so this is a, I don’t want to say fancy, but this is a way to save on taxes and use that money to pay for your kid’s college with money that has been taxed significantly less than the money that you would contribute directly.
Of course, you have to have a legit job for your child. But I know many of my clients, you know, if you own your own practice or you own your own business like I do, this is something you can definitely do and think about for the future.
All right, so those are the four different things I wanted to talk about today regarding putting money away for your child. Of course, there are other ways to do this, like if you own a real estate business you can buy them real estate in their name, you can teach them about it. I think that’s actually a wonderful way to teach your kids how to create wealth, get them involved in your real estate portfolio when they’re older and they can understand the terms more.
And I definitely know some parents who buy their child a home for college and then the child, or I guess they’re an adult when they’re in college, they can have roommates and that money from the roommates can pay for the mortgage. So there’s so many ways to do that if you own real estate and business.
Okay, so let me just summarize what I just went over. The first thing I went over is opening a brokerage account for them, called a UTMA or UGMA. And it’s like a regular brokerage account and you can contribute, family can contribute, whatever you want to do for that.
The second thing I talked about was an educational account, like a 529. And I want you to think about it as a Roth IRA for education. You can use it for K through 12, but my recommendation would be to wait until at least high school if you’re doing private school or just wait for college that way you have almost two decades, or at least a decade of compound interest working.
And you also have the ability to front load it to about $170,000 when the kid is born. Most of us probably won’t do that, but it’s nice to know that you can front load it if you need to or if you want to, rather.
Okay, the third thing I talked about was opening a custodial Roth IRA for your child. This requires earned income. So if your child is making money babysitting, mowing lawns, or maybe even working inside your business and they get paid a legit income, they can contribute up to the amount that they earned as long as it’s not beyond the Roth IRA contribution limit, which is usually around, at this time around $6,500.
And then, obviously, they can invest that. Or rather you’ll invest that money for them, and a great way for them to put money away. Can you imagine, think about it, if your child starts contributing to a Roth IRA at age 15, I mean, we’re talking several, several decades of compound interest. Insane, right?
The last thing I talked about was paying your child, adult child a salary, like 20 or $30,000 a year to work for your business, maybe you own a practice. And use that money to pay for college because that money is taxed significantly less than your tax bracket.
All right, I hope this was very helpful. And hopefully maybe you will open up some type of account for them. All right, I’ll talk to you next week.
Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at WealthyMomMD.com. See you next week.
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176: Pivoting to Entrepreneurship with Dr. Jimmy Turner
My guest this week has had an incredible journey in business and entrepreneurship. If you’re a physician, while you’re listening today, I want you to ask yourself, “How could this apply to me?” because today’s episode is really about deciding what you want to do, what would make you fulfilled, and showing you that it’s possible to do something else with your life and not feel guilty about it.
Dr. Jimmy Turner is the Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of Attend: a financial platform built by physicians, for physicians. Jimmy is also a practicing academic anesthesiologist, author of The Physician Philosopher’s Guide to Personal Finance, and host of the Money Meets Medicine Podcast. He’s made many pivots in his career, and he’s here to challenge the idea that pivoting is somehow bad.
Tune in this week to challenge the idea that once you’re practicing medicine, you need to stay that way forever. We’re discussing transitioning into entrepreneurship, charging for your services, and Jimmy is discussing the realities of burning out both as a physician and an entrepreneur, and how he’s pivoted as necessary each time he’s hit the wall.
Learn more about Live Wealthy, an exclusive coaching program designed for successful women who want to be confident.... and be rich.
What You'll Learn from this Episode:
- Jimmy’s journey in business while continuing to practice medicine part-time.
- Why personal finance is a huge passion of Dr. Jimmy Turner.
- How Jimmy has always associated financial wellness with career satisfaction.
- Why Jimmy believes he thrives as part of a team rather than as a solopreneur.
- How Jimmy found coaching after burning out in his physician career.
- Why charging as a physician feels normal, but charging as an entrepreneur can be challenging.
- How to focus on profit instead of revenue as an entrepreneur, and keep things simple in your business.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Follow me on Instagram
- Dr. Jimmy Turner: Website | X (Twitter) | Podcast
- Attend: Website | App
- The Physician Philosopher’s Guide to Personal Finance by Dr. Jimmy Turner
- Rocket Fuel by Mark C. Winters and Gino Wickman
- FinCon
- Peter Kim
- Sunny Smith MD
- The Life Coach School
- AlleyCorp
Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.
Welcome back, everyone. Today I have a very interesting guest. Now, we’re going to talk a bit about how we met and how we continued our friendship and kept in touch with things. But basically he’s had a very, very interesting journey and I wanted to have him on to talk about it, and here’s why.
Well, first, I want to say that we’re mainly talking about business and entrepreneurship. So if this isn’t you, I still want you to listen and here’s why. While you’re listening I want you to ask yourself, how could this apply to me?
Now, towards the end I basically mention that the bottom line message is less about entrepreneurship and what you should do, not do, what you should charge. But it’s more about giving yourself permission to really look at what you want to do, what makes you fulfilled, and to show you that it’s possible to do something else and not feel guilty about it.
And so Jimmy has pivoted many times. He’s still a practicing physician and so I just want to give you an idea of how you might find yourself pivoting very frequently and there’s nothing wrong with that and to challenge the idea that we should be doing the same thing for the rest of our life. And yes, I’m talking about medicine.
I’m not saying you should leave medicine, I’m just going to challenge the idea that we should be practicing the way we’re practicing forever. I think this was more of a thing with the last generation of physicians. And one thing that I’ve noticed is that, well, what I usually joke when I talk about having multiple careers over a lifetime, is that having one career made sense when humans didn’t live that long. I mean, that just makes sense, right?
So why have we carried forward the same belief that we should be doing this considering that most of us will probably live well into our 70s and 80s and beyond? It just doesn’t make sense to me, personally.
All that being said, going forward with my podcast and any other podcast or knowledge that you’re learning, ask yourself how does this apply to me? Or how can I take what I’m listening to and maybe take a different action that you maybe wouldn’t have taken before?
I think that’s one of the reasons why we listen to podcasts, at least for me. I listen to mainly, I guess you could say personal development or business podcast versus like just a story, although I have listened to those as well. And I think if you’re someone like that as well, it’s because you enjoy learning and you enjoy growing.
And the goal is to always become a better version of ourselves and so it just makes sense that when you listen to something and it changes the way you think, you’re going to take different actions.
All right, here’s my conversation with Dr. Jimmy Turner.
Bonnie: Welcome to the show, Jimmy.
Jimmy: It’s good to be here, Bonnie. Good to see you.
Bonnie: I’m so excited you’re here. We’ve been friends for a while and I realized you’d never been on my podcast. And you’ve had such an interesting journey. I’m really excited for people to hear about it because it’s definitely not typical.
I’ve definitely had people come on the show, talk about their ventures into real estate, starting a coaching business, et cetera. But what you’ve done, and also I want to learn too, like we’ve talked a little bit about what you’re doing. Okay, so why don’t you introduce yourself real quick?
Jimmy: Yeah, sure. We were talking before the show and I have this tendency to change what I’m doing about every two or three years. And so I’ll see if I can walk people through this, my meandering path to where I am now.
But yeah, so I’m an academic anesthesiologist. I still practice anesthesia two days per week. I did all of my training at Wake, basically. So med school, residency, fellowship at Wake Forest. I’m still on faculty there. I’m an associate professor, so I’m still doing the academic gig a little bit, although that’s probably my full stop. I’m never going to go to a professor role.
But yeah, so I basically ended up learning about personal finance during my very last year, so my fellowship year. And the more that I learned about that, I started using my past experiences. So anyone that’s heard me talk before knows that I basically got hosed out of disability insurance when I was a fourth year medical student and had no income.
Bonnie: I didn’t know.
Jimmy: Oh yeah. This is a good story, I’ll tell you the whole thing. So yeah, we had our first kid, so Grace, she’s now 12. And we were like, hey, let’s do the adult thing, let’s go get life insurance because that’s what responsible adults do when they have children. And so I didn’t know who to talk to and actually one of the brothers of my medical school classmates ended up being an agent at a well known mutual fund company.
And I didn’t know about them at the time and so I ended up saying, hey, I need life insurance. He’s like, yeah, no problem, but you should also probably get disability. And I know nothing about money at this point, and I’m like, I don’t have an income, I don’t understand.
Long story short, had me apply. I have an essential tremor, I’ve got an ADHD diagnosis, I got flat out denied. And so when you fast forward to training, there’s the guaranteed standard issue policy, which basically says we don’t look at your medical history, we only care if you haven’t been disabled and you haven’t been denied.
And so to this day I can’t get disability insurance, which for practicing physicians I would argue is the number one financial task because you can know everything you want to know about investing and paying down debt, but if you don’t have any income, even if that income is to eventually build non-clinical streams of income, you’re kind of hosed.
And so that started my journey. And then fast forward seven years later I started learning and I realized what had happened to me and I realized how much mistrust there is in the financial space. So I started getting lots of questions to talk and to teach about personal finance. I ended up turning that into a blog at the Physician Philosopher, a couple podcasts, a couple of books, transitioned into coaching for a bit.
And then now I am at a venture capital backed startup called Attend. So I have done the medical thing, I’ve done the solo entrepreneur online business thing, I’ve done the coaching thing, and now I’m in the VC backed startup world. So that’s quite the journey.
Bonnie: Yeah. So obviously, we’re going to go into some of those things. So when you say you were flat out denied, did you not pursue the standard issue policy? I just didn’t catch that part.
Jimmy: So I didn’t know that it existed. And he had me apply in my fourth year of medical school, so I didn’t have it available to me yet because I wasn’t in training. And so the GPSI plan, just for a plug for any physicians listening that are in training, that’s only available during training and for the three to six months after training.
And so if you have any medical history, you’ve had cancer before, you’ve had type one diabetes, you saw your PCP that one time for that test anxiety you had before step one, all of those things have the potential to get you completely denied or to get you to have a rider or an exclusion on your policy. So that’s if you go through a fully underwritten process where they look at your medical history.
You can avoid all of that by getting the guaranteed standard issue policy, but that’s only available during training. And so agents don’t tell you about it and the reason why is because they often won’t make money from doing that. And so a huge conflict of interest, they won’t send you to the GSI agent because it’s exclusive at that institution for each institution.
And so yeah, no, I didn’t get it because I didn’t know it existed. And unfortunately, a lot of doctors don’t know that.
Bonnie: Yeah. Yeah, I am actually going to have Stephanie Pearson on the show. And I’ve talked about disability insurance, but I feel like I can’t talk enough about it. So briefly, I have a policy but I remember in residency there was this insurance agent who would take us out for drinks and stuff and disability insurance sounded like a scam to me.
But I think this is just like the lack of education, because I think there are certain things you do need to keep in mind as a resident, not just disability insurance but having life insurance as soon as you have a kid. But I actually got mine before I had children because life insurance specifically, as we both know, is never going to be as cheap as now the younger you are right?
Jimmy: Right.
Bonnie: And before you develop any health issues, which everyone’s like, I’m healthy now. I’m like, you’re healthy until you’re not.
Jimmy: Yeah. I say the same thing to people. They’re like, hey, when should I get disability insurance? I’m like, I don’t know, the day before you get disabled. But since you don’t know when that’s going to happen, naturally you need to get it now when you have an income because you’re the healthiest you’ll ever be, right?
Bonnie: Yes.
Jimmy: So I had my ADHD diagnosis, my tremor, but then I didn’t expect to get diagnosed with Graves disease in my early 30s and the anxiety and depression that came along with that, but it happened. So you have to get it as early as you can.
Bonnie: Yeah, no one thinks they’re going to become disabled. But I think a common thing, which I think people can relate to is you could get into a car accident, right?
Jimmy: 100%.
Bonnie: And that can significantly affect, like I had a co-resident who was a big rock climber. He had a big accident where both of his feet were broken.
Jimmy: Yeah, wow.
Bonnie: I mean, shit happens.
Jimmy: Didn’t expect that. Yeah, that’s right. You’ve got to be prepared.
Bonnie: Yeah, so moving away from that. So this is actually how you and I met. Do you remember exactly how we met? Because I have a foggy memory. But the reason why we met is because we’re both in the personal finance blog world. I think it was at FinCon in DC.
Jimmy: Yeah, it might be. But also my nickname at work is Dory, like the forgetful fish because I am terrible at stuff like this.
Bonnie: Okay, good, we’re in the same boat here.
Jimmy: That’s right. But I do remember meeting you there. I think we interacted before, probably online or whatever. And it’s so funny, I don’t usually remember a lot of things, so in case people are like, what’s FinCon, it’s a conference for financial media people, bloggers, whatever, et cetera, and advisors. It’s just where people gather and I’ve been to like two of them. And I haven’t gone in a long time.
Jimmy: Me neither.
Bonnie: But at that time there was a little group of physicians who were doing this besides the White Coat Investor. But I remember walking down the street on the way for dinner and I’m pretty sure I met you and your wife. Because your wife came to one of them, right?
Jimmy: Yeah, this was in DC. Yeah, my wife and my kid came.
Bonnie: So I do remember, for some reason, walking and talking to you. So that’s a rare memory that I have of these things.
Jimmy: Yeah, no, we actually enjoyed DC. It was pretty fun. It’s the first time my kids had ever been there and they very much enjoyed it. But it was kind of fun to have them be a part of that journey and to write off a hotel room.
Bonnie: Yeah. So, I mean, that was a while ago.
Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah, it probably was. It’s probably been, what, three or four years, something like that. It was definitely pre-pandemic.
Bonnie: Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. So you said you got into it, because you were educating yourself, and then let’s continue the story about that.
Jimmy: Yeah. So I had lots of people come up to me like, hey Jimmy, can you come give a talk on personal finance? Can you come to this grand round and that grand round? And I’d have people start reaching out and asking questions via text and email. And so it became pretty apparent to me that despite all the resources that were already out there, that there was a need for more of them.
And in addition to that, I always very early married personal finance, or I guess you can call it financial wellness, with career wellness and overall being in satisfaction. And so, in fact, at one point on the blog the tagline was fighting burnout with financial independence.
And so that was kind of my niche. And that has continued throughout the seven years. I’ll say that the one thing that’s been steady is my belief that financial independence and non clinical income and entrepreneurship and a whole host of things is a fantastic way to deal with a lot of the misery in medicine. And now I practice two days per week and I love it.
Like when I go to the hospital, I get to be there. I get to take care of patients. I get to do my thing in anesthesia and I like it a lot. Whereas five years ago, six years ago when I was doing five days a week, I did not. It was not balanced. I missed T-ball games and recitals.
Bonnie: It was too much.
Jimmy: Yeah, it was miserable. And so now I get to work out in the mornings. And I dropped my kid off at camp this morning for soccer and I came into the office and I’m doing the startup world thing. And so for me, that balance was huge.
And so, yeah, I started writing predominantly. And then I found out very quickly after a couple of years that that probably wasn’t my gig without an editor because I cannot spell, my grammar is not great. So people would make fun of me. They’d be like, hey Jimmy, you do know R-O-L-E and R-O-L-L are different words with different meanings, right? And so they would make fun of me.
Bonnie: This is your blog?
Jimmy: Oh yeah, blogging. But despite my ridiculousness in the English language, it gained traction. But then I transitioned to podcasting and found out very quickly that apparently I’m better behind a microphone than I am on a keyboard.
Bonnie: Because you don’t have to spell.
Jimmy: Yeah, there’s no spelling. You can’t tell that I’m a bad speller with a microphone. So I transitioned to podcasting, have been doing that for a few years and love it. But the journey has continued in terms of financial literacy and kind of that link to physician wellness.
Bonnie: Let’s talk about your brand name because I don’t think you mentioned it.
Jimmy: Yeah, so back then it was the Physician Philosopher, and that’s also an interesting story. So two parts of the business, one was financial literacy, the other was coaching. So career coaching, burnout, that sort of thing, again, same thread. And then now I’m with Attend, so I sold the financial side of my business and joined Attend as a chief medical officer and co-founder there.
So those are the two brands. And now Money Meets Medicine, which is the podcast that was at, TPP, is in the 10 branded podcasts. So yeah, it’s been an interesting journey. Went through the whole M&A process as well, which was fun.
Bonnie: Yeah, I mean, so much has happened. I can’t wait to actually talk offline about some of the things that you talked about. Okay, so even I’m a little confused about your journey, just because I haven’t kept up with every iteration, right?
Jimmy: Sure, yeah. Yeah.
Bonnie: So when you say you sold the finance part of your business, what part didn’t you sell? Like what was left?
Jimmy: Yeah, so the coaching side of my business is still owned by me. I’m still the CEO of Physician Philosopher as well. And so that side still exists, people can still hop on there and get a consult call and join the program. I don’t do any of the coaching myself, it’s all done by coaches that work with me in that program.
And so that still exists. I still own 90% of that. So my two partners in crime are Peter Kim and Leif Dahleen.
Bonnie: Oh right, yeah.
Jimmy: Yeah, they own a portion of it as well. But yeah, so the coaching side is still mine. The financial side, the financial literacy, financial podcast, book are now with me at Attend. And I’m still responsible and in charge of all those things, it’s just underneath different branding and different direction.
My CEO, Aria, is amazing and so she gets to tell me which direction to go and I get to implement those things. And believe it or not, I actually love that. I love having a team. Being a solopreneur was extremely hard.
Bonnie: It is hard.
Jimmy: Not my favorite thing, if I’ll be honest with you. And so I walked away from a – Walked away is not the right word because it got acquired. But I changed gears from a business that made $600,000 a year to making less, with much more massive upside and potential. But as a solopreneur I was running everything. I made every decision. I was the CEO, the CMO, the COO. I mean, it was exhausting.
Bonnie: Yeah. I’m going to pause you here because we’ve talked about a lot of things, which I follow but I’m guessing that the listeners might be getting a little bit lost because most of them aren’t in this world.
Jimmy: Totally get it, I talk fast.
Bonnie: Okay, let’s rewind a little bit. Tell me how you got into coaching, because I actually don’t know that story.
Jimmy: Yeah, so I had burned out myself a couple years into my career. And interestingly, I burned out twice. Once was as a physician working 1.3 FTE in academic anesthesia. Our department was short staffed, so I had to pick up a lot of shifts and missed a lot of things.
The second time was, hilariously, as an entrepreneur, which is what I tried to use to escape my physician burnout. And so I ended up burning the candle at both ends.
Bonnie: And this is so common, right?
Jimmy: Oh yeah, super common. People always think like, hey, I don’t like my job in medicine so I’m going to go start a blog, a YouTube channel, a coaching business, you name it, because they see other people that have been successful. And that’s great, right? There’s always a need for more people in this space. Your voice is unique and people need to hear it, I very much believe all that’s true.
What I don’t think people realize is that 90% of businesses fail, right? And so when you think about that, you might put 20, 30 hours a week in, like I was working 50 hours a week, 60 hours a week doing anesthesia and putting 20 hours a week into my blog at the time. And so it was a lot of work. And it wasn’t really profitable for 18 months, significantly profitable for two, two and a half years.
So I was making, I don’t know, minimum wage working on this thing on the side until it finally took off, but it was a challenging journey. But anyway, to answer your original question, so coaching, I ended up getting coached as I worked through some of that burnout myself and found it immensely helpful.
And so I decided after that to pursue coaching myself. And I’d always had the experience in my life that people came to me for advice for as far back as I can remember. And so, a very natural fit for me, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, that’s what led to my transition, was the impact coaching had on me personally.
Bonnie: How did you know that coaching even existed? Because a lot of people haven’t heard of it. So how did you know it existed? And how did you know how to find one?
Jimmy: That’s a really good question. I think that probably the first time I ever heard anybody mentioned coaching was Peter Kim. And Peter kind of mentioned that he had had experiences in the entrepreneurial world in terms of being around other people and how that really changed his perspective and his mindset towards entrepreneurship, towards money, towards his career, towards his family.
And so that was the first time someone had put that idea in my head, because coaching is super common in the business world. But in medicine back then it wasn’t. It’s picked up a lot of interest and kind of coverage, if you will, people know more about it now. But back then they didn’t.
And so I want to say it was actually at the first FinCon that I went to. A lot of FinCon plugs in this show. And Peter was talking about it and I was like, yeah, that’s a really interesting thing. And so yeah, I found out about it. And then I just ended up kind of living in that space for a little bit in terms of entrepreneurs.
I was like, oh, this is where entrepreneurs hang out and they have coaches. And then you’d figure out whose coaches were coaching who and kind of hear a few names. So, yeah, I basically found it from just word of mouth and community.
Bonnie: What year was that you said you heard about it? Because I guess I’m trying to figure out the time on that, not that it’s important, like did I have a coach then already? I don’t know if you and I had talked about that at all.
Bonnie: So I started the Physician Philosopher in November of 2017. And so that probably would have been around 2019, give or take. I published my book in February 2019, so it’s probably shortly after that. And so it would have been FinCon 2018 or 2019, around that time.
Bonnie: That’s around when I started coaching with Sunny Smith.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jimmy: Yeah, and Sunny is amazing. She definitely coached me for six months. I’ve gone through a, I don’t know what you want to call it, an M&A and a buyout twice. And so I was going through one of them. I used to be part of the White Coat Investor network, and then went through that process before I bought back the portion that Jim owned. So Sunny actually coached me through that, which was immensely helpful.
Bonnie: Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s, obviously I’m a coach and people listening know that I am. And yeah, basically, you and I were both impacted and so we decided to do it.
Okay, so was it shortly after that you decided to have a coaching business as well? When did you make that transition?
Jimmy: Yeah, so I started coaching people before I was certified. It’s a funny thing, right? So I mentioned before that people have always come to me for advice. It’s just always been my life experience.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jimmy: And so because of that I already had people asking me questions about their career, like, hey, Jimmy, what should I do and all this sort of thing. And I had already started developing some tools.
And I think any coach training is helpful to kind of expand your thought process in terms of other tools that other people have discovered. But, for example, I’m not a coaching purist. I’m not going to spend all the time, and I’m sure you talk about this on your podcast, on the T line. I’m just not because I think certain circumstances impact your thoughts, and we know that from psychological studies.
So for me, my style of coaching is going to be in part experiential and helping people sort through the same things that I’ve sorted through because it turns out that people can save you a lot of time. If you don’t want to go through that seven year period of figuring out entrepreneurship, Bonnie Koo can help speed you up, right?
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jimmy: So for me, I started before I even got certified because I’d already developed some of those tools.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jimmy: And then as I got certified, I gained more tools in my tool belt.
Bonnie: So Jimmy and I are certified at the same coaching school, The Life Coach School. It took me a while to figure this out, when I say figure this out, like really just verbalize it for myself. But I think of it as the tools you learned at Life Coach School is just one coaching tool. And, to me, coaching is not just that type of coaching, which is basically purely mindset.
Jimmy: Right.
Bonnie: That’s why every one of us is unique because, just like you, I bring my life experiences, or just telling people this is what I’ve seen and that perspective and just my knowledge of XYZ, right? Money and business included. So then you decided to actually create the business in terms of charging for coaching.
Jimmy: Yeah, so I even charged before I got certified, but yes, I charged more after I got certified, which required some mindset work in and of itself, right? Given that people for whatever –
It’s so funny to me, doctors walk into entrepreneurship and all of a sudden they have a problem charging for things. It’s like when I do a thoracic epidural on somebody that’s having thoracic surgery or having this huge abdominal surgery, I don’t feel bad that they’re going to get a bill for that.
But then entrepreneur doctors step outside that space and they’re like, oh, I don’t really know, I feel bad charging people. It’s like you’re providing a service. And so for me, I definitely had the same journey, I charged less and then as things grew, I charged more. And so I started, basically, the program from the very beginning. And this was a journey.
Bonnie: Let me just stop you for a second.
Jimmy: Yeah, please do.
Bonnie: Because I think it’s important to spend a little time on this. If you do make the change to entrepreneurship, charging feels weird. And you mentioned the analogy for being paid as a doctor. I think a large part of that is that you don’t set the price and you’re kind of removed from that sales process of getting paid.
Jimmy: That’s fair. Yeah, totally.
Bonnie: But then when it’s you saying like, hey, this is what I’m charging for, whether it’s one on one coaching or group coaching it just, yeah, Because I still deal with that too, like what to charge, what not to charge and then having opinions on what I charge.
Jimmy: I think people make it too complicated, right? So at the end of the day, you’re just going to pick a number. And then as you pick that number, it’s literally like an up/down study in medicine, right? You’re going to keep increasing the number, right? And then you’re going to find this resistance level where people are like, you know what, I think you’re wonderful but I don’t think you’re that wonderful.
And then you bring it back down and you’re going to find a pricing level where people will consistently pay. And then you can try that up/down study later on again. But people spend so much time perseverating about the first number it is hilarious.
Bonnie: I totally have seen this too.
Jimmy: It’s like, just pick one. Just pick one. If you want to charge $250 an hour for coaching or 125, I don’t care. Pick a number. And when people say yes just automatically, your number is not high enough. And so you just kind of keep increasing because at the end of the day put a number on it, right?
If I’m going to help you through a career transition or you’re going to help somebody build a business or increase their financial literacy, how much is that worth to you, right? If I prevent you from taking a job that you’re going to hate or taking a job that you’re going to love, that career transition is worth a lot of money. I mean, it is a multiple five-figure mistake if you move to a job that you don’t end up liking, right?
And so are you willing to pay $5,000 to figure that out? I bet the answer is yes. In fact, I know the answer is yes. I’ve heard somebody say before, like don’t put yourself in other people’s wallets. What your value is, is determined by the market and the people that you help.
Bonnie: Yeah.
And I think it’s important, you know, I used to really have opinions about what people should charge, like you should charge more. Now I’ve kind of changed how I look at it. It’s kind of like what you said, pick the number that you have no drama about because you just want to start getting paid, basically.
Jimmy: Yeah, 100%.
Bonnie: Yeah. And then you’ll figure out what you want to charge. But yeah, I feel like we’ve gotten – And this is talking about stuff that most of my listeners probably can’t relate to because they’re not in business. But what was my train of thought? But yeah, it’s important to start getting paid, and then you can deal with whether you want to charge more or not.
Jimmy: Yeah, I mean, just pick a number.
Bonnie: Yeah, it sounds so simple, but I know people will still have drama. Like, what do you mean, Jimmy and Bonnie, just pick a number? Like what number?
Jimmy: Just start with 11476, I mean, just pick a number.
Bonnie: Yeah. Usually, I’ll put some numbers out there and there’s usually a number where they’re like, ah, that’s too high. I’m like, okay, let’s go lower.
Jimmy: Yeah, and if you have that massive resistance, the reason that that’s important, and I mean there’s so many lessons from entrepreneurship, right? But your ability to sell yourself, that will be directly impacted by how you feel about the number, right? Like if I walk into a call, and I know that an hour with me is worth $500, right? I’m going to walk into that call, when they ask how much does this cost I’m going to say it and it’s going to be very matter of fact with wholehearted belief that I’m going to provide the ROI on that number that I’m asking from them.
If you don’t feel that way, just lower the number, right? I mean, that number could start at $99. Do I firmly believe I’m going to give somebody $99 of value in an hour? And if the answer is yes, fine, start there. And then as you help people, you’re going to find out, wow, the help I’m providing is a lot more valuable than this. And then all of a sudden you’re going to start charging more because you recognize the value and other people will too.
Bonnie: Okay, we got a little diverted here.
Jimmy: All right, so that’s coaching.
Bonnie: Okay, so you started the coaching program.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Bonnie: And where are you doing, you were doing one on one and a group.
Jimmy: Yeah, so I did coaching in a group and then coaching one on one. And I’ll be honest with you, this is one of the things that burned me out, was everybody in this space –
Bonnie: The third time you burned out?
Jimmy: Oh my gosh, yes. And Attend ended up being the answer to this. But for me, everybody in this space talks about scaling. And I think that it is overly, you know, just people pounding on their chest about how important scaling is because we want to get to a million dollars.
Bonnie: Let’s define that because people might not know what that means.
Jimmy: So if you’re coaching one on one and you have 10 clients, you’re helping 10 people. You’re charging money for 10 individuals. And so there’s a cap, if you will, if you say I’m only going to coach 10 people. But if you coached 10 people in a single hour in a group, now all of a sudden, you can have 10 groups and coach 10 people, now you’re helping 100 people, right?
And so that’s called scale, when you help more people with the amount of effort that you’re putting into a company. And you can scale that in a variety of ways. But a lot of people in the coaching space do that through programs. And so the person that is running the business, you’ll typically have less time with them. And if you want more time with them, you’re going to end up paying more money, that’s called an ascension model.
But scaling, the idea is to help more people, which allows you to grow your business, which allows you to help even more people. It’s like this reciprocal process. But for me, what I found out is that I was heavily dependent on Facebook ads, and then iOS/Apple did their wonderful thing that they did and changed their algorithm. And all of a sudden, the funnel that I’d created for two years that was generating multiple six-figure launches, wasn’t. I was breaking even.
And I honestly got to the point where –
Bonnie: I remember that.
Jimmy: Yeah, I couldn’t solve the puzzle. I had two launches in a row where I broke even. And I was putting 40 hours of work, maybe 20 or 30 hours of work per week into a business and not making any money from it. It sucked. It was terrible.
And so I got to the point where, honestly, if I hadn’t made this pivot into the VC world, I was going to start just doing one on one coaching. And the reason why is because I enjoyed that. I felt like it was not as big of a lift as a group coaching program. And at the end of the day, it made me happier, right?
And when people focus on – This drives me insane. It’s one of my giant pet peeves. They’re like, hey, how much money are you bringing in? And they’ll be like, oh yeah, I’m bringing in a million dollars. I’m like, okay, great. How much profit are you making? How much money are you actually taking home?
Bonnie: Yes.
Jimmy: And they’ll be like, oh, I don’t. I know million dollar coaches that don’t make money in their business. And so it’s like, okay, so why are we talking about revenue? Who cares about revenue?
Bonnie: Yes.
Jimmy: My $600,000 business back then was bringing home 225. And so why don’t I just do one on one coaching, which I probably could have made the same money from, with less lift, less effort, not having to launch a program. I could run my podcast, people could hear my voice and they will reach out and ask to get coached.
And so I was actually heading towards simplifying my business because for me, it increased my happiness, it increased my ability to run my business without just a tremendous amount of stress. And honestly, was my revenue going to go down? Yep, but my profit was going to be about the same.
Bonnie: Yeah. So I think this is an important point because in business, and we’re both, although you’ve moved on we’re going to talk about what you’re doing now, it’s easy to get caught up with the top line because that’s what people talk about.
But yes, people don’t talk about the profit margin, right? I think that percentage is really important. And people also, and then being very clear how you’re calculating that profit margin. So yeah, and then I’ve really come to the conclusion that I also want a simple business.
And simple can mean different things to different people. Like it could be that you have a team that really takes care of the things that you don’t want to take care of, so it’s simple for you. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a simple business. But one on one is definitely the most simple because you really don’t have an overhead, especially if you don’t have a podcast. There could be literally zero overhead.
I actually, my current one on one coach, it is phone coaching. She doesn’t use a scheduling program. It’s literally just like analog.
Jimmy: That’s interesting.
Bonnie: Yeah. So she literally has no overhead.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Bonnie: Except for her cell phone bill.
Jimmy: I mean, people make it too complicated. And I guess the thing that I would take away from that story is, A, focus on profit, not revenue. But also be your own person. Just because other people tell you you need to scale or they’ve done things a certain way, that doesn’t mean that you have to. And unfortunately that is such an easy trap to fall into. And for me, I did for two and a half years.
So just follow your own voice and your own passion and what you want to do. I think that’s extremely important in this space because at the end of the day, if you’re not happy doing what you do, it doesn’t matter how much money you make. And I can very, very vehemently attest to that.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jimmy: I made lots of money and was not happy.
Bonnie: Yeah. And I think an important piece of this is taking the time to really think about what you want. Because when I talk to my clients about that, a lot of them have no idea what that is because they’ve just been doing maybe what they’re expected to do or like, well, this is the path, I should do it.
And very few people have paused and been like, what do you really want to do? Especially if you’re a parent too, you kind of just get into this hamster wheel of living life.
Jimmy: I think that’s a really good question. And, honestly, it’s a hard one to answer. And I think this is the reason that it’s important to dabble, to try things, to see, to experience, right? Because when I was an employed academic anesthesiologist, which technically I still am, I was like, man, you know what I want? I just want my freedom. I want freedom of my time.
And so what that means is I need to run my own business. And if I run my own business, I can set my own hours and that’s going to be wonderful, right? And then I started running my business. I experienced the stress of being a solopreneur and I honestly hated it. I was in an office downstairs in my basement. I mean, this is a different place now.
Bonnie: I remember, you built this really decked out office, I remember.
Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah, it was like my podcast room, it had soundproofing. And that was an example, I couldn’t figure out like, why wasn’t I happy? And it came down to two things for me. One of them was that I realized that I really wanted a team. And not necessarily a team that I built, but a team that I could join that was accomplishing a similar goal that we had different skill sets. And to be honest with you, there’s a large part of me that actually likes being a bit of a sidekick.
I would much rather be supportive of an overall mission and be able to pitch my ideas and suggest things and have very strong convictions about certain things, but not necessarily run the direction of a company. And that may sound strange listening to that, but that’s just an honest truth about me.
So being on a team, as opposed to a solopreneur was a huge part of what made me happy. The other thing is like this office, this is an office that I rent downtown and I’ve got other human beings that are all entrepreneurs around me. Yeah, it’s a co-working space. It’s called FlyWheel, it’s in the middle of Winston-Salem.
Bonnie: Do you have your own office, not like a shared office?
Jimmy: No, it’s my own office.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jimmy: And so it’s great. And you know what? Being around other people and being able to take a lunch and stare at the mountains outside, well I call them mountains. I’m in North Carolina, these are not mountains, the foothills of North Carolina. Yeah, it made me really, really happy.
And so, for me, that thing that I was telling myself that I wanted was to be a solopreneur and to be in charge and to control my own hours, wasn’t really true. I actually enjoy being an employee, hilariously. I just want to be an employee and control my hours, which now I do.
And so I’m going to the dentist right after this call, Bonnie. Like I blocked off an hour and a half to go to the dentist. I get to do that in the middle of my day, which in medicine would have been impossible. And so I have the best of both worlds. I don’t have to make every single decision, but I still have control of my time and it is amazing.
Bonnie: Yeah. So this is really an important point that you kind of said earlier, it’s like knowing what you want. You’re taking almost a hypothesis, you’re not going to really know if that’s it until you actually try it. And I think a question that is easier for people to answer is what do you want to stop doing? What don’t you want? People know that answer.
Jimmy: What do you not want?
Bonnie: Yeah, people know that answer pretty quickly. And that’s like a clue to what you may want. But again, like you said, I wholeheartedly agree and I’ve learned a lot about myself. I actually like to be the person in charge, that is clear to me. But it’s good to know that you don’t like to – Do you know the book Rocket Fuel?
Jimmy: I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t read it.
Bonnie: Yeah. So it talks about the relationship between a visionary and an integrator, people call it also COO. And I’m definitely the visionary and I need the integrator so that I can just focus on ideas, being the front face, and then someone else –
Jimmy: It is fascinating, right? 100% agree and I’ve actually heard those terms from a different place, but I am 1,000% a visionary. I love abstract ideas. I love making those abstract ideas simple. I’m a values person, a mission-driven person, like I can direct a company in terms of value and tell you where we need to go.
But at the same time, I’m not an integrator. I’m not a detail-oriented person. And you can call that a thought, I call it a fact. And it’s something I don’t want to change. I don’t want to change that about me.
Bonnie: You can’t be both, and I think in the beginning you have to be because you’re building your business. And as you make money, then you can hire a team. But absolutely. So you are a visionary and then you just don’t want to like –
Jimmy: But I think it’s a misnomer to say that a CEO of a business has to be the visionary. I think actually, and I’d have to ask Aria, my CEO that works at Attend with me.
Bonnie: Well think about The Life Coach School. Brooke is the visionary, but she has a CEO now.
Jimmy: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so Aria is amazing and an incredible CEO, I love working with her. But she is kind of a, you know, I think everybody is on a bit of a spectrum. And I say she has a direction, like this is how we’re going to accomplish what we’re going to accomplish, right? And so I’d say she’s more of an integrator than I am. And she’s in charge of business, right?
So I think it was a misconception I had for a long time that the CEO had to be a visionary. But that’s it, I do think it’s like we all have a little bit of both, but you definitely are going to lean heavily towards one or the other.
Bonnie: Yeah. And that book, Rocket Fuel, actually has a little test. I mean, I already knew I was definitely a visionary.
Jimmy: Me too.
Bonnie: And in the beginning as a solopreneur I had to wear both hats. And I think what was hard is I actually am very good at the integrator part too. I just love business back-end, et cetera. But I’ve gotten to a point where it’s interfering with my ability to be the visionary as my company has grown.
Jimmy: Sure.
Bonnie: Okay, I want to be mindful of your time. So how did you go from that to what you do? And explain what you do, because it’s probably a concept that most people aren’t familiar with.
Jimmy: Yeah, so maybe it would be helpful to kind of explain, so I mentioned what my mission and what my value was, right, in terms of helping financial literacy, helping doctors build financial foundations, that they can then use that to feel empowered and to potentially reduce their burnout and their life and career satisfaction.
And so what I was running into as a solopreneur is that I didn’t have the resources and the technology. And I probably didn’t have the ability to scale that as much as I wanted. And so it turns out, there’s this world called venture capitalism, right, which does this exact thing, right?
So at Attend we are technically a Fintech company because we have an app that you can get on the App Store, it’s called Attend for Doctors. And that app basically helps doctors with those foundational pieces, right? So our focus is on residents and early career physicians because we felt like that’s where doctors needed the most help initially. And yet, the assets under management, the traditional financial companies, they don’t target you until you have half a million dollars in assets.
And so we wanted to help people earlier. And so when I was thinking through this transition of going from owning my own company to potentially joining this one, that was really what appealed to me about the startup land and venture capitalism, is that there’s just this entrepreneurial spirit everywhere. Everyone you interact with, that’s everyone’s kind of being, that’s who they are.
But then there’s also the opportunity, like we’ve had tons and tons and tons of calls with investors at other VC firms to help us, you know, there are rounds where you raise money. So there’s a pre-seed round, a seed round, series A, B, and C, and each of those you’re trying to basically raise more money to put more fuel on the fire to accomplish your goal even faster at a larger scale.
And so what you do when you’re running a company is, in the startup land, is you’re trying to accomplish your goal. So for us that financial foundation, a comprehensive solution for doctors, Fintech forward. And then you go get money. And that money is then used to carry the company X number of months, and then it becomes a game, right? Like you need to reach the next stage before you run out of money.
And so that’s the reason that 90% of startups fail, is because they run out of money.
Bonnie: Wait, what do you mean by reaching the next stage? Like start making money? Is that what you mean?
Jimmy: Yeah, so let’s say that you raised a million dollars. And your burn rate, how much you spend every month in your business is $100,000. You have 10 months to basically prove your idea and then approach another investor, or the same investor, and say, hey, we’ve proven this concept. Now we’re raising $10 million to get to that next level.
And then now your burn rate is a million dollars a month, because you’ve scaled, your business is larger, now you have 10 more months to either become self-sufficient or to raise more money after you’ve proven the concept even further. And so you basically keep leveling up in terms of the money that you’re raising. That’s the idea, at least.
You can have a down round where you actually raise less money in the next round. That’s no bueno in the VC startup world.
Bonnie: Can I pause you for a second?
Jimmy: Yeah.
Bonnie: Okay. So, obviously, when you’re pitching this to investors, they want a return, they’re not just giving you money to burn. So what’s the typical, I’m sure it’s all different, but can you just talk in broad strokes? Like they obviously want to get their money back plus a profit, so what are the typical terms that you’ve seen?
Jimmy: Yeah, so what will typically happen is, and I’ll say I’m in a bit of a unique situation. So Ally Corp is the venture capital company that incubated Attend. And so they actually came up with the idea at Ally Corp and then put some initial money into it to get the idea off the ground, right? To see if we can build the team to accomplish what we’re trying to accomplish.
And so Aria and I joined Attend in February.
Bonnie: Can we talk about that? How did you even find out? Did you get approached for this?
Jimmy: Yeah, so this is one of the –
Bonnie: Like how does this happen? I would love it if someone approached me.
Jimmy: Yeah. So success in this space, and I’ll tell you the fun thing about venture capital is it’s such a tight-knit, small community that once you get your foot in the door you start building connections from, oh, I worked with so and so at such and such company back when. And so connections are huge.
And for me, interestingly enough, Money Meets Medicine, my podcast co-host Lisha Taylor happened to be an advisor for Attend. And I actually don’t know how they found her. I should probably ask that at some point.
But Lisha was like, hey, yeah, this company I’m advising for, they’re looking for some C-suite people and you’ve got a pretty prominent name in the physician finance space. Why don’t you talk to them and see if they’re interested?
And so I did and it turned out that their north star, like literally being the USAA of physician finance is what we’re trying to accomplish. We want to be the trusted place, like you don’t have to worry when you go to our company whether you can trust us or not. Unlike the insurance agent that hosed me, we want to do the right thing for doctors and play that long game of doing the right thing and gaining trust.
And so when they told me that was their north star, I was like, this is exactly what I want to do. It made so much sense. And so the connection was actually through Lisha. And then we started those conversations and it kind of became a quintessential negotiation because like, hey, yeah, we’d love you to come and help here.
And actually, their initial thought was we’d like to partner with you and potentially use your platform to help reach other doctors. And I said, well, I think I’m interested in helping a little more than that, so is there any opportunity to do that? And they were like, well, we have thought about hiring a chief medical officer. And I said, yeah, tell me more about what you’re looking for in that role.
And as they began talking, it made more and more sense. And so, negotiation 101, I pointed out the problem. And I was like, wow, this is really interesting but I just don’t have the bandwidth to do anesthesia, to run my own business, and then to be the chief medical officer at Attend.
Bonnie: Wait, can I ask you a question?
Jimmy: Yeah, please do.
Bonnie: I’m curious why it’s CMO. Because to me, CMO means like you’re actually in a healthcare industry program, like pharmaceuticals.
Jimmy: Yeah, so technically a CMO in the business world too is Chief Marketing Officer, which I am not.
Bonnie: I thought you were the chief medical officer.
Jimmy: No, no, I am. And so I thought it was funny because in the business world, that acronym doesn’t mean the same thing. And so yeah, basically, their goal was to have somebody in the management whose responsibility was to have the background in physician finance and to help determine, in part, the direction of the company and holding values.
Because, obviously, I’m more familiar with this space in terms of what physicians want, what physicians think about which players in the market and companies that exist, and whether they are well regarded or not, which insurance agents should we collaborate with to try to help set up our process, that sort of thing.
And so they needed help in the physician finance space. And so my job was to serve in that role, and also to be in some ways the forward-facing physician from the company to help represent Attend. And so it is an interesting name, I agree. Probably the most important name in the startup world, for those that ever consider joining or starting a company, is co-founder. That matters a lot more in that space than chief whatever.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Jimmy: So just so that you’re aware.
Bonnie: Yeah, I know. So to wrap things up, basically you’ve had a very interesting trajectory. So I’m hoping, to those listening, the take away from this is it’s going to take experimenting and actually going after things to figure out what you want. Don’t be afraid to do it. Anything else that you want people to take away from this?
Jimmy: Yeah, you’re about to say the exact same thing that I would say, which is, don’t be afraid to pivot. That’s what kept me stuck for two years, was that I had built a business that made revenue. And so it was very, very hard to pivot from that even though internally everything, I mean, it was the last thing I thought about before going to sleep, it was the first thing I thought about when I woke up was the problem that my business had that I couldn’t solve.
And yeah, I stayed there for 18 months, two years. So don’t be afraid to try that, to have that hypothesis, like you said. Don’t be afraid to pivot.
Bonnie: Yeah. Since most people listening don’t have a business and may not have an interest, I think everything we’ve talked about is applicable to what you’re doing now in medicine. And I think even in all traditional careers we have this belief that we should be doing this forever.
So anesthesiology, this is what I’m going to do forever and that’s just the way it goes. I think it’s becoming more popular to know that people do pivot. Like there’s more examples of that. But I still think it’s a foreign idea to many people because I think we have this deep-seated inclination or belief that we should be a doctor forever. And if we don’t, that’s bad and you could feel guilty.
We could talk about this forever, but that’s kind of what I want people to take away if they are full-time medicine and maybe don’t really want to start a business. But don’t be afraid to pivot, even within medicine. Like I know people who are still 100% full-time doctors, but their practice looks different than what it used to be. Maybe they’re half-time but doing expert witness on the site to give themselves more flexibility.
And so what people want or what you want, people listening, it’s going to change over time and don’t be afraid. Like don’t make that wrong and don’t be afraid to try something else.
Jimmy: Couldn’t agree more.
Bonnie: Yeah. Okay, thanks so much for being here. How can people find you?
Jimmy: Yeah, so people can find me and Attend, it’s at HelloAttend.com. If they like listening to podcasts, Money Meets Medicine is out there. I host that with Dr. Lisha Taylor. And I’m on Twitter, it’s probably the most active place that I am social media wise, and it’s TPP_MD from the days of yore.
Bonnie: Awesome. Thanks so much for being here. Jimmy.
Jimmy: Thanks for having me, Bonnie. This was a ton of fun.
Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at wealthymommd.com. See you next week.
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175: Emotional Wealth vs. Material Wealth
Last week’s episode was all about how your net worth has nothing to do with your inherent worth as a human being. This got me thinking about a previous episode that will help really drive this point home. It’s all about emotional wealth versus material wealth, and it’s a super important lesson.
Being wealthy is about more than having tons of cash. There is so much that contributes to our overall wealth, and one of those things is how emotionally wealthy we are. A lot of us go through life thinking we have no control over our emotions and our experiences, and this leads to emotional poverty, which actually has a huge impact on your ability to build material wealth. It’s time to start building that emotional wealth.
Tune in this week to discover how to begin building the financial foundation of emotional wealth. I’m sharing how a lack of emotional wealth affects your wallet, and what you can do about it, so you can begin building success from a place of Wealth Confidence.
Learn more about Live Wealthy, an exclusive coaching program designed for successful women who want to be confident.... and be rich.
What You'll Learn from this Episode:
- What it means to be in emotional poverty versus being emotionally wealthy.
- Why you’re allowed to be happy, no matter how much money you have.
- How to start moving from emotional poverty to emotional wealth.
- What you can do to take your emotional wealth and use it to cultivate Wealth Confidence.
- How Wealth Confidence is the best-kept secret for helping you create financial wealth.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.
Hey everyone. So this episode is coming right after – I was going to say the one last week, duh. But the topic was on how your net worth is not related to your inherent worth. And so I thought episode number 60 would be a great additional episode to listen to to kind of fill in the gaps. It’s about emotional wealth and material wealth, and so it really rounds out the conversation that I was having last week.
So even if you’ve listened to this before, it’s episode 60 so it was well over a year ago, listen with a new lens. Also, you’re a different person than you were when you first listened to it if you listened to it when it actually came out. And actually, that skill of listening to the same thing or actually reading the same book, I actually have an opinion on that I’ll say in a second, you will learn new things and you will understand things differently than when you first heard it.
And regarding the comment I made about books, one thing that annoys me a little bit is that people will often post about how many books they’ve read or they’ll list like ten books or even take a picture of the stack of books that they’re going to read this summer or the whole year. Nothing wrong with it, but I think one thing that people don’t do or talk about is reading the same book a few times.
Now, I do that often, mainly because of the types of books I read. I don’t really read stories or fiction, to be honest, mostly nonfiction. And I will reread certain sections or even the whole book multiple times or even listen to the audiobook. And here are a few reasons why. I learn it better, it’s kind of like studying something new. Generally speaking unless you’re crazy smart or have a photographic memory you don’t really fully absorb it the first time around, right?
And then I always get different insights when I read it again. And if some time has passed, then my brain is literally different. I have grown as a person, the way I think has changed and so I will literally read it and hear and learn something different even if I’ve read that sentence or even if I remember that sentence from before.
And so whether or not you’re new to this podcast or not, I do recommend relistening to some of those episodes that maybe you remember were impactful. Or if there’s a topic that you really want to learn more about, even if you’ve listened to it before, I really encourage you to do that. I do that all the time with a lot of the podcasts that I listen to.
All right, so here is that episode.
Welcome to episode 60. So, very recently I did a live training called How to Create Wealth Without Seeing More Patients. I hope you were there. If not, I’ll probably do this live workshop again in June. And I plan to do a live workshop several more times before the end of the year.
So, if you didn’t catch me, you can definitely catch me in the future. And so, one of the things I talked about during that workshop I wanted to spend a whole podcast episode on because I think it’s so important to talk about.
And so, what got me thinking about this was actually a podcast episode that my business coach does, Stacey Boehman. And it was the podcast on emotional wealth versus material wealth or something like that.
And so, obviously I coach on money and I talk a lot about wealth. And usually it’s in the context of material wealth or external wealth. And so, I wanted to kind of break down the word wealth a bit.
I know I’ve talked about it on a previous episode where I talked about how the book that’s coming out this fall is called Defining Wealth for Women: Peace, Purpose, and Plenty of Cash. And I really want to focus on that peace part.
Because the reason why I chose that word is it comes from peace of mind. And to me, that represents not just peace, but emotional peace or emotional wealth. And so, emotional wealth is separate from material wealth. But when I think about the word wealth, I think of it as an all-encompassing term to not just talk about the money side, but all of it. Because what’s the point of being rich if you are empty inside? And so, first let’s define what emotional wealth is.
And so, the way that Stacey defined it and the way that I define it are very similar. It’s having agency over my brain, my emotions, and the overall experience of my life. Now, notice I said experience, and my emotions, not what my life actually is in terms of the outside stuff, the material stuff, the external stuff, like my status, how much money I have or make or whether I’m married, et cetera.
Emotional wealth is knowing deep in your bones that you do not need the house, the guy, the money to be happy and content in your life. And it’s because you know that those things don’t create your internal wealth, your internal happiness.
Because at the end of the day, you know that you can handle any emotion, negative and positive. It’s knowing that you can think for yourself, take responsibility for yourself, and that you’re able to intentionally decide what and how you want to do it. It’s about knowing how to enjoy yourself, your life, no matter what the actual external circumstances are.
And it’s enjoying and being present to all of it right now versus waiting for money or some other milestone, like getting married or having kids to finally enjoy your life and feel like you’ve actually arrived. Because newsflash, you have arrived.
Now, I know that was a lot in terms of the definition, but now let’s contrast this to being in emotional poverty.
Emotional poverty is when basically you’re overall not happy and you have an overall net negative experience of your life. And you think it’s because life is happening to you versus for you. Those two words, to you versus for you, they really change everything.
We all know people who think that life is happening to them, they can’t get a break, and that nothing is their fault. They are at the mercy of all the things happening a certain way to feel good, to feel good about themselves. They’re at the mercy of how other people behave around them so that they can feel good because they aren’t telling themselves what they need to hear.
And listen, I’m not saying this is a bad thing. We all have moments like this. and I’ll say, as women, we’re specifically socialized to place a lot of emphasis on what other people think about us, really valuing what they think of us.
And the truth is none of us go to emotion school or brain school. None of us learn how our brains work. We don’t really learn how to manage our minds or emotions.
A lot of us go through life thinking we have no control over our thoughts, our emotions, and we don’t know how to change our experience of the world. And so, of course, the antidote to this is what I have coined Wealth Confidence.
And so, what’s Wealth Confidence? It’s my fun take on emotional wealth, which I talked about already, plus self-confidence. So, emotional wealth plus self-confidence equals Wealth Confidence.
Now, let’s define self-confidence because it’s probably not what you think it is. Self-confidence is different than feeling confident. Let me explain. Self-confidence comes down to this. It’s about knowing who you are, trusting yourself completely, and having your own back. Which means you have a high opinion about yourself.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you’re arrogant. I think a lot of people think, like, if you think highly of yourself, that’s being arrogant. But being arrogant is about putting other people down to feel better about yourself and it’s actually based on low self-confidence.
But self-confidence is being sure in who you are and loving yourself unconditionally. And in fact, when you’re self-confident, it’s like the complete opposite of being arrogant because you’re not saying, “I’m awesome and you’re not awesome.” You’re basically saying, “I’m awesome and you’re awesome too.”
And so, why am I even talking about this? What does this have to do with material wealth? Like, “Yeah, this sounds nice, but I really want the money.”
What if I told you that the key to creating lots of material wealth was actually to come into emotional wealth, into Wealth Confidence first? Because if you keep thinking that you’re going to feel better about yourself, trust yourself, feel more secure once you have the money, that’s just simply not true.
Money, at the end of the day, is a circumstance. And circumstances don’t create our thoughts and feelings. Feeling secure, having peace of mind, feeling self-confident, it comes from inside. It doesn’t come from the outside. And I’ll tell you, it really sucks to have a lot of money and to be in emotional poverty.
And another part of Wealth Confidence is really being present to what you have already. Because how many of us achieve something and then we’re like, we don’t even stop to appreciate it because we’re onto the next thing already?
Because basically it’s like, “Well, it could be better. It’s not good enough.” And the thing is, nothing will ever feel enough. Nothing will ever feel like you’ve arrived if you keep thinking that way.
And so, the problem I see in my clients who are trying to increase their self-confidence is they look to their past to see if they’re allowed to feel self-confident. And like I said, self-confidence comes from within. It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do in the past.
Having self-confidence doesn’t mean that you’re going to crush everything in the future and never fail. It’s about knowing that you are capable of achieving whatever you are capable of and also knowing that if you do fail, nothing’s gone wrong and you can pick yourself back up because you have your own back. You’re not relying on the external achievement to feel good about yourself. Because you already feel good about yourself.
You already know that you’re 100% worthy and you don’t need to do anything to show yourself that because you already have that. And when you have true Wealth Confidence, you really become unstoppable on being able to create whatever you want to create, accomplish, accumulate.
And of course, that includes money because here’s the thing; creating wealth, lots of wealth, requires self-confidence. It requires Wealth Confidence. It requires you to be able to trust yourself. It requires you to be able to pick yourself up when you do fall – because you will – that you have your own back, that you can experience the negative emotions of not creating what you’ve created and keep going.
Otherwise, you’re going to never take risk. You’re going to never try something new. And then you’re going to regret things 10, 20, 30 years in the future. And so, I invite all of you listening to ask yourself, “How can I create more Wealth Confidence today? How can I learn how to trust myself more? How can I have my own back? How do I already have self-confidence in myself? how can I create more?”
And well, of course, you know I’m going to say, the secret to that is getting coached and self-coaching and intentional thought creation. And so, I believe this episode comes out before the end of May, and so I wanted to make sure that you know that I’ll be starting my live self-coaching master course starting the first week of June, or the last week of May, I think it’s the same week.
And so, that is a four-part live workshop slash course I’m doing inside of Money for Women Physicians. Which is a program that helps you create not just material wealth but emotional wealth, or Wealth Confidence. Because they’re so tied together.
And so, learning how to self-coach yourself is the first step. Learning and being aware of your thoughts and feelings that you might be having on default, and then deciding on purpose what you want to think and feel about yourself going forward. Because you get to decide what you think and feel going forward.
It doesn’t matter what you have or what you don’t have. There’s no belief police, there’s no thought police. You can think whatever you want. And so, I invite you to join the program so that you can get started and get started in the self-coaching mastery course and start creating your emotional wealth, your Wealth Confidence right away. I will talk to you ladies next week.
Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at wealthymommd.com. See you next week.
Get started on your journey to wealth by getting the best selling book: Defining Wealth for Women.
For media or speaking inquiries please click here.
For all other inquiries please click here.
174: Untangling Your Net Worth and Your Inherent Worth
As humans, we have a tendency to compare. You may have read about or even heard me talking about the idea of "compare and despair." We often compare ourselves to other people, especially when it comes to money. However, my message to you this week is: your net worth has nothing to do with your worth as a human.
Your net worth and your worth as a human are entirely unrelated, but I personally know how easy it is to think these two things are connected. Before you spiral into shame about your peers appearing more financially successful than you, tune in this week to discover why it’s a natural thing to do and how to recognize your inherent worth as a human being.
Tune in this week to discover why your net worth has nothing to do with your actual worth as a human being. I'm sharing what I mean when I talk about your worth as a human, explaining why we often intertwine net worth and human worth, and most importantly, how to untangle your net worth from your inherent worth as a human being.
Learn more about Live Wealthy, an exclusive coaching program designed for successful women who want to be confident.... and be rich.
What You'll Learn from this Episode:
- Why, as humans, we compare ourselves to others.
- How we think comparison helps us understand who we are.
- The power of intentional gratitude and appreciation.
- Why your net worth has nothing to do with your worth as a human being.
- How to see that you are inherently worthy as a human being.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Follow me on Instagram
- Calm App
- Tamara Levitt
- Brené Brown
Welcome to the Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode. So today’s topic is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I needed to kind of make sense of it and think about it in a way that would make sense to you. And, coincidentally, I’ve just been listening to this gratitude masterclass.
Many of you are probably familiar with the app Calm, C-A-L-M, and it’s a meditation app, but it has so much more than just meditations. It has music, it has things for kids. And they have little master classes that are short. And the one I’m listening to is the gratitude masterclass with Tamara Levitt. And, first of all, I’ve just got to say I really love anything by Tamara. I hope I’m pronouncing it right.
I almost always do her daily meditation, and it’s about 10 minutes, so super quick and easy to do and a great way to get started if you’re new to meditation, right? 10 minutes isn’t too long and I’m sure you have 10 minutes in your day that you can do that.
Anyway, so I started listening to her gratitude masterclass. I’ve had a not so great relationship to gratitude. I’m pretty sure I’ve learned since forever that it’s good to give thanks. That was mainly rooted in my early very Christian upbringing. But even in my early 20s I remember someone telling me to practice gratitude.
Now, personally, I think the word gratitude has some very negative connotations because of growing up in a church and church trauma is the best way to describe it. And I have noticed that I have a resistance to practicing gratitude. And so listening to this masterclass has been really eye-opening because she doesn’t just just say, hey, you should do this and hey, here’s how to get started.
She gives you a lot of background, why it’s hard for us and lots of interesting things that if you’re listening to me right now, I’m pretty sure you’ll find it great as well. By the way, the Calm app I think is around $80 a year, maybe $100. I think it’s well worth it. I’m pretty sure they have a free trial as well.
Now, the reason why I’m mentioning it is one of the things she talks about is our tendency to compare. Now, I’m sure you know this, I’m sure you’ve already read some things about this, you may have even heard me say the phrase compare and despair. And so the reason why I bring this up is because a lot of us do compare ourselves to other people when it comes to money.
And so here’s the phrase that I want you to memorize. Your net worth has nothing to do with your worth as a human. They are literally unrelated. And I also know how easy it is to think they are, basically seeing someone either more financially successful than you. And the thing is, we’re sort of making these judgments haphazardly, like maybe your friend just bought a vacation home and the vacation home looks amazing. That actually happened to me recently.
Or someone’s business is making a lot more money than you. These are basically examples from my life. Someone living in a bigger house or taking better vacations, all so normal. It is our brain’s tendency to always compare ourselves socially.
In fact, Tamara talks about this and sort of the brain science behind it. And one of the things she said that I hadn’t heard before is that part of the reason why we compare ourselves, and apparently it’s called social comparison theory, is that it helps us understand who we are.
And more importantly, and I’ve heard this before, is that comparing yourself socially is an evolutionary impulse. And what I gathered from that phrase, and also I’ve heard Brene Brown say this, is that you literally cannot help doing it. Meaning there’s nothing wrong with you. There’s no reason to judge yourself if you are doing this. And not even if, when you do this, right? Because you will, it’s just natural.
And basically she was saying the antidote to this is intentional gratitude and intentional appreciation. I’ll let you listen to that masterclass on your own, but you’re going to love it because she goes into much more detail. But what I wanted to focus on today is to really break down what I just said earlier about your net worth has nothing to do with your actual worth as a human being.
And what I mean by your worth as a human being, you may also want to think about it as like your self-esteem or how you feel about yourself or your confidence level. And so here’s what I mean by the two things being completely unrelated. It’s like saying this, that the number of apples you have has something to do with how great your hair is.
Now, that just seems really crazy to even put the two things in the same sentence. But this is how unrelated your net worth is, when it comes to your inherent worth as a human being. And so one thing you may have heard, but I think it’s always worth hearing again, is that all of us are inherently worthy.
Meaning before you ever do achieve or acquire anything, you are worthy. You were born 100% worthy. Now, I used to have a lot of trouble with this concept because I think, and maybe you, because I think it’s so easy to fall into the trap that our worthiness depends on what we provide or the value that we give to other people.
But notice that that is hinging your worth on something outside of you. And so if you are having trouble believing what I just said, it’s okay. I think a lot of us don’t. Because, like I said, we think our worth is somehow earned and that is just not true. And that thinking right there, obviously, feeds into why most of us think that the state of our finances has something to do with our worth, or how we feel about ourselves.
So I think it’s pretty obvious how you can tell that you’re collapsing the two, but let me just give you some concrete examples. And these aren’t just money specific situations. So it could be as simple as feeling embarrassed about your current numbers. That could be the balance in your checking account, your current net worth, et cetera.
I see this a lot when women join my program, Live Wealthy. They just assume that everyone has their stuff together or that everyone doesn’t feel as embarrassed or alone when it comes to really not understanding money. It could be something like feeling bad about yourself if you’re single when all of your friends are paired up because you want to be paired up as well. By the way, this was definitely me in my 30s.
So I want you to notice whether it comes to your weight, or how you look, the amount of money you have, the amount of money your business is making, the amount of debt that you have. Your status if you’re partnered up or not, whether you have children or not. Your friendships, whether you have them, whether you think you should have more, whether you want different types of friends.
One thing I’ve noticed having thought about this for a long time is that these are basically societal expectations. And we’ve all basically just believed that these are things that we should want and if we don’t have them, somehow our status in society is lower.
Now, I want you to really ask yourself this honest question. Do you actually value having these things? It’s either going to be yes or no. And if the answer is yes and if you’re feeling less than because you don’t have it, I want you to notice what you like about where you are now. This is sort of going back to the gratitude practice that I talked about. But really, it’s about intentionally looking at what you already have.
What can you appreciate about where you are? Because, again, it’s so normal for our brains to focus on what we don’t have and what’s missing. Now, personally, I find it really hard to do this practice. In fact, I was doing some journaling today after listening to the masterclass that I talked about. And here are some thoughts I actually wrote out that were coming out from my brain.
Basically, I was noticing my resistance to practicing gratitude. And what I mean by practicing is at that specific moment I was wanting to write down a few things. And so I asked myself, what is this resistance about? And what immediately came to my attention was that it seems silly and indulgent. And then it became a judgment of myself. Well, I should be grateful. I know there are so many things to be grateful for. So therefore, because I’m having trouble doing this exercise, I am clearly ungrateful.
Anyway, I went into this little spiral and I was noticing this going on in my brain. And what I realized is that simply my brain has just been trained to focus on the negativity, on what’s missing, on why it’s bad that, I don’t know, my business isn’t making as much money as someone else or my net worth should be higher. I should be living in a bigger place, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, one thing Tamara said that actually really helped me today is what I said earlier, that I should be grateful, I have so much to be grateful and because I’m not, I’m a bad person. That was basically the narrative going inside my head. One thing she said that really kind of shifted things for myself is when I have in the few times written down things I’m grateful for, it was very nonspecific.
And so she actually said to be very, very specific. So let me give you an example. So when I would do these types of practices, she also said start with something right in front of you. Don’t try to find something profound et cetera. It could be as simple as, let me just give you a very simple example just in case you might have trouble verbalizing this as well.
You could write, I’m grateful for the cup of coffee I just had. Notice, if you think that’s kind of a silly thing to feel grateful for. Like it’s obvious or whatever. But to make it more specific it could be something like, I love the five minutes of quiet time that I had with coffee that I love to drink in my favorite mug. I’m just literally making this up on the fly.
So here are some things I literally wrote down just like 20 minutes ago. And, again, this is honestly a new practice for me. I have attempted to do this many, many times. And I’ll do it for a day or two, then I’ll stop. And I think a lot of it’s because of my resistance. So here’s one of the things I wrote down.
Now, while I was writing these things down, I happened to be at my kitchen table and so I wrote down I’m grateful for sitting down in this comfortable chair at my kitchen table. And I have a corner apartment, so there’s lots of sun. And at that moment, it was very sunny and the sun was streaming in. And I’m grateful for this journal that I have for writing in. So if you’re new to this practice, like I am, that’s what I would focus on, simple things right in front of you.
Here’s another just random example that I’m thinking of. I’m so grateful that someone invented the microphone, so that I could be recording this podcast right now. Someone invented it, someone created this specific model, someone literally put it together. And someone put it in a box and shipped it to me. And also how crazy it is that I can order something and have it shipped to me right to my door,
So do you see where I’m going with this? The more specific you can be, it just paints a more visual specific picture in your mind. Okay, so bringing it back to the main message that I want to talk about today, which is that your net worth has nothing to do with your inherent worth, the state of your finances, whatever you want to say. I actually personally don’t think net worth is the best measure of the state of our finances.
But notice if you’re feeling less than because of where you are financially compared to where someone else might be. Whether it’s wishing you could take as many vacations as them. Whether it’s wishing you could, I don’t know, have more free time or have more time off in order to do whatever you want. Whether it’s someone saying that their student loans are paid off and you wishing that you did as well.
I just want you to notice when that’s happening. Just notice what you’re telling yourself about it and notice if you start feeling bad about yourself. I’m just guessing you do if you’re having those types of thoughts about how if your finances are not as good as theirs, then that’s bad and that’s a reason to feel bad about yourself.
So that’s really the first step, is noticing that you’re doing this. And then just like any time I coach a client, notice that you’re the one telling yourself that. It’s not the truth. It doesn’t matter if someone actually says that to you, although that would be weird if someone did. Like, oh, you definitely don’t have your money shit together because of XYZ. People don’t say that generally. And even if they did, who cares? They’re not you. What they say has really nothing to do with how you should feel about yourself.
And then I want you to tell yourself, my current numbers have nothing to do with my value, with how I can think about myself, with my confidence. It doesn’t mean anything bad about me.
Now, when I first heard this concept, it made sense to me logically but I still found it really hard. So that’s okay if this is you, but I just want you to start sort of wiggling that fixed belief that they’re related and just consider that maybe, just maybe they’re not related and that you don’t need to use the state of your finances against you. Okay? All right, bye.
Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you love what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at wealthymommd.com. See you next week.
Get started on your journey to wealth by getting the best selling book: Defining Wealth for Women.
For media or speaking inquiries please click here.
For all other inquiries please click here.
173: Stop Taking Your Charting Home with Dr. Sarah Smith
One of the biggest complaints I hear from physicians is dealing with charting. Many of you find yourselves charting at night and on weekends, spending hours on it without getting paid. It’s the bane of a physician’s existence. But did you know that it’s possible to get your charting done before you get home? If you think that sounds unrealistic, this episode is for you.
Sarah Smith is a Charting Coach for Physicians, as well as a practicing Rural Family Physician in Alberta, Canada. She has helped over 150 physicians in the specific area of getting their charting done before going home. Sarah has a passion for reducing burnout and uses evidence-based coaching to help clinical physicians find simple solutions within their clinical environments.
If you want to know how to stop bringing your charting work home with you without diminishing the quality of your notes and patient care, tune in this week for my conversation with Dr. Sarah Smith. We’re discussing the cost of doing your charting in your free time, the barriers stopping you from doing your charting during clinical hours, and Sarah’s tips for making changes to how you do your charting.
Learn more about Live Wealthy, an exclusive coaching program designed for successful women who want to be confident.... and be rich.
What You'll Learn from this Episode:
- How charting is a serious contributor to physician burnout.
- Why you don’t need to take your charting home.
- What you’re missing out on when you’re taking your charting work home.
- How to see the language you’re using that’s costing you valuable time with your patients.
- The top barriers stopping physicians from getting their charting done during clinical time.
- Why your value is not only your time.
- How to approach the idea of getting your charting done before you get home.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Follow me on Instagram
- Dr. Sarah Smith: Website | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Podcast
- Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
- 170: Building a Practice You Love with Dr. Nitin Gupta
Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.
Hey everyone. So today’s special guest is a friend of mine, Dr. Sarah Smith. And I know that one of the biggest complaints I hear from all physicians is charting. Charting at night, charting on weekends, charting for hours and not getting paid for it. It is the bane of so many of our existences. And did you know that it’s possible to get your charts done before you get home?
When I say this to a lot of people, they say, “I wish.” And they don’t quite believe it’s possible. I’m here to tell you that it is because I’ve talked to so many physicians who have worked with Sarah or another charting coach, yes charting coaches exist, who have literally revolutionized their time. Meaning they’ve freed up so much time because they’re not charting.
And so I’ve had Dr. Sarah Smith inside my paid program, Live Wealthy. She’s probably the most popular guest coach because who doesn’t want to stop charting at night? And I don’t think I need to say this, it’s obvious, but this is definitely one of the things that makes physicians really unhappy and contributes to burnout because when you’re working all the time, not being able to give yourself to the people that you love, to things that you love, your life suffers.
And so I’m excited that she’s here because I know you’re going to get so much value out of it. And if you are a physician who is struggling big time with charts, I just want you to be open that it is possible to stop charting at night without diminishing the quality of your notes or diminishing the quality of your patient visits.
All right, here’s my conversation with Sarah.
Bonnie: Well, hi, Sarah. Thank you so much for being here.
Sarah: Thank you for having me.
Bonnie: All right, so why don’t you introduce yourself.
Sarah: So I am Sarah Smith. I’m a family physician in Edson, Alberta, which is a rural town. I’m also a charting coach, so I help physicians and clinicians get home with today’s work done. And that can include any aspect of the clinical day, not just the charting.
It can look at the interruptions that are happening, our workflow, the work of the day, anything about the day that is stopping them getting home with the work of the day completed. So that is the work that I do in the world in regards to physicians.
Bonnie: Awesome. Well, obviously, this is so needed. And I have so many questions to ask because I know most of the people listening who are physicians or anyone who charts, right, it’s not just limited to doctors, they’re like, is it really possible to chart less? Because when I tell people that you exist, some people are like, “Oh my God, I need her.” But then I do have skeptical doctors who don’t even consider that this is a possibility. So I’m sure you’ve seen the whole range.
Okay, so I wanted to get a bit more background on you. How did you decide to do this?
Sarah: So I was a family physician working in Australia and within those first few years of doing family medicine I realized that we have a paperwork problem. I was often the bottleneck when it came to getting forms completed.
I may have had staff that could put the required pieces together to go with the document, but getting the actual work of it done, staying late at the end of clinic. I knew the security code on every clinic that I worked in because I was often the last to leave because I was sitting there doing my notes from the day.
And then on weekends I would come in and do my work because at that point we couldn’t access EMRs from home. That was kind of a little bit later on. So this was 15 years as a family physician. Still not sure what time I would be home, knowing that if I was home I wasn’t done, that I was collecting this backlog of work that would then have to be done at some point.
Going away on holidays was a particular nightmare because we would have to kind of have everything up-to-date and emptied in order to be able to go away. But I’ve even heard the horror stories of people taking charts with them on holidays or during work while they’re on holidays.
So I understood that it was a big problem. And I had asked my mentors along the way, how do we do this paperwork bit? Like how do we get the charts done? And the answer was always to come in on Sunday. Come in on Sunday and get it done.
That was it. That was the answer. So we moved then. So we traveled around Australia for a couple of years, which was really great. Made some memories, traveled as a family, semi-retired, super great. And then I went to Canada doing full-scope family medicine, plus emergency, plus inpatient work. And this problem followed me.
So the minute I started seeing patients in the clinic, my own patients, I would have this same dilemma. When am I going to be home? I would get a text, when are you home? Knowing that I wasn’t done, that I was late again. Feeling completely useless that I still had work left to do at the end of the day, trying to figure out how do we do this? How do we actually figure it out?
And then my eldest child was in grade 10 and I remember them sitting in the lounge room chatting about university. And I was on my way to my study to do my charts and I thought, I’m going to miss out on his last two years at home if I don’t figure this out. So that is how I ended up in this work, I had to figure it out for me first.
Bonnie: That’s such a compelling story. But also I just wanted to acknowledge that you decided to problem solve for this, right? Because I know so many, you know, we have this culture in medicine of, I’m sure you’ve heard, learned helplessness and that we can’t do anything about it because everyone else is struggling. Your mentor said this is just how it is, come on a weekend.
Sarah: That’s right, this is normal.
Bonnie: Yeah. And so just kudos to you, like there must be a solution I’m going to figure it out. I mean, that was the driving force, right, to make this happen.
Sarah: Well, no, actually, just like you said earlier, this is impossible, right? It’s an unsolvable puzzle. That is exactly how I thought at the beginning. So skeptical, I get it because there was no way I thought there was any way of doing it differently. Clearly, after 20 years of doing this if I didn’t know how to do it, I was never going to know how to do it, right?
Bonnie: Totally.
Sarah: Completely unsolvable puzzle. And I had read any article that had come out about efficiency, about the paperwork problem, about the administrative era and the administrative load on family doctors. Specifically at that point I was looking at family doctors. And even trying to do some of the things that were said in there, like see less patients. I mean, come on, I’m a single income earner for a family. I can’t just drop the patient load. I have no other way of making income.
So I had to stay where I was because there wasn’t anywhere else to work in town. Stay where I was, keep doing medicine, keep seeing the same number of patients that I was seeing in a day and get home after the last patient with everything done. That was my impossible mission. Mission Impossible. And I was not going to let it go this time. I am going to figure this out.
Bonnie: Well, speaking of Mission Impossible, you know the new one just came out, right?
Sarah: Haven’t seen it yet.
Bonnie: Yeah, I saw it. I’m a big fan of Mission Impossible and funny movies and actions. Yeah, so I saw it last week. I mean, it’s fantastic. It’s even better than the old ones. I also don’t understand how Tom Cruise doesn’t seem to age. But that’s a whole nother discussion.
Sarah: He has a lot of money.
Bonnie: Yes, but his work is very natural. Anyway, that’s a whole nother discussion.
Sarah: That is right.
Bonnie: I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone listening that all of this charting after hours, weekends, nights, is definitely contributing to physicians being really unhappy and to burnout. So I think it’s obvious, but I’m wondering if you just have anything else to say about that?
Sarah: Yeah. So the cost is huge. So when we think about what is it costing us, so I’ve heard this said before as well and it was true for me. I didn’t think it was hurting anyone to chart in the evening and to chart on Saturday morning and to spend all weekend with paperwork, right? But it was unpaid work. You’ve earned the money in the room with the patient and so now you’re adding hours without adding income for most of the work.
Now, some doctors are getting paid for some of that work or all of that work. But still, it’s costing you life. It’s costing you time with your family. It’s costing you time with your kids. It’s costing you exercise, ability to sit and watch a movie guilt free, have hobbies, other interests outside of medicine. And it’s stopping the ability to rest well.
I mean I was up till midnight or I was getting up at four to get the work done. It’s costing me sleeping time, so then I’m not even as present the next day. I’m not coming in as my best self.
Bonnie: Yeah, well for yourself, your family and for your patients, right?
Sarah: Yeah. If we look at some of the income earned across the different models of payment for physicians, they’re not getting paid any more if they spend 10 minutes or 30 minutes in a room with a patient. And if they then go and spend another 30 minutes doing the paperwork involved in that encounter, they’re really under earning. You don’t want to know what your hourly rate is at that point.
Bonnie: Yeah, I can just imagine. I mean, have you calculated it for yourself?
Sarah: It depends on what your pay model is, right? So it really depends on your pay model. So if you are doing the work, if you’ve doubled the work, then you’re earning – I could have earned if I was in the pain of where I was before, so that was 120-ish an hour earned in the clinic. So then I go spend another hour in the evening doing that work, 60 bucks an hour. Plus, then you’ve got to pay overhead and taxes.
Bonnie: Yeah, you’re making less than my assistant. Like literally. Who is amazing and I try to pay my contractors well. But it’s a little insane, right?
I just had Jack’s pediatrician, the podcast came out, I think, a week or two ago at the time of this recording. So he’s a DPC, which I’m sure you know is the cash only model. And one of the things that pushed him towards creating this as he realized that his – Who was it? Oh, his wife who works in finance, his wife’s assistant was making more than him based on the hourly rate and everything. And he was like, what is going on?
Sarah: That’s right.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah.
Bonnie: So before we go into, obviously, this one podcast is not going to radically change – Well, I don’t know because I’ve had you guest coach in my program and just one hour with my group has really helped them, like because they tell me. You’re like one of the favorite guest coaches, I’m sure, because everyone hates charting. No one is like, oh, it’s not so bad and I don’t want to fix this problem. Like said no doctor ever, right?
Sarah: But what I find interesting, the feedback I got this week was I was in a guest coaching program with somebody else and one of the participants said, “Oh, I thought she was going to be telling me how to chart.” And really that was nothing much to do with it at all. It was more about what are we saying yes to in the room and the cost of time for that yes? So what are we saying yes to later?
So when the patient says, “Oh, by the way, can you refer me to a dermatologist?” I’m picking on that because you are one. And we say yes and then we don’t do it right now, I’ll do that later. As in, oh yeah, that’s a super easy, simple drive-thru question, right? Go to the drive thru, get your quick fix. Patient says I would like a referral to X and you’re like, sure, and you move on.
Then at some point you’ve written down that you were going to refer them to the dermatologist. And then at some point you’re like, oh, I better do that referral. And then you’re like, what was I referring them for? Even which part were they interested in having looked at by the dermatologist? I don’t even remember, now I’ve got to get them on the phone, I’ve got to get them back in.
There’s a cost to doing work later. And since we said yes in the room, now we’ve got to figure out where we’re going to do that work.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Sarah: So when I’m working with physicians or clinicians it’s about what is happening within that encounter? What is the language that we’re using that’s costing us time in the room? Like, how are you today? That’s a three minute question out of your possible eight and a half minutes with the patient. Just noticing how we are paid, therefore and how much time have we got? Because most of the time we don’t have a lot of control over that.
Some of us have all the control, but most of us have zero control over the number of minutes we’re given with a patient. What are we going to do within that encounter? What are we saying yes to? And how are we going to get out of this encounter on time with the work of this encounter today done?
Bonnie: Okay, people listening are probably like, what the hell?
Sarah: That’s right. So this is not how do I get my charts done? This is how do I structure my consultations or my time in the room with a patient or my patient protected time, so that it’s not just the patient is seen and on time, and the documentation of that encounter is completely done. All of it. All of the documentation required to complete that encounter plus the billing, done, then you can move on.
Bonnie: All right.
Sarah: But that’s a skill set. That is a skill set. That is not just a see patient, do note, which is what I teach. See patient, do the chart then move on to the next thing, right? It’s also, well, I don’t have time to do the note. Well, that’s because you said yes to all the things in the room. Now we have to create this whole language and skill set of what do we do about that list that comes in?
Bonnie: Yes. Before we move on, because I know everyone’s like, tell me all the things, Dr. Sarah. I think I know some of the barriers, but what are sort of the top barriers you see to implementing or to actually doing this? I have a few things in my mind, but I’m curious what you say.
Sarah: It’s hard to do new things, right? I’m already running an hour behind, how could I possibly add in the notes as well? My notes take too long. I see patients with really in-depth encounters, like psychiatrists, endocrinologists I hear you. I hear you say that in your head. That my charting is very long for the type of encounters that I have.
Bonnie: Can I pause you for a second?
Sarah: Yeah.
Bonnie: One of my new local friends, I don’t know if she listens to the podcast, but she’s an endocrinologist and she said the same thing. She charts like till 2am she told me.
Sarah: Yeah.
Bonnie: She’s like, well, I have to really think about it. This is not something I can just flippantly decide. That’s what she told me, literally verbatim.
Sarah: That’s right. And so we’re helping the physician who is in their workplace right now and with the struggles that they currently have. So your friend who’s working till two in the morning to do her charts. Now we’re going backwards and saying, okay, why? What is it about that encounter? What is it about this note? What’s happening right now? And how can we start to make the changes that she is comfortable making?
So this is not my way for all. This is what is your most simple solution? How do we help you figure out your clinical day in the environment you’re in with the concrete pieces of your day that you can’t change? Like how with the staff you have, the patient load that you have, the type of encounters you have, even then how can we start to do things differently so that you can have life outside of medicine? Creating time for you or improving your income, whatever it is your goal that you’re going for.
Because they come in with all the goals. I love it. They come in saying I want to be home at five with everything done. You’re like, great, let’s do it. What is your current experience? Well, it’s leaving at nine. Okay, we’ve got to find you four hours, let’s go.
Bonnie: Yeah. I also think, I’m sure you see, because you also have men that you coach, right? Yeah, I’m wondering, especially since I talk a lot about how women are socialized, I’m guessing that women might have a harder time with this because we want to say yes to everything.
Sarah: So the men also have very similar issues who are coming inside the program. They are coming in to learn the same skill set. They come in with a list, now what? They’re working in the evenings and weekends, too. I mean, my mentors were men who were telling me to come in on Sunday.
Bonnie: I think I told you that I didn’t quite have to chart because I basically finished the chart, and I had a scribe which helped, but still they don’t do everything correctly. And I think once or twice I brought the charts home and to me, this was a while ago so I’m probably remembering it a little bit wrong. But I think I just got a little lazy that day, in terms of charting and finishing every room. And then I brought them home and I was like, never again. Because I would forget details.
Sarah: Yeah, you forget details. Exactly. And that’s why it takes so much longer when you’re doing it that evening, this weekend, in three weeks time, in three months time. Like this is part of the difficulty of having this leftover work. Like that referral that I said yes to and I can’t even remember which knee it was that I was referring them for. Or was it the knee or were they actually wanting the shoulder?
That is an additional piece of guilt and shame that you put on yourself. Having to call the mother and say, what did I see your kid for last week? I wrote nothing down. I don’t know what happened but the whole thing, you know, that is an extra heavy mental burden for the person seeing the patients, right?
Bonnie: Yeah, and probably, I’m just guessing, I think damage is a strong word, but probably the patient is like, what?
Sarah: I like to say it like this, if you went to the lawyer or the accountant and you spent an hour with them and they wrote nothing down while you were in the room. Let’s say it’s the accountant, they wrote nothing down while you were there. How much do you trust them?
Bonnie: Such a good question, I never thought about that. I have a CPA, but I don’t think that’s the problem. But yeah.
Sarah: If they wrote nothing down, your goals, your wishes, your dreams, your current financial position. None of it they wrote down.
Bonnie: Yeah, it’s like how can they do great service for you if they don’t keep track of that? I mean, I think this is kind of going on the side but it’s like I personally have an issue with remembering things. So I really have to write things down or I just literally forget. There’s a running joke in my family about how bad I am around this. But yeah, if I don’t write down a few notes, I literally don’t remember how that meeting went.
And if I don’t take the action based on the meeting, like, okay, I need to do XYZ, because I’m like, oh, I can do it later. So it’s similar, but I’m not charting.
Sarah: Yeah.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Sarah: So the working memory for physicians they’ve studied, and they’ve studied the working memory of people in healthcare, but physicians particularly. We have very amazing brains. We can remember a lot, a lot, a lot in a working day. Incredible. Like clinical decision making, medical decision making is really high-level work. But we can also keep, Mary wants this and Jack from patient number two wants that, and you’re going to remember to do the note for that, but it’s taking away our focus.
So we can do it. We’re very well practiced, those of us who are putting things off to later. We’re very well practiced at keeping a lot of information in there. Incredible. And how much easier is it as we walk into patient eight of the day and all of the work behind us is done? It just frees up so much more of that problem solving brain.
Bonnie: Okay, let’s talk about, you kind of said something earlier about – First of all, I’m just so impressed that you were like, the how are you is a three minute conversation and getting the charts done before the next patient.
And so we talked a little bit about how people might react to that, because some doctors are like but I want to ask how are you. I want to have that chit chat. And how can I finish the chart in the room because I’m going to be running late? So you want to break that down a little bit?
Sarah: Yeah. So our relationship with our patients is not necessarily that social interaction every time, right? We are there to be able to help them with their clinical questions for today. When we derail them with the how are you, they also start using a different part of their brain to answer that question.
So they were all ready for you, ready to tell you about their knee and their shoulder and whatever else they brought in for you today. And we say how are you? And they’re like pause, that leaves, find that question, find that answer, give you the answer, chit chat, now what are we here for today?
Whereas if we move straight into the, hey, what are we here for today, we get to the nuts and bolts of the problem. If you’re running well on time and you want to have a chit chat or you finish your note, by all means. You get to do medicine your way, but it can sound different to how it is right now.
Bonnie: So it sounds like if you want to have that sort of few minutes of social interaction, do it at the end. That’s what I’m hearing.
Sarah: Or don’t do it with every patient every time.
Bonnie: Yes. Okay. And I can see people just having thoughts about that, right?
Sarah: Of course. Of course, if a part of the change is, ooh, no, that’s not something I want to do, then don’t. This is your consultation. You’re the boss in the room. You’re the one who gets to decide how you’re going to run this space. But some of us have done it the way we’ve done it because that’s what we were taught. We never step back and say, hang on a minute, where did all my minutes go?
Bonnie: No, totally.
Sarah: Some of you will have a knock on the door every encounter. Knock, knock. Hey, Mr. Jones is here, will you still see him? Poof, there goes all your decision making. All the information you were starting to process for that patient in the room and you have to now kind of re-orientate.
Okay, well, Mr. Jones is late. He usually comes in for X, Y, or Zed problem. I need to be at that meeting for five o’clock today. So if I say yes to him, but I’m already running 20 minutes behind, that’s going to put me another half an hour behind. You’re doing all of this stuff in your head before you say yes or no.
Bonnie: Yeah. Well, what I’m hearing is two things, it is basically task switching, which really slows down our brain.
Sarah: Costly.
Bonnie: I’ve read articles about how much extra time that adds, just how many extra minutes, right? Because our brain literally is like, yeah, shifting gears and there’s a cost to that. And the second thing I’m also hearing is the skill of boundaries, right?
And that’s something that, because I do teach that and that is something really hard, I think for everyone, because we’re worried people are going to be pissed. But then if we don’t have boundaries, it’s like you have to have them and then you have to enforce them. We fear that.
Sarah: Yeah, so for that particular instance it’s just simply noticing what they knock on the door for. What are the questions they’re asking? Just start being curious about your day. Just start noticing it from that step back perspective of your day. Say who interrupts me and what do they ask me?
And then when we know the answers to those questions, then we can say who did I need to tell this morning that this afternoon I need to be in a meeting at five. If I’ve got any late patients you have permission to just re-book them so that there’s no knock on the door this afternoon. You have my blessing. Go ahead, go re-book them. When they turn up, you’re like, let’s re-book you.
Bonnie: Yeah, I gave a talk on boundaries at the White Coat Investor Conference and this was one of the things we talked about, how you have to think about what are the boundaries? What you just said is basically like, what are the things I’m getting interrupted for? Create the boundary, and when I say create the boundary, it’s like don’t knock on the door for this, you do this.
And I think part of it is when you haven’t set them and enforced them, it is going to be a little jarring to patients who are used to you doing things. And so there’s going to be some training involved. I have a friend who kind of I really thought about her from the get go. This is like her whole jam, she gives talks on this and the importance of really following through with this, no exceptions.
Sarah: And I’m a little lenient. I say if you have that one patient who caught the bus for two hours to get to you and they see you twice a year. And they brought their son and they need an interpreter and you want to spend an hour in the room with that patient, do so. You are still the decision maker in the room. You might get 15 minutes for that patient and you spend an hour.
But don’t be mad at yourself that you’re now an hour behind. Just know I chose to spend that time with Mary today because I know the circumstances behind her travel to see me. And she’s complex and I wanted to do the five things in the room for her.
But then Jack, who’s next, and he has a 15 minute appointment, maybe today you give him what he needs today and it takes eight and a half minutes and you’re out of the room. Right? So we don’t have to be held by the clock every single time. Your value is not your time.
Bonnie: That is such an important concept because we do feel like we have to spend a certain amount of time because there’s also patient reviews. I don’t know if that’s a thing in Canada, but I’m sure you know in the US patients will ding you for, really for anything.
What’s your answer to patients who feel like they’re not getting enough time?
Sarah: Patients will use up all your time and then still think they don’t have any time with you. You can spend three hours in the room with some patients and they will have all the complaints about how you didn’t spend enough time with them, right? So that is not how we actually please patients. A lot of patients will have no idea how long their appointment was set for or how long it takes to do any of the questions in the room.
I have a quick one for you, they say. I want to talk to you about my headaches. That’s not quick. You know how long it takes you to do a headache inquiry, exam, assessment and plan. That’s not a quick question, just so you know. So that is our job to help them understand I want to do a good job for your headaches, let’s re-book you so I have the time to do quality work for you.
It’s not about me. The patient doesn’t care that I’m an hour behind. The patient doesn’t care that I have a meeting. The patient doesn’t care that I have kid pickup. They have zero interest in me, right? This is about a value proposition for them, okay?
When you go to the hairdresser and you say, hey, I know I booked in for a haircut, but can you color me at the same time? And the hairdresser is like you don’t want a five minute color. We’ll get you back for that, we’ll do a good job.
Bonnie: Yeah, basically the answer is no.
Sarah: But it’s not saying no. It’s saying you do not want a five minute color. And it’s true, you don’t want a five minute color. The hairdresser knows what a five minute color is like, right? You know how long a headache takes. And then the way, the language that we’re using with our patients to help them understand. Yes, we need to talk about your headaches. I need a deep dive into that for you. Let’s re-book you.
So it’s not about just one problem in the room. You are the boss, you get to decide what you’re going to say yes to in the room, but understanding within the context of what I’m given, what am I able to say yes to and what am I deciding is a priority today? Because they might want this form completed, but you really want to dive into that chest pain that they just said something about. And then that discussion that happens that says, hey, we need to really sort that out for you.
Bonnie: Yeah, in my brain I’m like, but patients get pissed if you tell them they have to come back or that you only can solve – Again, they don’t understand how this works. So how do you deal with – I’m thinking about worst-case scenarios if you can’t tell.
Sarah: Well you’re not really because access is a problem, right? So they’re thinking about, well, if I want them back, that’s in a month. But if we really step back and say okay, why is it in a month? Okay, why are we so full that we can’t get them back in for a month? And if we have zero control over how full we are, then what else is available? And how do we help our patients understand what to do if we’re not available?
So sometimes waiting for your doctor in four weeks time is not the right answer and it’s not what I want for you, my patient. I want you to go and get available healthcare. And so me saying, hey, my colleagues are available at the walk-in clinic four days a week. I like all of them. I can read their notes and we can catch up with what happened when I see you next. That is a better message than I am not available for four weeks, so I’ll see you in four weeks.
You might say, you know what? I’d love to dive into that juicy problem you just brought me, but we’re going to do this today because that’s something I can do for you very well. And I know that I can get you back in to have that other thing dealt with. And if we don’t get resolution, then I’ll see you next time.
Bonnie: Yeah. So it sounds like there’s a few skill sets we’re learning. How to literally talk to patients and set up expectations. Okay, let’s talk a bit more about charting because basically what you said about seeing a patient and getting the charting done, do you mean actually getting the charting done so that you don’t actually have to look at it later?
Sarah: It’s completed, yes.
Bonnie: Okay. Let’s talk more about that.
Sarah: Now, it does not have to be a skill that you say I’m going to do tomorrow and you’re a whiz bang at it tomorrow.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Sarah: Because we do things in the way we do them because we’ve done them in the same way for years, right? So we have this method of doing our work and it’s the way we’ve always done it for whatever reason. We don’t need to say it’s good or bad, it’s just not working for us if it’s not done in a timely manner immediately after this encounter.
Do you have to do every patient every day? Not when you’re starting this new skill, right? You might decide I want to give this a whirl, but if the wheels fall off the wagon somewhere, that’s okay, you’re learning a new skill. Give yourself the ability to say, hey, I’m going to fail a bunch of times on the journey towards this goal that I have for myself. I’ll see the patient, and do the note.
Bonnie: Yeah, and as doctors we hate not getting it right away, right?
Sarah: Failing, right. We want to think about it until we know the answer and how to get it perfect, and then we’ll do something. It’s like no, no, no, no.
Bonnie: Yes.
Sarah: So my questions are just about pausing and deciding what’s happening right now. When I’m in the encounter, how much of the work is getting done? Immediately after the encounter what’s already in the file? How long is it going to take me to finish it in the way I do it right now? What is in my note and why?
You know what needs to go in your note, I don’t need to tell you that. You need to give us the important what happened today, the positives and negatives of the assessment that helped you towards the diagnosis or the working diagnosis, your assessment and plan, right?
So what do we need for billing? What do we need for insurance? That’s what needs to go into a chart note. And what else is in there, right? Are we writing a huge document? And why? Like what about that document could be different if you wanted it to be on? How and where could you get that note done if you wanted to?
So if you go back to a pod with eight other people and they’re all going to be talking to you, that is not good thinking time. And some doctors say I need to think about this in order to figure out what’s going on. I need quiet to think. And then I want to tell you, do you? Well how can you create something closer to that in the moment? Where else could you work that could be a little bit more conducive to you being able to pull your thoughts together for that patient?
Bonnie: Right, because if you’re interrupted, it’s clearly going to just take longer.
Sarah: That’s right. The work of charting is not just a you problem, okay? So this is informational continuity to your team, to the people who help you, right? So you might be putting in orders and if they don’t get them right away and they’re waiting on you, maybe you want to get done in a timely manner for your patient, for your staff, whatever.
And, for instance, in the emergency department, if you are leaving all your notes to the end or to tonight, so you’ve just put in a 12 hour shift, you are done. You’re a wreck, your brain is fried. You go home, but think about your colleague going home after a 12 hour shift and charting for four hours. How likely are they to keep coming back every day? And what is that going to cost our department when we’re down another doctor? Dang, that’s expensive.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Sarah: This is not just a you problem. This is an us problem. How do we look after us to get our work done so we keep coming back? This is a sustainability question. If you’re asking a doctor to see 30, 40 patients through a busy clinic like urology or ophthalmology, they see huge volumes. And you expect them to go home and then work? You’re not going to keep them very long. They’re going to be worn out.
So how do we notice our colleagues putting off work and say, hey, I just want to check in, how’s it going? As we see our residents coming through and they’re not getting their work done until midnight, you’re seeing their pajama time charting. You’re like that’s not good for you. I want you sleeping. I want your best brain here tomorrow. This can be an us problem.
So when I’ve talked to teams, like the emergency department as a team, I’m like, hey, listen, guys, charting and documentation is not going to be complete after every encounter because you kind of do it bits and pieces encounter. You see them for a bit, go do some investigations, come back. It’s kind of like three visits. There’s three episodes of charting. You want everything up to where you’re at right now.
Obviously, we can pause because you’re the boss, if you’ve got something bleeding or coding or seizing or crowning, of course.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Sarah: But where can we put you so you can get that chart note done? It’s a you problem, where can I do my work? And it’s a them problem, us problem. If they’re working, I know not to talk to her because she’s in the purple chair, right? How are we looking after each other as well?
Bonnie: I mean, everything you said sounds great. And then, obviously, as you said, we have doctors who probably can’t affect that kind of change in the type of environment that they are. That’s a whole nother discussion.
Sarah: If they want it, they can. That’s the beautiful thing about this. If you want something bad enough, we can make it happen. But it’s that noticing what do I actually want about this? Some people are delighted by charting all weekend. They love it, they don’t want to change. It’s totally fine. I have no problem with you doing you, of course.
Bonnie: Are people really delighted by charting all weekend?
Sarah: They’ve got nothing else because they’ve been doing it so long, they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves on a weekend.
Bonnie: That’s fascinating to me.
Sarah: They choose it. They’re choosing it because it’s what they keep wanting to do. That’s the way they’re working through the week, creating the same result day after day, week after week, year after year. Does it get better? Not unless you actually decide you want something different, then it can change. Otherwise, our brain will do everything on rinse and repeat because that’s what we do. Whatever we do, we do it efficiently because it’s less energy, honestly.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Sarah: Even if it’s not efficient, it’s less energy than change. Change, deciding you want something different and doing it is very energy taxing.
Bonnie: Yeah, yeah, no, totally. It’s like we can apply this to all different things. Obviously, this is a concept that I do with my coaching. So, it sounds like people need to, the doctor needs to want to change this, otherwise they wouldn’t pursue you, I guess.
Sarah: That’s right, absolutely. Well, they don’t even need to pursue me. Even the pursuit of something different about their clinical day, just noticing I want different. Like I didn’t even know I wanted different, I just didn’t like what I had, right? I didn’t think it was possible to have something different.
So if nothing else, if we can just start noticing our clinical day, decide do we like the way it’s working for us and the result that it’s creating what it’s costing us? What is it costing us? If I was to do it this way and it was still this way in 10 years, am I delighted with my medicine? And if I’m not delighted, what would make it delightful? What would make it sustainable?
Bonnie: I mean, I have so many wheels turning. I’m also, you know, between you and I and all physicians, we know what physicians aren’t happy with. And the first step is, are they willing to do something different? Do they even think something else is possible, right? And I think as we help more people, and people see that actually it is possible, then it’s like this ripple effect, right?
Sarah: Yeah.
Bonnie: But if you don’t know any better and everyone is just doing it, and even though they might be complaining, it’s very easy to be like, oh, this is just the way it is.
Sarah: This is just the way it is. Now, are we saying that the system is perfect and we should just live within the system that we’re in? No, of course not. Of course not. But system change and changing the medical system, maybe there’s people working on it and it will eventually change. But what you exist in right now, what is it about that that we can start to help you figure out so that it’s more survivable, sustainable, easier, gives you back some evening or weekend time, right?
So this is about creating time so that you can rest well and have a life outside of medicine.
Bonnie: Yeah. Change is hard and it’s worth it.
Sarah: Change is hard and it can be worth it if you want it. Even just a little bit better than what you have now can give you bucket loads of time back.
Bonnie: Yeah. Sometimes I think what’s helpful when I talk to clients is, because I think also it can be a little overwhelming to be like, I want this and XYZ. And so sometimes I will say, how can we just make it 10% better? Or even like 10% less crappy? Because I think when I say that, it seems doable, and also like not underestimating the power of just making it a little bit better.
Sarah: That’s right. Exactly.
Bonnie: Is there anything that you haven’t said that you think is important or you want to say?
Sarah: So I think that there are many physicians out there that are really struggling in the area of feeling stuck or trapped about their clinical day. Whether that be I would prefer to be making more money, but I don’t think I can move or I can’t affect change in my workplace. I feel trapped by patients asking me multiple questions in the room. I think that the untrapping is important.
So a lot of the time we feel trapped, stuck, miserable, and we still have choice. There’s still somewhere that you are able to make a different choice. You have choice. So we’re not saying you need to make huge change, but when you notice that I’m feeling stuck or trapped, I want you to pause and say, oh, what else here isn’t the experience of being trapped? Where am I making decisions? Where’s my choice?
So you’re noticing that I do have some choice here, right? Even, I arrive at quarter to nine and my first patient is at nine, I chose this by what time I got up, how long it takes to commute, all those types of things. You get to see, oh, I see. I determined that I arrive at quarter to nine and I’d rather be here at 20 to nine because then I could get a little bit more done. You’ve got choice.
Bonnie: Yes.
Sarah: There are things about your day that you have got some choice around when you’re feeling that trapped and stuck.
Bonnie: Yeah, I mean, I feel like that’s what we do, and when I say we, those of us that coach anybody, is helping our clients see that they have a lot more agency than they think they do right now.
Sarah: Yeah, even if you can’t get the MA that you really want, there could be something else about your day that we can start to improve. So I think that that’s a big one, is that they could just be feeling really, really hard done by, very, very tired and under load right now as they say. Let’s see if we can get some pressure off you and find your people.
Honestly, when you feel alone is when it’s so much more dangerous to you and your mental health. Find your people, find your mentor, find the person who can help you make a little bit of change in your day. That’s all.
Bonnie: Okay, where can people find you? Because I’m sure they want to learn more.
Sarah: Yeah, so they can find me on The Sustainable Clinical Medicine Podcast or chartingcoach.ca.
Bonnie: Yes. And how do people work with you?
Sarah: Yeah, so we have the Charting Champions Program, which is the lifetime access for physicians program where we do the foundational steps of how do we do this getting home with everything done and the ongoing coaching calls and guest coaches that come into the program to give you all the ideas on how do we manage our clinical days differently, better. Any type of expert I can find for you guys, I bring into the program. And if you’re a clinician, the Smarter Charting Program is the one I own.
Bonnie: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. I mean, I feel like we could just talk for hours about all of this. And you’re amazing, anyone who’s listening who wants to stop charting at night, you need to check her out.
Sarah: Thank you so much, Bonnie. Thanks for having me.
Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at wealthymommd.com. See you next week.
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172: How to Change Your Habits with Dr. Kristi Angevine
Are you aware of your habits? This week, I’m joined by habits expert Dr. Kristi Angevine. We dive deep into a whole range of habits and behaviors and how they relate to personal development. As you listen, I want you to see what resonates with you, and decide on the habits you have that you want to change.
Dr. Kristi Angevine is an OB/GYN who has moved into full-time life coaching. She focuses specifically on habits and identifying the areas in your life where you don’t realize you’ve developed habits, especially unhelpful ones. Once you begin noticing the habits you’ve developed and you decide you want to start doing things differently, that’s when you’re able to make big changes in your life.
Tune in this week to discover what habits are, why they matter, and how people misunderstand their habits. We’re discussing where habits come from, why thinking certain thoughts is a habit you may never have noticed, and how to question and interrogate the core beliefs that drive your habits.
Learn more about Live Wealthy, an exclusive coaching program designed for successful women who want to be confident.... and be rich.
What You'll Learn from this Episode:
- What a habit is and why it's different than you might think.
- Where our subconscious habits come from.
- What it means to be an objective observer of your thoughts.
- How we get into an all-or-nothing mentality with our thoughts.
- Some of the habits that people don’t think of as habits.
- The difference between being thoughtful versus ruthlessly second-guessing.
- How to start looking at your relationship with your habits and decide what you want to change.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Follow me on Instagram
- Dr. Kristi Angevine: Website | Instagram | Podcast
- How We Feel app
- Sunny Smith
- Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
- Interested in 1:1 coaching with me? I have some open spots available, so click here to learn more or send me an email!
Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode. I have my friend, Dr. Kristi Angevine on and she’ll introduce herself in due time. We talked about a lot of things surrounding habits, and they’re not what you think. And we kind of were all over the place, but also common themes.
And so what I really want you to do is to just pick one of the concepts we talk about and see if that’s something you want to examine and do something about. And I also wanted to say that if you do find something, and you’ll hear in a second, but if all of them you’re like, yeah, I need to work on this because of XYZ –
And first of all, if you have that insight that is amazing because not everyone does or even thinks about it. But if you’re listening to this podcast, then I know that you’re someone who is interested in growing and evolving et cetera. And I really invite you to schedule a call with me to see if we’re a good fit for one on one coaching.
I am opening up some spots for my one on one coaching practice. And so this episode is a perfect way for you to think about whether you’re ready to move forward with changing some of your habits. And so the way to do that is to go to my website, wealthymommd.com/coaching, or just simply send us an email, send me an email at hello, H-E-L-L-O, @wealthymommd.com. All right, here’s my conversation with Dr. Angevine.
Bonnie: All right, welcome to the show Kristi.
Kristi: Thanks for having me here, this is so fun.
Bonnie: I know, I’m so excited about what we’re going to talk about today. Okay, so why don’t you introduce yourself first, since many of my listeners probably don’t know you. I’m sure some do though.
Kristi: Yeah. So for those who don’t, my name is Kristi Angevine. I’m an OB/GYN, I did that for about 11 years. And then transitioned from clinical practice to being full-time a life coach. And I focus on habits and habits that we don’t think of as habits.
Bonnie: Yeah, actually before Kristi and I started recording we were chit-chatting and we were like, okay, we’ve got to start recording because we’re going to say all the good stuff before.
And so I think this is going to change how everyone thinks about habits because basically, I know this is what Kristi does and I have a sense of the flavors of the types of people and what you coach on, but literally I was like, what’s a habit again? How do you define it? So let’s talk about that first.
Kristi: Beautiful question so we can all be on the same page. I used to think of habits very differently than I think of habits now. So most people, most of us when we think about habits we think about our morning routine, the way we fix our coffee, the way we push our glasses up on our nose, like little quirks that we have that are habituated.
The way I have come to understand habits that I think is so much more useful is to think about them as the automatic ways that we act in the world, as well as the automatic ways that we emotionally respond and the automatic ways that we think. So they are the patterns of how we think, feel and act on default.
Bonnie: Yeah, and that does apply to traditional habits, but it’s like way more than that, right?
Kristi: The scope of what a habit is is much broader than just I have a habit of procrastinating, beating myself up, pressing snooze. It’s not just those things that we do in times of stress or in times of just automaticity. But it’s the way that we automatically think about ourselves. It’s the way that we think about the world in a habituated way, meaning we repeatedly do it until we notice we’re doing it and we decide we want to do something differently.
So habits aren’t all bad. There could be habits that are really useful that we really like that we’ve cultivated, or that are just automatic that are amazing. But some of them are ones that are problematic, but they’re also sometimes stealthy and we don’t even notice that they’re habits.
Bonnie: Yeah, and for those of you who have been following me for a while, you know I talk about how thoughts are also habits. The thoughts you think over and over again are habits. And because I mostly speak on money, a lot of it’s not even thinking about money because I think a lot of us don’t even think we have thoughts about money.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m just thinking a lot of them are habituated because of the culture we live in and patriarchy and all that stuff. And we inherited those beliefs that we think are true and we’ve just had a habit of playing those thoughts for decades. Am I getting that right from your perspective?
Kristi: Beautifully. Yeah, absolutely. I think that the thoughts that happen automatically to us, the ones that we don’t even recognize are thoughts, they come from the soil that you describe so perfectly. We inherited them from our family of origin or the culture in which we grew up, or we are socialized to believe them. And we have the habit of not thinking about our thinking in a way that we get space from it and we can question and interrogate through the core beliefs that drive it that are the basics or like the roots of the habits that we have.
Bonnie: Yeah. This is such an interesting topic because one thing I’ve taken on here and there, but I’ve just retaken it on is to try to be, as much as possible, an objective observer of my thoughts, because I’m assuming part of habit change is to be observing those habituated thoughts. I’m just guessing. And we are blessed as humans that we have the ability to think about our thinking, right?
Kristi: Yeah, absolutely. And that is a habit in and of itself that you can cultivate on purpose, the habit of stepping into that watcher/witness role and saying, okay, I’m going to be from a place of neutrality and curiosity and just noticing things in an objective way. I’m going to look at what I naturally think, I’m going to look at how I naturally respond, and I’m going to look at what I do.
And when you can step back in that, then you can see the pattern so much more clearly. It’s kind of like if you’re literally holding up something really close to your eyes you can’t see the detail versus when you put your arms out in front of you and you can actually look at it with that perspective.
Bonnie: Yeah. No, no, totally. Okay, so let’s just give examples of habits that people aren’t even aware of. You used the word stealth, so I love that word because there’s so many – Actually, I’m going to give an example of one of mine that I’ve recently uncovered.
So I actually have been working with a parenting coach, and it is about parenting but it’s also about examining how I was raised. And because of certain things about – And also, I’m Asian, my parents were raised in Asia, well, Korea. I should say Korea specifically. And so we’re all messed up because Asians, we’re raised in shame. And I know we’re not the only people, but it’s very predominant in Asian culture, right?
And so the reason why I say that is I think this is a perfect example of stealth. And the way I think about it is like it’s in the air in my brain and so I didn’t realize, until very recently, that it was not “normal” or helpful for me.
But an example is when I make a mistake and it affects another person, there’s probably other areas but I’m thinking about a recent example, I truly believe that I should suffer a little bit. I should feel bad and that’s not optional. And because I’m feeling bad, that’s actually a good thing because that means I care. You know what I mean?
So that’s just an example of a habit I realized. And myself and type A women physicians, we generally have low self-compassion, which makes sense if you’re brought up on shame. And so this is something that I’m exploring for myself because I don’t think I realized that was an optional thing. I thought everyone did that, almost, if that makes sense.
Kristi: Totally. And I think what you said right there is so key. So number one, I love how you described that because it takes a lot of reflection to notice that you have connected doing something that you or other people see as a mistake, and connecting that to how you feel and what you make that mean. I mean, it takes a lot of work to see that.
And I do think that sometimes if we can’t see it, we don’t even know that it’s something that could be optional.
Bonnie: Exactly. Yeah, I know. It kind of blew my mind when I realized it. I was like, wait a minute, it doesn’t have to be that way? But here’s where my brain is like, yeah, but if you don’t feel bad, then you’re just going to treat everyone like shit because you’re not going to care about them. Like that’s literally what my brain says.
Kristi: Yeah, that is so good. So this is where we get to be super curious, right? Because I know people listening can totally relate to this. Like, if I don’t feel bad, that means this other extreme. So the habit that strikes me is a little bit of this all or none. And it’s kind of like where we see this a lot with people who have sort of a sense of insecurity and they worry that if they’re a little bit more confident, that means they’re going to also be an arrogant jerk who doesn’t care.
Bonnie: I literally have that same. Let’s just define all or none just in case. I have brought it up a few times on the podcast, but just in case everyone’s like, what is that again? Let’s just explain it real quick.
Kristi: Yeah, so all or none or black and white thinking is where things are either one way or they are completely another way and there’s not a gray zone in between. And so let’s just be clear, when we’re human there’s a lot of gray zones. There’s a lot of complexity and nuance in between yes and no, left and right, right and wrong.
But it’s easier for us to have categories of it’s either this or that. And that simplicity is sometimes great. Like, if you have to rapidly assess something, like in surgery or while you’re driving, you need to very quickly say, this is good, this is bad, I need to press on the brakes, I need to do something.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Kristie: But when it comes to things that are more complex, even though that tendency is there, we can just get to notice like, oh, how interesting. I think that if I’m slightly less insecure, then I’m going to be arrogant. If I don’t feel deeply guilty for this, then I’m just not going to care at all. And it’s like, there’s actually an in between, but it requires some stretching, right? Because the either or is sort of like it’s much, much simpler.
Bonnie: Yeah, even just you saying it, it’s like logically I know. And I think this is the curse of being a coach in some ways, because logically I know, this is literally what I do. It’s different when it’s somebody else. Like, it’s so easy for me to see. But when it’s me, it’s like it’s crazy in there.
Kristi: Yeah, absolutely. And I can relate to this and I think it’s a very important point. It’s just like when you can, and I think your listeners will relate to this, when they see a friend who’s had a really bad day and they listen to that friend and they can give perspective. Like, yes, it makes sense this is so hard for you. But did you think about this, this, this and this? And they’re things that are so obvious from the outside, but to the friend it’s like you’ve just spoken the most brilliant things, but they can’t see it because they’re in it.
And the analogy I always like to use is if you’re in the jar, you can’t see the label. I don’t know who taught me that, but I’m like, when you’re stuck in the jar you sometimes can’t see what you can’t see. And that’s why it’s so helpful to have somebody else’s perspective sometimes.
Bonnie: Yeah, I think the two examples we just talked about, like from my life about how if I don’t feel bad, then I’m going to become a careless person who just treats people poorly because who cares, right? The same thing, like well, I don’t want to be too arrogant. And that’s also part of how women are socialized. We’re told not to because people get mad when we’re confident, right?
Kristi: 100%.
Bonnie: So, yeah, I think I have a fear of being arrogant and delusional if I like myself too much. I know, it’s like even just saying it out loud. But even just talking right now, it’s kind of meta. I’m like, I really don’t see the gray zone. It’s like logically I know there is because I know what all or none thinking is and I can recognize it as all or none thinking.
Kristi: Yeah.
Bonnie: So I’m working on it.
Kristi: It’s so good. And I think this is worth also emphasizing that working on all or none thinking is a difficulty of recognizing that there is a gray zone and recognizing that there’s a difficulty with that. So it is meta, right? You’re trying to unpack a way of seeing the world that maybe you haven’t practiced as much. But the cool thing is that it is practicable.
Bonnie: I think the fear of doing a complete 180, like becoming arrogant or becoming someone who doesn’t care about other people’s feelings, I think because of that fear, it’s kept me from exploring it.
Kristi: Yeah, absolutely because that would be “bad” to do those things. And I think it does point to things that are valuable to you. Like my sense is you worry about becoming arrogant, you worry about not caring because you don’t want those things and because probably your core values are I’m a person who cares and I’m a person who wants to be empathetic and listen or connect or whatever it is.
And sometimes it’s easy when we’ve been socialized to believe certain things, that any time we diverge from that path we are therefore going to the total opposite other side. When really just 10% of a shift, like maybe I feel 10% less guilty when I do something bad, and I don’t make it mean anything bad about me, is that middle ground. It feels wildly foreign, right?
Bonnie: Yeah, even as you’re talking, my mind’s very fixated on, but you should feel a little bad. So maybe we just decrease the amount we feel bad. That’s a start, I guess, right? That’s a start.
Kristi: It’s totally a start. Well, so you started this off with what are some habits that people don’t think of as habits? And I love what you said, is it okay if I toss out some that crossed my mind that I think people don’t?
Bonnie: Yeah.
Kristi: Some of these are things that I think people do think of, and some are ones that I think we don’t recognize just because they are exactly like you said, they are just how we operate. And we haven’t thought to even look at them as something different because oftentimes if we did something different, it might mean something about us we don’t like. So I think that’ll make sense as I go through these.
But habits that I see people don’t think of as habits are, classically number one, second-guessing. Constantly make a decision and be like, is that the right decision? Should I maybe have done this? Maybe I should have done that. And we will think that that sort of post-decision inquiry is just our way of being thoughtful, our way of being comprehensive, being thorough. But there’s a difference between being thorough and thoughtful and ruthlessly second guessing, constantly.
Bonnie: I know people can’t see it, but I’m raising my hand. I’m like, I’m there, for sure.
Kristi: Yeah.
Bonnie: Not with every decision, but –
Kristi: But with some of them, right? But you can feel the difference between ruthless second guessing and just being thoughtful and being like, huh, I wonder what I can learn here. I wonder if there’s anything interesting to know, they feel totally different.
Catastrophic thinking, like when you go from 0 to 60 really quickly picturing the worst case scenario. When you’re like, what happens if I leave my keys in my car while I run into the house to grab something? Will somebody steal my kids?
Bonnie: Oh my God, I don’t have the steal my kids thing, but let me give an example. When I would pick up Jack from his Korean preschool and it’s a parking lot and the parking lot is like right where the door is. So it’s not like it’s around the corner, it’s like literally right there. And it crosses my mind like, oh, I should lock it and take my keys because what if someone takes my car or takes my bag. Not my car, but my purse, because that happened to a friend of mine.
Kristi: Exactly, and so it’s easy. And, of course, anybody listening here, there’s a fine line between a realistic concern based on data, based on things and deciding you want to turn off your car, take your key for reasons you like, and finding it disruptive, right? Catastrophic thinking in a way that’s problematic as opposed to like, I want my ICU nurse to have thought of all the catastrophes that can befall me as a patient and plan and prepare for them so that they can prevent them.
Bonnie: I think catastrophic thinking is definitely big with the clients I work with because there’s this app I just downloaded, and you may have heard of it, how we feel. I saw it in one of the Facebook groups.
Kristi: Yeah.
Bonnie: It had like a little lesson and I remember listening to it last night. And it said something like, it had to do with catastrophizing. So when they’re catastrophizing money, it feels like a true threat to their survival. Logically they know it’s not, but that’s literally what it feels like. It’s fear that stops you in its tracks.
And the app, it was a lady talking, and she was kind of explaining that that’s just what our brains do. And, of course, I knew that. I don’t remember exactly, but she explained it in a way that I thought was very beautiful. And so I just wanted to highlight that because when I ask them like, do you really believe you’re going to be homeless? And they’re like, no. The answer is always no, but that fear is so, it’s almost like visceral, that fear.
Kristi: Yes.
Bonnie: And money is required for survival, so I think that all makes sense, right? But I think that’s something we all do. And I don’t know if I’ve effectively, I don’t want to use the word figure out as if it’s a problem that needs to be solved. But how do we reduce the catastrophizing? Maybe you have the answer because this is what you do.
Kristi: I mean, I will tell you my first answer, and I love that you sort of mused on that a little bit because I don’t think catastrophic thinking is a problem. I think our relationship to the catastrophic thoughts that come into our mind are sort of meta habits, it’s like the habit behind the habit.
So I can have a catastrophic thought populate my mind. If I believe it and I get really wound up about it and I use that as the thing that dictates all my decisions and then I feel anxious or stressed, or maybe I don’t take a step towards trying something new because of the catastrophes I fear that logically I know probably won’t happen. But I’m so sort of paralyzed by that visceral fear that I don’t do anything, that’s the habit.
That’s the like, I believe the thoughts because they’re there because they seem so dangerous. Versus, oh, so interesting. As a human, I have these visceral fears based on survival. And some of them I want to listen to, and others I want to say, okay, I get this is a fear and I get this is a catastrophe. But what I’m going to do is I’m going to lock my door but I’m not going to walk around the block looking for somebody who’s going to steal my car. Like that relationship to them.
Bonnie: Yeah. And so the way I think about the concept is that thoughts are neutral and we can decide we don’t have to believe them. A lot of the “problems” in our minds are because we believe the thoughts that come up. But it’s interesting, even, again, it’s like of course as a coach I know this, but I definitely have had that fear of catastrophe. I mean, around a lot of things, but definitely around money, too.
I was like, oh, yeah, of course. I don’t need to believe that. But it’s like a constant reminder that I don’t. This is one of the reasons why I get coached, because it’s so easy to forget as someone who literally does teach this.
Kristi: Yes, it is so easy to forget. Yes. I’ve gotten to the point where now that I know, I mean, just like you, I know it’s so easy to forget, that when I forget and then I remember, I try to just remind myself like, this is just how it is. I will forget some basic truths. I will believe the thoughts that are there, I will get all wrapped up in them. And then I will remember, and ideally I will remember more quickly with each iteration, right?
And when I don’t, then I can still be like, yep, this is just what humans do. And now I have the tools to kind of navigate that without doing what I did in the past, which would be, well, I know better. I should be further along. I intellectually get this, what’s my problem?
Bonnie: Yes.
Kristi: And that’s the other habit of just berating, right?
Bonnie: I think we tend to do that because we are coaches, like I should know better, right?
Kristi: Totally.
Bonnie: It’s poisonous, literally.
Kristi: Yeah.
Bonnie: But what’s also nice is when I am reminded of it I feel like my brain is just blown by the same concept over and over again.
Kristi: Totally. I can completely relate to that. Totally agree.
Bonnie: Okay, what was the next thing you were going to say?
Kristi: So second guessing is super common. So is catastrophic thinking in terms of like a more stealthy habit. I think another one that’s really common is people, it falls into the category we would call people pleasing, but saying yes at our own expense when we really want to say no. And not even noticing.
Bonnie: Oh, I do that, even recently.
Kristi: Yeah.
Bonnie: And that’s actually the situation where I felt like I should suffer because I changed my mind and told this person.
Kristi: Yes. You know what? That reminds me of something, I was talking to somebody just recently and this idea of changing their mind, their thought was, I changed my mind and that means I’m flaky and labile. I’m unreliable, I’m wishy-washy. As opposed to I have new information. I’ve changed my mind. I’ve made a new decision. No big deal.
So making your change of your mind means something is another, you know, it falls in the category of just making global indictments on things that could be neutral, which is such a common, probably in the Western Hemisphere, thing that we do, right?
Bonnie: But what about people who constantly flip-flop and change their mind?
Kristi: Yeah, so I think that in and of itself is, I mean, I feel like that’s with analysis paralysis too, where you do this, you do that, you do this. Because like, well, this one isn’t as good as that one, so I should do this one. I should do that one.
We think that if we make the right decision, then we’ll feel peaceful and calm and confident or whatever. When really, it’s we’re going to feel how we’re going to feel based on how we think about the decision we made. Not the decision making us feel anything.
Bonnie: Yeah, no, I mean I have several podcasts on decisions because this is a very important life skill, right?
Kristi: It is.
Bonnie: And one of the things that I think is such a good concept is what you just said. I think people feel like if they pick the right decision, it’ll be clear, they’ll feel good. And I remember telling a client decisions don’t always feel good, even if it’s “the right” decision for you.
Kristi: Yeah.
Bonnie: And I think she was confused when I said that.
Kristi: Yeah, I mean, because that’s a confusing concept because we have data to suggest that when we make, and nobody can see this but I’m doing air quotes, we make the “right” decision, sometimes downstream of that right decision things feel great. And so we assume that that “right” decision made us feel great. Or we have historical evidence, we look back and we’re like, well shoot, I made the wrong decision,, I felt terrible. It’s because I made that decision. Look at all the stuff that happened.
And so it makes sense we piece that together. Sort of like, oh, that’s the sequence. But in reality, like you said, thoughts are neutral, decisions are neutral. And then we have thoughts about them. Like I made the best decision I had with the information at the time is one of the thoughts I go back to all the time that helps me neutralize any decision I make.
Even if I look back and I say, because I made that decision these are the circumstances I now have. And I may not like those circumstances. It sort of decouples the decision from how I feel, because really we make a decision then we think about it, and that dictates how we feel.
Bonnie: Yeah. Yeah, I feel like we may have lost some people just because we’re talking about decisions meta. But one thing my first coach, Sunny Smith, who you obviously know, one thing that she really baked in my head is decisions move you forward.
Kristi: I think she baked that in my head as well and I find it so powerful, right? Decisions move you forward.
Bonnie: Otherwise, you’re in analysis paralysis, you don’t make a decision and you’re literally in limbo. And, obviously, we both see this a lot in my clients, but the way it shows up for my people is afraid of choosing the wrong investment. And then it catastrophizes into thinking they’re going to become homeless, or maybe not necessarily that, but it reinforces the idea that they’re behind. And that now they’re going to be even more behind if they make the wrong decision.
And that’s a whole other topic around money. Because I have friends or people message me randomly, I’m sure they do for you too. And they’re like, I want to go part time but then I’ll make less money, or I’m having a really bad money year.
Actually, someone messaged me that, not a physician, and my answer is always, this is temporary. And money is not made linearly, because I think people really think about that. Think of money like, well, if I lost $50,000, now I’m going to have to work harder and it’s going to take longer to get that money back.
So anyway, it’s all intertwined.
Kristi: It’s all intertwined, and I think you brought up a really important point when it comes to, I mean, it’s true that let’s just say you invest in stock A as opposed to stock B, thing A as opposed to thing B. If we had a crystal ball and we could predict the future, we could say yes, one of them you might lose money with and the other one you might not lose money. But the idea, it’s like a bit of magical thinking where we think that we should know in advance what a decision is going to lead to.
Bonnie: Yes.
Kristi: And because we think we should know or could know or that somebody else might know, then we can get stuck because it’s literally true you could lose money. So we can’t argue with somebody and say, hey, don’t worry, every decision you make is going to be totally fine, you won’t lose any money.
We can’t say that, but we can’t say that, like Sunny Smith says, a decision will move you forward, you will get new data and when you decide in advance that no matter what comes my way, I will figure it out, I will handle it and it might be good or it might be bad.
Bonnie: That is the key sentence, right? I will decide in advance. Because that’s something actually that I forget that I can do.
Kristi: Yeah, we all forget. I mean, I teach this every day. I feel like I live and breathe it. And I will notice, I will look back and go, oh my gosh, I completely forgot that for myself. I do it all the time.
Bonnie: Yeah, because I don’t think I’ve actually, I mean, maybe I have, I just don’t remember, but it’s been a while. Like actually say, you can decide, and did you know that you could decide in advance how you’ll think and feel about whatever? Let’s give some examples.
Kristi: Yeah, so this is perfect. I was going to go to a public speaking event that was going to be much bigger than I had ever gone to before. I was imagining all the judgment, I was second-guessing my decision choice. I was second-guessing my ability to be there, to do a good job. And I reached out to a variety of people who I knew, they seemed very comfortable with public speaking.
And the one person I reached out to that gave me the best pearl was basically to decide today, this was months before I was going to go speak. Decide today what you’re going to think about how your talk goes afterward. And I remember thinking like, what do you mean? If I bomb and everything goes terribly, how can I decide now to think like the talk was amazing.
And that’s not, she didn’t mean to come up with a happy feeling that goes against reality, but she just meant to decide no matter how it goes, how you’re going to think and feel about that. And so what I decided was to basically think something, I can’t even remember what I decided to think. But it was something along the lines that made me feel very neutral.
I was just like, I imagined I probably reached at least one person. And I probably don’t have the ability to self-assess accurately. It was something like that because I’m like you just never know, right? You never know, did you give a talk and it was great? Did you give a talk and it was horrible? And that’s the first one that pops in my mind, is like to decide in advance how you’re going to feel about how you execute on something, even though you don’t know how it’s going to go.
Bonnie: And I think why this concept is hard for a lot of people to grasp is most of us, well, all of us I should say, even people who do this work, we think we don’t have control over how we think and feel, that something external is what creates it. So if someone yells at us, that’s why we’re upset.
Kristi: Yeah, that’s a huge point, right? And I think anybody who’s listening to this that you find yourself furrowing your brow and being like, what do you mean, I have the ability to choose how I’m going to think? It’s okay to pause and think about this for a second, right? Because I remember when I first learned this idea, it kind of broke my brain a little bit too. I was like, you mean I can think this way on purpose?
And I think one of the reasons it’s so hard is because our lived experience oftentimes is, especially as kids, somebody does yell at us and we instantly feel shame. So our sequential experience is an external thing creates an internal feeling. And it’s so fast that we don’t often appreciate that there’s a meaning-making that happens in between, right?
And it’s subconscious and it’s quick and that’s why coaching is the process of slowing things down so we can figure out, okay, in the past when I was a kid and somebody yelled at me and I felt instantly enraged or shamed or whatever, I didn’t know what I was thinking. But now I can go, okay, what do I think about myself? What do I believe about myself? What do parts of me that get triggered, what are they believing such that shame or whatever big emotion is the thing that happens with this external event?
Or like when I look at the money in my bank account, when I see that number and I feel like a pit in my stomach, what am I thinking that’s in between? And once you know what it is you’re naturally habitually thinking, that’s when we can start getting curious about, oh, what would I want to think instead, right?
Bonnie: Yeah. I mean, everything we just talked about, so many great concepts. But I’m hoping everyone listening can see how applying one of these concepts, and I know we talked about lots of great things, but I also know it can be overwhelming to someone who hasn’t heard about this very much.
Kristi: It can totally be overwhelming, for sure.
Bonnie: Yeah. So I just recommend whoever is listening, to just pick one of the concepts and kind of just mull on it. But just pick one because as perfectionists we’re like, well, we can do it all. And we’re used to inhaling or like learning from a fire hose, right? Because we all had to do that during med school.
Kristi: Yeah.
Bonnie: But I think these concepts are, it’s like but there’s no rush to master it, I guess is really what I want to say.
Kristi: Yeah, there’s absolutely no rush. And I think when it comes to looking at your own habits, related to money or related to anything, I think one of the most concrete things you can do is you can just notice whatever your natural habits are and start just naming them for what they are.
That’s the simplest thing you can do, is like, oh, I have a habit of worrying about which investment to pick and waffling back and forth. Good to know. And once you just notice and name them as habits, then you can start being curious about, huh, I wonder why that habit makes sense. Because all of our habits make sense, they’re all learned solutions for something. And when you can get curious about them, that’s when you start opening up space for being more deliberate.
Bonnie: Yeah, so I just want to highlight what you just said, habits are learned solutions. And so what that also means is you can learn a new one/unlearn a habit.
Kristi: Exactly, 100%.
Bonnie: Because I don’t think people realize they have control over it.
Kristi: No. Yeah, most of us do not. I mean, I for sure didn’t, despite the fact that I have a passion for this. I didn’t realize. And I mean, I think it bears just sort of explaining like, a habit is this learned solution in the sense that at some point in time something happened to us and we responded to that in a way that worked well enough.
And you can see this in people pleasing. Like as a kid we might have people pleased in order to get attention, or to avoid punishment, or to get accepted at middle school. And it worked well enough, like it served a purpose. It was a solution to something at the time. And then it repeated itself, we repeated those behaviors over time.
And once we realize, okay, that was a solution that worked then, but may not be something you want to continue now. That’s when we can say, oh, maybe this is solving for a problem I no longer have and I can unlearn that old habituated pattern and decide to do something new.
Bonnie: Yeah. Now, I’m just going to riff on what you just said because you’re familiar with Brene Brown’s Atlas Of The Heart book?
Kristi: Yeah.
Bonnie: It’s so good. And I just was reading a section on her shame section. That’s what she’s known for, is shame. And, obviously, I saw something and I was like, oh, I want to read this section on connection because what you just said, people pleasing.
And basically what she was saying, and it makes sense to me and probably to you, that a lot of what we do or what we’re afraid of, is really predicated on losing connection with people because it’s such a, I was going to say, it’s not even a habit. I think it’s like a survival mechanism, right? Because if you are not connected to other people, then you might not survive. And so anything that threatens that is very, very bad.
And so people pleasing is a way to solve for, well, I’ll always have a connection if I please someone.
Kristi: Totally. And I love that you highlighted that. It’s like an innate, intrinsic drive that we have for a really good reason. If connection is breached, our survival can be threatened, thousands of years ago and today. We can still feel that. And we develop all sorts of interesting habits and behaviors and ways of thinking about the world that you can trace all the way back to. I'll do anything to make sure that connection is not severed, even if it’s at my own expense, right?
Bonnie: Yes. Is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you think is important for people to know?
Kristi: So I mean, we emphasized the fact that habits are learned solutions, and they’re stealthy things you don’t oftentimes see. And I think anybody who’s listening, just know that your habits make sense. They are things that you learned that were really adaptive, they’re really protective in some way. And even if they seem really fixed, all of our habits are much more malleable than we realize.
That’s what I would just leave it as, your planting that seed of hope that if you have certain habits around money, habits around perfectionism that seem just like part of your personality, all of them are actually much more changeable than we realize, which is kind of fun.
Bonnie: Yeah, how you spend money, how you eat, all that kind of stuff.
Kristi: Yeah, all the things.
Bonnie: It’s like I’m not really a snacker or like chocolate. Actually to tell the truth I’m like, no, if I see a chocolate chip cookie, like a really good one, it’s like I feel like I have to eat it. Like it’s calling my name. That and mac and cheese. Those are my weaknesses.
Kristi: Oh, I love it. That’s great.
Bonnie: Anyway, okay. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here. And obviously you and I will talk soon.
Kristi: Yeah, thank you so much, Bonnie, this was fun.
Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at wealthymommd.com. See you next week.
Get started on your journey to wealth by getting the best selling book: Defining Wealth for Women.
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171: 5 Questions to Discover What Really Matters to You
For my birthday a few weeks ago, I decided to go on a solo retreat to the Miraval Resort for two nights. Since becoming an entrepreneur, I've found that I need a lot more alone time than I previously did. A few days of meditation, self-reflection, and prioritizing myself were exactly what I needed.
As professionals and entrepreneurs, we spend a lot of time on our work and not as much time on ourselves. I hear from people all the time who say it's difficult to prioritize themselves because of everything going on. If you're ready to take some time just for you to recharge but haven't given yourself permission to do it yet, this episode is for you.
Tune in this week to discover what I did during my solo birthday retreat, how I relaxed and took time to think, and the practices I decided to take away with me. I'm also sharing five questions you can ask yourself to decide what's most important to you and how they can become a bigger part of your life.
Learn more about Live Wealthy, an exclusive coaching program designed for successful women who want to be confident.... and be rich.
What You'll Learn from this Episode:
- Why I knew I wanted to take a solo retreat for my birthday this year.
- What I did during my birthday solo retreat at Miraval.
- How I relaxed and got into a more introspective state of mind.
- Some habits and practices I’ve decided to bring back from my retreat into my daily life.
- 5 questions designed to help you figure out what’s actually important to you right now.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- Follow me on Instagram
- Get on the waitlist for the currently sold-out Live Wealthy Conference 2024
- Miraval Resorts and Spas
- Calm App
- Brooke Castillo
Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode. So, I had said, I think a few episodes ago, that I was going to spill all the beans about what I did on my two night, three day birthday solo retreat. And so in case you didn’t catch that, for my birthday this year, which was in June, I decided to go to Miraval for two nights.
And in case you don’t know, Miraval is an all inclusive luxury spa resort that includes all meals, all snacks, lots of activities like yoga and meditation, and you also get a credit of around $200 a night to spend, meaning you’re basically forced to spend on yourself, to meditate, to get a massage, et cetera. And one of my really good friends ended up joining me for a day.
And so I went to the Miraval up by me, it’s Miraval Berkshires in Massachusetts. And Miraval is where my conference is in Arizona in March 2024. So, at the time of this recording the conference is sold out. We do have a waiting list, and so if you want to join it you want to go to wealthymommd.com/conference. But right now it’s sold out and we will let you know if spots do open up.
So, there are a number of reasons why I decided to go to Miraval for my birthday. Well, I don’t really need an excuse to go to Miraval, but it was a good reason to go. And I would say that since becoming an entrepreneur I have needed a lot more alone time. And I do think part of it has to do with the fact that I work from home which I know sounds like a solo activity, but my partner, Matt, is also home with me all day long. So I think that’s part of it. Not that he’s super annoying et cetera, but it’s a lot to spend 24/7 with your partner.
And also I’m constantly spending time working on my business, but I’m not spending enough time working on me, which I know many of you probably do not do, or at least you don’t prioritize it enough because most of us are so busy we’re just going, going, going and we feel like we don’t have time to stop and sort of look at our lives and really be intentional about where we’re going.
And this is obviously magnified depending on the type of job you have and if you’re a parent as well, right? We feel like, well, we have to give all of our time and attention to all these things and there’s really nothing left for ourselves. But I’m busy all the time, I hate my life – Okay, maybe you don’t hate your life, but you kind of get the gist. And so for me it was a bit of a forced rest, if that makes sense. And also time devoted to really thinking about myself and where I want to go.
And so I didn’t really have an agenda. It wasn’t like, okay, today I’m going to do XYZ in terms of what I want to think about et cetera. I did schedule a bunch of activities, but like many places you can cancel with four hours notice. And so I was like, okay, it’s better for me to sign up because things do get full.
And so I scheduled my spa treatments, got a massage, and got a facial. And actually, the last few times I’ve been to Miraval I didn’t actually schedule a lot of activities, I kind of just wanted to chill and didn’t want to commit to anything. So this time I decided I want to check out some of the activities that I haven’t done before.
So I signed up for something called a silk cocoon floating meditation. And, first of all, it just sounded really cool. And when I read the description it basically said you’re going to be in a silk hammock and it’s going to feel like you’re floating and it’s going to be some type of meditation. So I was like okay, I’ll check that out.
And so I did it and it was super interesting. So it was a silk hammock and then the facilitator, he told us how to get into it without falling over. And he gave us a blanket and he gave us a little pillow and then he put a little eye pillow. And then he gave us these headphones. And the headphones had binaural music playing.
Now, if you’re not familiar with what binaural music is, I’m probably going to explain it wrong, but it basically helps facilitate changing your brain waves. And for most binaural types of audio, and you can Google these, they’re on YouTube and Spotify et cetera, they’re usually to help you get into a theta brain wave state.
Again, not an expert here, but my understanding is that theta is sort of a more chill, sort of contemplative, even like this subconscious conscious state. During the day most of us are in beta and sometimes alpha. Beta is like a very thinking sort of thing. And then when we go to bed, we’re in delta.
And there’s a progression of the predominant brainwaves as we grow up. And so newborns are predominantly in the delta wave, that’s why they’re sleeping all the time, right? And I think I read that beta waves don’t really kick in until age eight, nine, or ten. Anyway, I digress.
But that’s what that was. It was 60 minutes. And I will tell you, I had a pretty difficult time. And what I mean by a difficult time is what I realized is that my mind has been just going crazy. What I mean by that is just like a barrage of thoughts and not enough stillness in my life. And so it took me a really long time for my mind to be still.
And after the meditation, it went by so quick. It was apparently a full 60 minutes, it felt like 10 or 15 minutes to me. And afterwards he had us all reflect if we wanted to. And so, the reason why I just spent time explaining what I did there is this is one of the reasons why I love Miraval so much because it’s all about being intentional about everything, right?
It’s about not going unconscious, because so many of us go through life unconscious, right? Because we’re just literally going on autopilot. And so the intentionality and pausing to notice and pausing to think is baked into the culture of Miraval. And also they want you to be digital-free, phone free, but everyone is still – Well, I wouldn’t say everyone is still on it. It’s a lot less than some other places, but it is difficult. But they do have specific digital device-free zones. Okay, I digress.
But I did those types of things and it was really meaningful, really helpful and really showed me like, hey, I need to get back into daily meditation. It doesn’t have to be specifically meditation, but anything where you’re sort of slowing down your mind and clearing it out. So that could be journaling. That could be meditation. There are many ways to do that. And so that is definitely one big thing I took away was that I need to get back into that daily practice.
Now, people always ask me like, how do I get started? I think the Calm app, literally C-A-L-M. It’s on iPhone, I don’t know if it’s on Android, but I assume it is because it’s been around for a while. It is free but there’s a paid version. And I just recommend you pay for it because you get so many more features.
But they have really short meditations. They even have an introduction to meditation where it’s 30 days and they kind of teach you while you actually practice it. So I think those are really great ways to kind of dive in and start that practice.
And so it really takes time to kind of turn off that easy, automatic way of going on autopilot to kind of pause, like really pause, not just time-wise but like mind-wise. And so there is a series of five questions that I decided to answer during the solo retreat. I did not make up the questions, I got this from Brooke Castillo.
And I’m going to tell you the questions and I’m going to tell you why I love these questions. And basically, these questions are designed to really help you figure out what’s actually important to you right now. And then you get to decide, or rather really look at why am I not doing these things? Or why am I not spending time on the things that are important to me?
Of course, there are things you’re doing and being right now that are important to you, but a lot of us just honestly live thinking that we have so much more time to do things. And the truth is we don’t know how much time we have. Anyway, here are the questions.
So if I had one year to live, what would I stop doing? What would I start doing? What would I stop caring about? What would I care more about? And why do these answers change if I give myself less time to live? And so I think these questions are great springboards to really look at what’s going on and to really get clear on what is important to you.
And I think it’s really, really important, in fact I would say it’s required that you don’t just answer them in your head, that you start writing. Because I was actually surprised at what actually came out of my brain onto paper. Some of it was stuff I knew, but some of it was stuff that I didn’t know. It wasn’t immediately available in my head, but it came out as I started writing.
So this is one of the reasons why journaling is such a powerful practice because we think we know what’s gone on in our brains, but we really don’t. Our brains are all insane, myself included. And a lot of the work that I do with my clients is to think about what you want. And this actually, it sounds like a really nice question to answer. But I find that a lot of us actually have trouble answering that because we simply haven’t asked ourselves that question in a long time.
And so I think the first question here is, if I had one year to live what would I stop doing? Most of us know the answer to that immediately. And then again, stuff will come out as you’re writing things out because stuff came up for me. But pretty much everyone can answer that question pretty easily.
And then the next question, if I had one year to live, what would I start doing? I think most of us have answers for that as well. And again, there’s going to be some surprises. The next question, what would I stop caring about? I think most of us would say I would stop caring about what other people think. And what would I care more about? And then lastly, why do my answers change if I give myself less time to live?
And so I’m actually going to pull up my journal here and read you some of my answers. I didn’t decide ahead of time which ones I’m going to read, so I’m going to be scanning here. So one of my answers to what would I stop doing, and I think of this question in many ways. Like what would I stop doing, but also it’s like, okay, what’s something I do now that I really don’t like but I keep putting off working on? So that’s all that’s how I think about this question.
And one of them is actually I want to stop being so hard on myself. And I’m so much better at this than where I was even a year ago. But I think this question really highlighted to me that I’m so tired of being hard on myself. I’m so tired of judging myself, because truthfully we all know that working on this for ourselves is actually going to help us connect with other people and have much higher quality and richer relationships.
And that’s what life is really about, right? It’s about connection. And another thing that I wrote was that I would stop delaying this trip that I’ve been planning to go with my family to Korea.
And one of the things about what I would start doing, okay, there are two things here. I’m just laughing because one of them, to me, is, well, funny and not funny. One of them is to have the courage to say things that I don’t usually say because I feel uncomfortable or I’m worried about someone not reacting well.
And truthfully, the reason why I don’t speak up as much as I’d like to, and when I mean speak up, I just mean like stating my opinion or maybe having a difficult conversation is because I worry a lot about whether people like me or not, or what other people think about me, which I know is very common. But it’s something that I definitely struggle with.
Okay. And so the thing that I was laughing about is, if you know me, if you’ve been coached by me, if you’re friends with me, you already know this, I tend to interrupt and talk over people a lot. I talk too much, basically. And so one thing I decided is I’m going to work on this. I’m going to work on not talking so much, notice the urge to do so and not talk, which means I’ll become a better listener. So this is going to help everyone, including myself.
And the third question, what would I stop caring about? Well, I already kind of mentioned this, but I would stop caring about what other people think. And the work for that, it kind of goes back to some of the other answers. But it comes down to loving and connecting to myself, like having a better relationship with myself and caring more about what I think about myself versus what other people think.
And I will say a lot of these answers, or even to me the urgency, it’s not about having one year left to live. I may have mentioned that I’ve really been working on my parenting skills and focusing on that. And I don’t want Jack to grow up with these types of habits. He’s not going to be perfect, I’m not looking for perfection. But if I learn to do this for myself, then obviously I’ll be a better role model for that, right?
Because I think all of us parents, we want our kids to grow up, and it’s not even so much about confidence. Yes, confidence is important, but to me, self-confidence is the most important thing. It’s like a combination of trusting themselves, believing that no matter what happens they can figure it out and to not be afraid of failing. And to be good humans and to have the skills to have great relationships, right?
And so I can’t teach or model that effectively if I haven’t fully worked on that myself. So to me, that has created the urgency for me to work on it. And when I say parenting skills, really it’s about working on myself so I can be a better parent. And learning some actual skills, but also understanding how a child’s brain works and kind of understanding what’s appropriate developmentally.
Okay, so what would I start caring about? So one of the things I wrote down is my physical health. Now, before I had Jack I worked out a lot. I had a personal trainer. I went to yoga. I went to Orange Theory. Now, I lived in Brooklyn and everything was literally within a two-block radius and so that was super easy. And I have not had consistent practice to do any of those things since having Jack.
I did have a personal trainer postpartum for a little while when we lived in Philadelphia and we have a Peloton bike, so it’s not like I’m doing nothing. Or it’s not that I haven’t done anything in the past six years, but it’s something that I keep wanting to prioritize and I don’t.
And then let’s see, why do my answers change? And basically what I said earlier, it seems like there’s plenty of time and none of these things are urgent. When I say urgent, yeah, they’re not urgent, right? And so it comes down to, well, I know I need to work on this. I am working on it a little bit, but it can wait.
Okay, so those are some of my answers. And I really, really, really want you to answer these questions for yourself. You might be driving, you might be walking around, but I want you to schedule time. And ideally, it would be 30 minutes to an hour, maybe even more, but start with 30 minutes. I know you’re all busy.
And so here are the questions again, if I had one year to live, number one, what would I stop doing? Number two, what would I start doing? Number three, what would I stop caring about? Four, what would I care more about? And finally, why do my answers change if I give myself less time to live?
And again, the answers are so revealing and it’s really going to show you what’s really important to you. And then really examine how come you’re not doing that? And what can I start doing to move towards that? Like what’s one or two small steps? You don’t have to turn this all around in a day. What’s one thing you can do every day or one thing you can do every week in order to go towards that? All right, I’ll see you next week.
Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at wealthymommd.com. See you next week.
Get started on your journey to wealth by getting the best selling book: Defining Wealth for Women.
For media or speaking inquiries please click here.
For all other inquiries please click here.