Podcast

Wealthy Mom MD with Bonnie Koo | 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

Read the transcript

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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Wealthy Mom MD with Bonnie Koo | Emotional Wealth vs. Material Wealth

175: Emotional Wealth vs. Material Wealth

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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:

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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.

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Wealthy Mom MD with Bonnie Koo | Untangling Your Net Worth and Your Inherent Worth

174: Untangling Your Net Worth and Your Inherent Worth

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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:

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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.

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Wealthy Mom MD with Bonnie Koo | Stop Taking Your Charting Home with Dr. Sarah Smith

173: Stop Taking Your Charting Home with Dr. Sarah Smith

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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.

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Dr. Sarah Smith: Website | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Podcast
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
170: Building a Practice You Love with Dr. Nitin Gupta

Read the transcript

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.

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Wealthy Mom MD with Bonnie Koo | How to Change Your Habits with Dr. Kristi Angevine

172: How to Change Your Habits with Dr. Kristi Angevine

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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
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Read the transcript

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.

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Wealthy Mom MD with Bonnie Koo | 5 Questions to Discover What Really Matters to You

171: 5 Questions to Discover What Really Matters to You

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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:

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Brooke Castillo

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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.

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Wealthy Mom MD with Bonnie Koo | Building a Practice You Love with Dr. Nitin Gupta

170: Building a Practice You Love with Dr. Nitin Gupta

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This week, I’m welcoming Dr. Nitin Gupta to the podcast. Dr. Gupta is a Board-Certified general pediatrician with a passion for delivering the best possible care for his young patients. Nitin is my son’s pediatrician, which is how I met him. But his story of how he built a practice he loves and his decision to practice medicine the way he wanted and made it financially sustainable is truly an inspiration.

I know there are plenty of docs listening who have wanted to make the move and build their private practice, but are afraid to leap. Nitin has been there and done it, and he’s here to share his secrets and show us the options that are available for using your medical experience to grow your wealth.

Tune in this week to discover how Dr. Nitin Gupta started his own concierge pediatrics practice. He’s sharing how he’s created a profitable practice while providing an incredible service to his patients, the skills he needed to learn to make it happen, and where you can start if you’re ready to try something new in your career.

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:

Dr. Nitin Gupta’s experience of being miserable starting out in pediatrics.
How Dr. Gupta knew he needed to try something different using his skills as a pediatrician.
Why lean operations always lead to doctors needing to do more with less.
How Nitin landed on the idea of starting a practice that doesn’t take insurance.
The culture of learned helplessness in medicine.
What the Direct Primary Care business model is.
Why, as an entrepreneurial doc, you need to learn to love marketing and selling.
Dr. Gupta’s advice for any doc out there who wants to leap to private practice.

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159: Expert Witness Work for Physicians with Dr. Gretchen Green

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Hey everyone, welcome to another episode. So today I think you’re in for a treat. I have Dr. Nitin Gupta. And he is actually Jack, my son’s pediatrician Jack is turning six years old this fall. The reason I wanted to have him on is, well, I just thought it would be fun to have a chat with him, to be honest, because he’s amazing, and also highlight the way a doctor has decided and moved forward with creating the practice that he wanted. To practice medicine the way he wanted that’s sustainable financially.

And I think this is really important to highlight. I know many of us are familiar with the DPC model, direct primary care, basically cash only concierge type practice. And I have talked to many of you who were interested in doing that, but maybe are afraid to take the leap.

And so I wanted to do an episode where we talk to someone who’s done this, and also to highlight that you don’t need to, I don’t know, start a non-clinical business or do something different like what I do or solely invest in real estate, for example. I want to give other examples that are going to use your clinical skills.

Now, another episode you may want to check out in case you haven’t is I did an episode with Dr. Gretchen Green, who is a radiologist and we talked about expert witness work. And that’s a way to supplement, it can be considerable, your current income doing something that uses the knowledge you already have in your brain and get paid quite well for it.

And what I think is one of the great things about expert witness work is that you are helping doctors who are getting sued. Now, this is obviously if you’re on the defendant’s side, right? And not that there’s anything wrong with physician witnesses for the other side, but it’s an opportunity for you to help physicians and to do great work.

All right, I digress a little bit, but you’re going to meet Dr. Gupta. And one of the things I really want you to consider while listening, is to just listen through the lens of someone doing something new that was scary, but went for it anyway. And that’s kind of like what makes life worth living in the end, right?

None of us want to have regrets. And so especially if you’re a pediatrician listening, it is possible to practice medicine the way you want, to have the relationships that you truly want, and that there are patients willing to pay for this. Okay, let’s go.

Bonnie: Hey, Nitin, welcome to the show. I’m so excited you’re here, we have so much good stuff to talk about. So why don’t you introduce yourself?

Nitin: All right. Well, my name is Nitin Gupta, I’m the owner and founder of Rivertowns Pediatrics in Dobbs Ferry, New York. We are the first pediatric concierge practice.

Bonnie: Yeah. Yeah, so I think this is so interesting for a few reasons. One is I think people are aware that doctors are creating these types of practices and for the most part they’re, actually I don’t know if they’re generally limited to primary care, but I think so. I did hear about a few OB, well GYNs who are doing this as well.

But a lot of my pediatrician clients, and I tend to use them as an example, I’m not picking on them. But what I hear a lot from pediatricians who are employed, not so much from practice owners because practice owners make a lot more than an employed pediatrician, that they can’t make a certain amount of money as a pediatrician and that they’re the lowest paid type of doctor.

Nitin: Yes.

Bonnie: Yeah. So first, I just want to say that’s not true. You don’t have to start a whole new business that’s not related to pediatrics in order to do that. And also, I just want to talk about a way to use your pediatrician skills or clinical skills, right, this is applicable to other specialties, that can not only create great income, but also is much more fulfilling. And I think as doctors, we want to practice the medicine we want to versus being dictated by what insurance covers et cetera. And also not doing like 10, 15 minute visits, right?

Nitin: Exactly.

Bonnie: So I want to talk about your journey. And so it’s like there’s the short and the long version. When people ask me about how I became a coach, I’m like, do you want the long or the short version? But let’s just talk about maybe your job trajectory.

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: This isn’t the first thing you did as a pediatrician, right? So let’s start there.

Nitin: No. So right out of residency I actually did a pediatric GI fellowship. But I only did two years, two out of three years. I was actually miserable from day one because what I thought in my mind was I was going to really love doing procedures and I was going to only be doing procedures. The reality was I actually hated those procedures. And 95% of the patients that were being referred to us were things that really could have been managed by the general pediatrician.

So I really just kind of hated that. I only lasted two years and I quit. So then after that I was moonlighting in the pediatric ER at Cornell and going into pediatric ER. And that was just pretty much just ER visits. I mean, but again, most of what we seen in the peds ER was stuff that could have been managed by a general pediatrician if the patients had -

Bonnie: Outpatient.

Nitin: Outpatient, yeah.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: If the patients had access to their pediatrician. Actually, prior to that ER position I did three months of locums up in Caribou, Maine, but that was a three month job. So that peds ER, working for a hospital system, especially in pediatrics, there wasn’t actually much of a job trajectory from there. I was going to be pretty much capped. Administrators really kind of seemed to have more say than what actual physicians needed and they started taking away our nurses and we had no voice. You need a nurse in the ER.

Bonnie: Wait, they took away your nurses? How is that possible? Do you mean like less staff?

Nitin: Yeah. Well, I mean, we always needed more staff, but then they took away our nurse.

Bonnie: Like all the nurses?

Nitin: Just for us in the peds ER. If you need a nurse, go get the nurse from the adult side.

Bonnie: That’s insane.

Nitin: It was like, well, there’s only two nurses on the adult side. I mean they need their nurses too.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: But this was all about cost cutting and saving money and doing more with less. And that really kind of showed me where medicine was heading.

Bonnie: Yeah, it puts all the onus and burden on the doctors.

Nitin: It’s lean operations, it comes down to doing more with less. But the ER is not one of those places where you really should be doing that. After banging my head up against the wall we moved out to Westchester. So I figured let me just find a job closer to home.

And so if you look at my resume, it’s pretty terrible. I was bouncing from job to job. One job I lasted like nine months, I burnt out nine months. I saw 65 kids in a shift.

Bonnie: That’s insane.

Nitin: Yeah, the last job I had was actually excellent, but I had no income.

Bonnie: Was this outpatient?

Nitin: It was outpatient, yeah. I was making less money than my wife. My wife is in finance and so she works in the financial district. And I was making less than her 25 year old assistant. Yeah and I’m far more educated, I put in my legwork. It was like with me not knowing that I was not going to have any income trajectory –

Bonnie: Are you comfortable saying what that income was?

Nitin: Yeah, I was never going to go past 150,000.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: Unfortunately, right now that’s the average pay for a general pediatrician in New York, in the state of New York.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: And we’re in a very high cost of living area.

Bonnie: Yeah, there’s a range. I do know a practice that pays more, my friend runs it. And this isn’t a big hospital system, it’s owned by a pediatrician.

Nitin: Okay. It also depends on what the payer mix is.

Bonnie: So was this your last job before you decided to open up a concierge practice?

Nitin: Yes.

Bonnie: Okay. Tell us how you even decided to do it, the decision making process, et cetera.

Nitin: So, just knowing that I was never going to have that income trajectory, I was working, it got to the point where I was seeing 40 patients a day, doing notes until 11 o’clock at night. I thought, what the hell am I doing here? During that time I was also really checking out and saying what are the actual costs of supplies of these visits? What do we need to do to run a practice?

What I did see was payroll was number one. But looking at the amount of employees you need to have to support that in an insurance-based system, you have to have a ton of MAs to really room those patients, get the vitals, all that. You had to have a few secretaries just to verify insurance.

Bonnie: Yes. It’s crazy, right? All the staff needed.

Nitin: You need multiple office managers, billing people. There’s a ton of non-medical staff needed to get that running. And you look at that, the margins are super thin. So I figured, well, if we’re only getting paid pennies by the insurance companies as it is on such lean margins, why not start a practice that doesn’t take insurance?

Now, that was a crazy idea at that time. I say at that time because now we’re kind of bursting at the seams here now. But was it so crazy? Because also this was, I think, in 2017 when I decided to leave, we started to see the rise of the high deductible plans. A lot of people, and still people to this day don’t quite understand what a deductible is.

And now what a deductible is, is you have to pay out of pocket until you reach that limit. Now, at that point, the family deductible in New York got to about $5,000. So people have to pay out of pocket $5,000 before their insurance is going to start to kick in.

Bonnie: That’s a whole other discussion because patients don’t understand and then they get pissed that they have to pay.

Nitin: When I started this practice, it’s fully transparent. You’re paying a fixed amount per month. They were not pissed about that. It’s transparent, this is how much you’re paying. Just like New York Sports Club, or just like Netflix, you’re paying this much.

Bonnie: Right.

Nitin: There’s no surprise charges here. In my old practice, there was nothing but surprise billing. But that was the norm.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: So I remember people, especially every January, getting upset because their deductible just renewed. And they’re like, why? Why did I get a bill for $300? It was for a five minute sick visit.

Bonnie: Exactly.

Nitin: So people were pissed anyway. Patients were pissed anyway. And they’re not only pissed that they’re getting a $300 bill, but they’re pissed that they only spent five minutes with the doc and the doc seemed rushed. And then after hours, go to an urgent care or ER, they were starting to scream and kind of get mad at like, basically they weren’t getting the value. They didn’t see the value.

And actually, to be honest, they weren’t getting the value for their money. How effective was I with only five minutes? The next day, of course if the kid has the flu the next day get an angry phone call like, he still has a fever. Yes. But I can’t return those phone calls till the end of the day. And of course, those phone calls are rushed. Or when I do make that phone call it goes straight to voicemail, I feel relieved and I’m like, thank God, voicemail. I leave the fastest message ever and say just call us back.

But I just was a little worker bee. I was just a drone. And so, for me, as a pediatrician, that was not the medicine I wanted to practice. That’s not what I envisioned. 40 patients a day, just running in and out of every room, not establishing any rapport. I was cranky, I was burnt out, I was done.

Bonnie: And making 150 or less.

Nitin: Yeah, I mean, knowing a kid in their mid 20s is making more than me, I was done. In a high cost of living area. The one thing that was also always in the back of my mind is if my wife loses her job, can we afford to live here anymore? And the answer was, at that time, no. So why am I putting in all this effort if I’m not going to get paid?

So I started this practice. And at first people thought it was crazy.

Bonnie: When you say people, do you mean other doctors?

Nitin: Oh, definitely other doctors. And I don’t blame them because other doctors, this is how we are trained. If you think about it, in residency we’re trained to do these like five page notes because otherwise the insurance won’t pay. We were trained to basically work for the insurance companies. And every year, year over year, the insurance companies are reducing reimbursements by 10%.

Bonnie: Wait, can we just talk about this for a second?

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: I actually mentioned this to people outside of medicine and they don’t know that and they’re shocked. I think we’re the only industry –

Nitin: They don’t know what?

Bonnie: They don’t know that we actually get less money every year for the same type of visit. Like we’re reverse inflation versus jobs that kind of increase salaries to kind of account for inflation or get raises. Basically doctors do not get raises unless they see more patients and do more procedures, right?

Nitin: But, I mean, what are we doing about it?

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: The general public doesn’t know anything. We don’t unify, we don’t strike, we just kind of roll over and take it.

Bonnie: Yes. Anyway, that’s a whole nother discussion.

Nitin: That’s different, yeah.

Bonnie: Yeah, well, I think this is why –

Nitin: Now part of your audience is going to be angry at us and going to send us hate mail like, how dare you? Well, you know what? Sometimes you just have to say it like it is.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: We also have contributed to this.

Bonnie: Yes. Yeah, there’s a culture of learned helplessness in medicine. And also, the thing is, insurance companies and large employers know that we’ll pick up the slack because that’s the way we’re indoctrinated.

Nitin: Indoctrinated, absolutely.

Bonnie: Okay. Yeah, we could do, like we could talk hours about this problem.

Nitin: We can.

Bonnie: Okay, back to the issues at hand. Okay, so you decided to start your concierge practice. Can you just talk a little bit about the timeline between idea and execution? And maybe just some highlights about what you encountered until you actually opened the office.

Nitin: All right, so probably from idea to execution was probably about three to six months.

Bonnie: That’s fast.

Nitin: Well, I had one of my, well he’s actually a cousin. He actually has a concierge practice out in Arizona and so I picked his brain. I was like, how does this work? And he says, oh, it’s easy. I charge a yearly fee and I also bill the insurance. And I thought, okay, great. So I was trying to figure out how to do that. But knowing that also insurance is just such a pain. Then I stumbled upon the DPC world, the direct primary care world.

Bonnie: Can you just say a little bit about what that is in case people aren’t familiar?

Nitin: So direct primary care is, in a nutshell, it’s a cash only or direct payment option, where you’re paying a fixed monthly fee. For most practices it’s a fixed monthly fee. It’s usually a fairly low cost fee. Now, I butt heads with some of the direct primary care doc’s in the DPC world because some people think my rates are too high. But I say, look, you have to be sustainable in what your area is.

Bonnie: Business minded. You have to really look at the finances.

Nitin: You have to. You can’t charge $40 a month per patient in a place like New York. It might work in a low cost of living area, but not where I’m at. $40 a month, that’s not enough.

Bonnie: Is that what they charge? I don’t really know what the range is.

Nitin: Yeah, I know some practices, I think in the Midwest, are charging that. And that’s just not enough.

Bonnie: Yeah, I was at a conference, I can’t remember which conference. But I ended up sitting at a table for lunch or something and it was mostly doctors and we’re like, what do you do, et cetera? And actually one of them was a concierge pediatrician in a lower cost of living, I can’t recall where, and she charged more than you.

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: And she was shocked that you only charge 150. And she was shocked at what that included. I don’t know if I ever told you this, but I remember thinking like, oh, I need to tell Nitin about this.

Nitin: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, no, I have a lot of people who tell me I should be charging more. I know what I can charge, but I like to say the keyword is sustainable. I want to charge something that’s sustainable for my practice and for my patients. So I know I can charge more. I know there are actually some concierge practices in the city that are charging tens of thousands or even $100,000 a year.

Well, that would be great, but that’s not serving my community. I’m not knocking their business model. Absolutely, I respect everybody’s. But for me, being involved in my community is key. And I actually kind of like to prove that. And we’re doing very well. We’re comfortable.

Bonnie: Also me, as a business owner, what I heard is like one of the values, what’s important to you. And so you said serving the community. And so I think that’s just important to highlight. And I think as any business owner is thinking about what are your values? Who do you want to serve? Why? Et cetera. That’s going to be different for everybody, right? So I just kind of want to highlight that.

Tell me, were you worried about getting business when you first started?

Nitin: Absolutely. I think any business owner is always worried about getting business. I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I didn’t try. I think what is it, like within five years, or two years, I don’t know, businesses fail. Like half of the businesses fail.

Bonnie: Oh, it’s more than half. I think it’s something like 90%. It’s crazy, it’s a very high percentage.

Nitin: Oh, is it? Okay, well, that’s what I figured. Let me give myself two years, if I’m not off the ground, okay. I know I’m employable.

Bonnie: Yes.

Nitin: If I didn’t try, I wouldn’t have forgiven myself because I was burning out too much.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: And there’s no end in sight of the burnout, physician burnout. I mean, I don’t know if we talk about this enough, but don’t physicians have the highest suicide rate out of any profession?

Bonnie: It’s high and it’s going up too.

Nitin: It’s only going up.

Bonnie: Well, what I want to say is, so what I’m hearing is you decided to take the leap, right?

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: I think the scariest part is deciding to take the leap and then actually doing it. And I think that’s what so many people are scared of, to do something different. Because even though you might be miserable at a job, I can’t speak for you, you know how to do it even though it sucks.

Nitin: Exactly.

Bonnie: And so humans don’t like change, even if it’s for the better.

Nitin: My daughter, the other day she was going to a pool party. She’s like, “Daddy, can you come in with me?” I was like, “No.” And she was like, “Why?” I was like, “Because I don’t want to go swimming, but you’re a great swimmer. Why are you worried?” She was like, “Because the pool is deep.” I was like, “But you know how to swim.” Just like I know how to practice medicine.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: You’ve just got to jump off into the deep end and you’ve just got to do it. So guess what? She jumped off into the deep end, tried to swim down to touch the floor, she did, and came back up and voila. I was like, see, I’m not going in. I’m keeping my shirt on. But that’s what we have to do.

So was I worried about getting business? Absolutely. Also, I was a no name. I didn’t practice in my area. My last job was 45 minutes, I drove 45 minutes each way to get there. So nobody knew me here. And so it was hard. The only person who knew me was my doctor, right? And she had kids.

And she was actually one of the big inspirations for me to start this practice because she was part of a big hospital group and her child was hospitalized. And I swear, I feel like there are times where they probably forgot about her kid on the floor for like two weeks. She had called me one day as I was driving home from work and she was like, “I just need a pediatrician I can trust.” I was like, hi. I’m not even your pediatrician, but I’m honored. I’m her patient.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: But she kind of inspired me. She told me what was going on, so I visited her in the hospital. And well actually that’s how our friendship began. But I really saw that what we are doing, what I was doing, what the whole status quo was, the norm was we basically it’s punting to different specialists, just kicking the can down the road, nobody taking ownership.

And then you have a kid who’s sitting there for two weeks where nothing is being done. It’s almost as if they’re forgotten, and that’s what happened here. And I thought, you know what? What happened to those days when a primary care doc actually ran this? And so I wanted to be that doc.

So it took about three weeks for my phone to ring. I just sat there by the phone. I had my grand opening, pictures are everywhere, the mayor and the Chamber of Commerce came. Had of this grand opening and stared at the phone for three weeks. The first phone call that came was from Yelp. Oh my God. This guy calls, he’s like you have a $300 credit. I was like, really?

Bonnie: Oh, to advertise.

Nitin: Yeah, to, I guess, bump up that. So I said, oh, $300 for free. Okay, I can advertise for free. And it was a month later I was in the hole for 500. Yeah, I didn’t know how to do it.

Bonnie: So I didn’t generate business though?

Nitin: No, absolutely not. No. So Yelp is dead to me. A week after that, my doctor called me and then she established her kid’s care. And then it slowly took off.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: Slowly, but still it was really a lot of kind of pounding the pavement, kind of going door to door to other businesses just trying to say hi, leaving business cards, brochures, a lot of social media marketing. I didn’t do that myself. Look, I’m in New York, I’m in a marketplace that’s surrounded by big hospital groups that have Superbowl commercials. So I hired a professional group and it was really, really just a lot of pounding the pavement.

And I think I had some steady growth for the first four months. And then for some reason for like 12 weeks, I didn’t get a single patient. I was thinking, oh, good God.

Bonnie: Well, one thing I want to comment on, and again, this is for anyone here who has a business, is you have to create clients, create patients, revenue, right?

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: Revenue just doesn’t arrive out of the sky. And one thing I’ve seen among everyone, but since my bubble is mostly physicians doing all sorts of things, not just DPCs, but any sort of business, is you have to learn and love marketing and selling.

Nitin: Absolutely.

Bonnie: And that’s something a lot of doctors are like, ugh.

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: You don’t know the skill, you learn it. You have to embrace it.

Nitin: You know what I hate? Is when doctors are like, oh, no, I didn’t learn anything about business in medical school. I’m like, yeah, because you went to medical school. But you were the smartest in your class in high school, probably smartest in your class in college, and you really did well in medical school. You passed your boards, you passed your USMLEs. You didn’t just get dumb the minute you graduated residency.

Honestly, learning about business is way easier than everything you’ve done leading up to now.

Bonnie: Yes.

Nitin: So why did you just stop? You also do CMEs, you’re always learning, why did you just decide to stop? You shouldn’t.

Bonnie: This is literally what I talk about when it comes to money. All these things are skills you can learn.

Nitin: Yes.

Bonnie: And we’re really good at learning.

Nitin: And we all took a neurology class and we all know that the brain is very, very functional and can learn other things too. So why did you stop? Yes, learn about marketing, do marketing, learn how to write down, what is it? Your checkbook. Don’t get the carbon copy, write that. You have to learn the basics of P&Ls and things like that.

Bonnie: I have a CFO, not full-time, I guess you could say fractional. And I just met with her yesterday and I don’t know what I would do without her. And just every month we go over the finances. And there’s a bookkeeper side, she’s not the bookkeeper. So the books get reconciled every week, and then we do monthly meetings for planning. And I meet with someone else, we just did our quarterly planning.

Actually, I don’t think I told you, but I created and I’m hosting a conference, a money conference for female physicians in March 2024. And it sold out within a month.

Nitin: Amazing.

Bonnie: And the revenue is about 200k from that, which is like, obviously, fantastic.

Nitin: Wow.

Bonnie: And there’s the cost of delivering the conference. And what she told me yesterday, which I didn’t think about, is why I hired her. She says, you cannot spend any of that money for what the conference is going to cost you. She’s like, so we have to put that aside, just pretend it’s not even there because things can happen, you have to be prepared.

Nitin: Yes.

Bonnie: So it’s about 50%, by the way. And then that doesn’t include running the business.

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: So there’s all these costs. And so everyone says conferences don’t make money, now I really understand why they don’t make money.

Nitin: Absolutely.

Bonnie: It’s a wash, basically. But anyway, that’s a whole nother discussion.

Nitin: Yeah, that’s another discussion. But also, sometimes we also have to put things in perspective. If we’re looking at any investment, if we get like a 5% return, that’s actually not bad. That’s actually pretty good. But yeah, a conference, yeah, you’re going to be lucky if you get that.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: If you do, that’s pretty good.

Bonnie: Yeah. And then it has to fit. So it’s also like, how does it fit in the business model, right? Because you’re going to do things that don’t create immediate money. Anyways, so I’m just learning. First of all, I actually love studying business. Like, I love it. I love talking about entrepreneurship, the business stuff. I could talk about it all day long. So I love just learning how all these things work, like thinking about how does the conference fit in my business?

I obviously have a vision for it, obviously I think it’s a much needed thing. There’s a gap. So something I’ve been trying to do for a while, well I was actually hoping someone else would do it, to be honest. Someone else would just create this conference because I knew it was needed. And then basically I was like, okay, it’ll be me.

Nitin: Do you know who that someone else is?

Bonnie: Well there’s other people, I’m not the only money coach for women or even women physicians. Yeah. And I know all of them. And there’s other women and other female physicians in the real estate world or whatever.

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: But it takes someone to start it, right? You can’t have like five people say, “Oh, we should do this.” Because then no one does it, right?

Nitin: Exactly.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: So you have that passerby theory.

Bonnie: What is that?

Nitin: Do you remember that? Do you know that? Okay, so basically it was a psychology study or theory where you see somebody pulled over by the side of the road, there are cars –

Bonnie: Oh, I think I know what you’re going to say but yeah.

Nitin: And everybody passes by. The minute one person stops to get out to help, all of a sudden everybody stops to get out to help.

Bonnie: Yes.

Nitin: It always takes that one person who has to stop and do it and then people will show up. And I think that’s, I don’t know if it’s psychologically like, oh, wait, somebody else is doing it. I’ve been thinking about this, somebody else is doing it. But that’s also another reason why I’m doing what I’m doing here.

But you said the word immediate. That word, immediate, is something important to any entrepreneur and anybody who’s starting a business. We all expect, especially as doctors, that when we start at or join a new practice – When we join a new practice, actually, there is often an immediate flow of patients. I think what a lot of physicians don’t realize is that, because they’re used to that kind of immediate success. When you’re starting a business there’s no immediate.

Bonnie: It’s different.

Nitin: And you have to build an awareness campaign.

Bonnie: Yes.

Nitin: And that awareness can take months to even years for somebody to consider and then pull the trigger and join a practice.

Bonnie: Yeah. So you are Jack’s pediatrician. I don’t remember exactly, I think it was probably last summer. Or maybe last March.

Nitin: Yeah, it was last summer.

Bonnie: Yeah. And so it wasn’t something I was seeking out specifically, but let me just tell you just a quick background. So we lived in Philly for a minute, okay, for like a year and a half. Actually, we moved when Jack was one month old. And we knew that, yeah, it was crazy. So he was born in New York in Long Island and then we had to have those immediate newborn visits. And so I knew I wasn’t going to be a long-term patient, but I found a practice.

They actually did like an open session to meet the pediatrician. I know not everyone does that, so I went to that and I was like, okay, they don’t seem insane, we’ll just do this. But then we moved and so I knew I had to find someone else. We happened to pick a – So we’ve always lived in apartments, we moved into this nice luxury building. We rented it without me seeing Matt went to see it because it was for his job.

And so I looked it up online et cetera and it was nice enough, but I didn’t really know the location. Check this out, his daycare was literally across the street. And then two doors down was a pediatrician. And downstairs from me was a Whole Foods and CVS. Oh, and there’s a Wawa. Do you know what a Wawa is?

Nitin: Of course.

Bonnie: Yeah, like literally.

Nitin: That is amazing.

Bonnie: I know, I hit the jackpot. This was not planned. But that pediatrician was his first long-term pediatrician and I absolutely loved her and I’ll tell you why. She was a bit more up-to-date on technology, you could schedule appointments online instead of calling an office.

Nitin: Oh wow.

Bonnie: In fact, you could not call the office for an appointment, you had to do it online, which is the way it should be, if you think about scheduling a spa appointment, well you could call but you can schedule things online.

So that happened, and then her visits never seemed rushed. Like I don’t remember how much time you’re “allotted” for a new patient visit or the annual visits, right? The annual visits for a kid. I never felt it was rushed. I mean, it wasn’t like an hour, but maybe it was 20 or 30 minutes. I think it was at least 20 minutes. And as she was examining him, she was educating me.

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: She was brilliant at that. And then Jack was, he’s always been a little bouncing off the wall since he was, you know, because we were there up until he was like one and a half or two. And I remember he was looking at something and was really into it and trying to cause trouble. And she just walked up to it and just stood there. Then she’s like, I’m just not giving attention, like she was explaining it. I learned so much.

And then at the end of each annual visit she had this, it was a standardized printout, but it was like here are the things that are going to happen here. So I remember when he turned four months she was like, you can start introducing foods, but she gave specific instructions on how to do it. Like it was amazing and there was like a rapport and stuff like that.

And then when I moved to northern New Jersey, everyone was recommending this practice, and I don’t want to say it because I never like to bad mouth. And there’s nothing wrong with them, but it was a very traditional insurance-based practice and I was building no rapport.

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: And she was a very different doctor. Like perfectly nice, didn’t do any education, was like, okay, what else? Do you have any questions? What else? Versus telling me things, right? And so I was already getting frustrated with that. And then Alaleh, our mutual friend, Alaleh is my dermatology friend who opened a cash only dermatology practice and I was in her office. I forget what, probably like a laser treatment and to chit chat. And she must have talked about you.

That’s how I learned about you. She mentioned you and I was like, oh, that’s interesting and I went to your website. And then she’s like, oh, there’s a waiting list. She’s like, but I could probably get you in.

Nitin: Yeah. We had a long waiting list. Alaleh was crucial in getting Dr. Gallagher to join this practice. I think she knew that, well she knew that and she was basically like, “So I have this friend who wants to join.” Okay, anything for Alaleh.

Bonnie: Yeah. And so the reasons why I joined there, I think it’s kind of obvious, but if you think about your kid, like, I really wanted a pediatrician that was going to get to know him, versus like, oh, let me look at the note, who’s this person, right? Because, obviously, you have a smaller patient panel than most insurance-based pediatricians.

I wanted someone to get to know him, develop a relationship so also when he saw you, there’s a rapport. And also you would kind of know everything about him and just be much more informed and you could help me more because of that.

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: And then, obviously, there is increased access to you. And it’s funny, sometimes I forget I have access to you and I’ll post on Facebook. I remember I posted on Facebook and you’re like. “Do you need a pediatrician?”

Nitin: I know.

Bonnie: Do you remember that? Because sometimes I forget and I actually will instinctively text my friends who are pediatricians or family practice who can do pediatrics, and I was like, oh wait, no, I have a doctor I pay to do this.

Nitin: Yeah, no, you get to ask me.

Bonnie: Yeah. So that’s kind of why I chose to do that. And I think for, I mean this is for any patient, but when I think about a child, we want that, right? Because some kids have special needs, like Jack has speech therapy, OT needs, and all this type of stuff. And I really wanted someone who would also help me advocate for what he needed. So I was on board, your rate was very reasonable and I was like –

Nitin: Sustainable.

Bonnie: Sustainable, yeah. Because I had insurance, a lot of people were like, well – I have a friend who moved to this area and she has two kids. And I was like, you have to join this practice and she was confused as to you not taking insurance. It was more like, why would I go to a doctor that I have to pay for? That was just her initial thing, it’s been a year so I’m going to work – I mean, obviously, she doesn’t have to see you.

Nitin: So what you wanted as a pediatrician for your child is also what a pediatrician wants for themselves.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: They want that. I wanted to start this practice because I wanted to be the doctor that I am to Jack. When I see Jack, I don’t know if you count how many times I hug him. We hug, we hug each other. I also try to hug him to stay in one place so I can check his heart and all that. But also the thing is I know he’s a tough kid. I know that I’m not going to give him stickers because he’s going to put stickers on places I don’t want and I can’t remove them.

Bonnie: He does that at home too, but yeah.

Nitin: Yeah, but I know him. So because I spend the time and I know his quirks and I know that say –

Bonnie: And it’s not five minutes.

Nitin: No, it’s not five minutes.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: No, no kid should be getting five minutes.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: Our job is not easy as doctors, we should not be giving five minutes to a patient. Okay, there are probably five minute things, but the important thing is we also have to establish a rapport.

I could be done with whatever it is that Jack needs in five minutes, but I also need to keep knowing him and seeing how he’s growing. And so there may be that one day where you call me and you’re like, he’s crying and he’s in a lot of pain. Well, if I hear that, well, I know this kid could probably just run 40 miles an hour into a brick wall and not cry in pain. So if he’s in pain, he’s in pain.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: So that’s important for me to spend that time. Now, I think it’s also regional in this country, reimbursement rates are different. New York, New Jersey, I think Boston also, they have very, very low reimbursement rates.

Bonnie: Isn’t that crazy for a high cost of living?

Nitin: A high cost of living, but also you got to look at what the Medicaid pool looks like, right? So you look at New York, you look at New Jersey, Medicaid is a fixed kind of budget that the state has and if our population keeps growing and growing and growing, there’s going to be a lot more strain on that pool, so the reimbursements are lower.

Private insurance is going to be based off of the Medicaid rates. Not Medicare, Medicaid. That’s for peds, that’s why peds are paid so little.

Now, look, our peds boards are hard, our peds residencies are hard, we have a lot of excellent pediatricians out there. The problem is it’s the system that they’re working for. And so you have to be robotic, you have to form a wall and you have to kind of be in and out. I’m doing air quotes here, so the “successful” pediatrician is the one who can efficiently run from room to room to room, get their notes done and bill.

Bonnie: Yes, dermatology too.

Nitin: And that’s just not right. Now, I think also pediatricians have been bad about advocating for themselves and fighting for higher pay. And if you think about it, if we can get higher pay, then insurance will work. But that’s just not the case. We’ve been rolling over and taking it, so it’s like, oh, it’s the start of the year, they just decreased reimbursements by 10%. Instead of fighting and saying we need to change this, we’re like, oh, I guess we’ll have to see more patients then.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: Sure, you didn’t go into this for the money.

Bonnie: Solely for the money. When people say I didn’t go in for the money, what they’re really saying is that’s not the number one reason because they also didn’t want to work for free either.

Nitin: Yeah, exactly.

Bonnie: Yeah. And as a money coach, that’s a distinction, right?

Nitin: There’s nothing evil.

Bonnie: Yeah, exactly.

Nitin: There’s nothing evil about making money.

Bonnie: You can help people in a way that you want to.

Nitin: But you also have to help yourself.

Bonnie: Yes.

Nitin: After you’ve been living poor for a very long time, barely paying rent off your residence salary, and then seeing you have a 500,000 in debt with 8% student loans and compounding interest, you really do want to make some money.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: Let’s just put it like that. I hope your audience knows what compounding interest is.

Bonnie: Yes.

Nitin: Because that’s an evil in and of itself. And that’s a student loan thing and that’s why it follows you to the grave. And yeah, just get over the whole I didn’t do it for the money thing. Yeah, now you do. You have to or you’re going to go bankrupt. You have to think about the money.

Bonnie: That’s one of the things that I do as a coach is just bring awareness of all the sorts of things that we’ve agreed to, even if it’s subconscious, right? Okay, so I think the general theme here is that the vast majority of doctors did not go into medicine to be like a worker bee.

Nitin: That’s not what we envisioned.

Bonnie: Exactly, yeah. And the vast majority of doctors, let’s just say all of them, wanted to help people and we had a certain vision of what that would look like. Everything we just talked about, we wanted to get to know our patients, we wanted to have that rapport and have that continuity. And this is specifically for certain specialties, right, pediatricians, family care, dermatology too. There are some one time derm patients, but you know there’s ones that you’re going to see every year, like the annual skin checks who are prone to skin cancer, et cetera.

So we don’t have to accept the status quo. There are ways to practice medicine the way you want and get paid for it. Which is what you decided to do. And I think it’s also good to say or important to say that you’re successful. You had to hire a second pediatrician, you’re already thinking about - So I think that’s important to put out there that there is demand. Patients want this as well.

Nitin: They do, they just don’t know it yet. A quote that Steve Jobs said was that the customer doesn’t know what they want unless you show them. And for 10 years I’ve been using nothing but an expensive iPhone. I love my iPhone and I’m never going to veer away from that. Do I need it? No. But Steve Jobs convinced me to get it and that’s what I want.

Bonnie: And now it’s an appendage.

Nitin: It’s an appendage. But I also want to kind of tell the audience that when you decide not to take insurance, when you decide to step away from the status quo, from the norms, there is a value that you also have to provide and offer. And for me it is, yes, it is good for me. I’m happier, less burnt out. I’m not saying that burnout doesn’t exist, but it has happened at times. Now it’s definitely decreased since I hired a second pediatrician.

But I offer a more thorough visit. So they’re longer, thorough visits, same day appointments, the accessibility 24/7 of you can text me, you can video chat with me. But also, there are things that I had to do, not just to prove my practice or not just to prove my concept, but because I needed to take care of this community.

And we became Covid hit, everybody shut down, big hospital groups shut down. They didn’t know what to do, how to serve their patients, so they just shut down. Instead of figuring out ways, they just closed their office. And then they took a couple weeks to figure out telehealth. Well, hell, I pretty much invented telehealth. But that’s where we started doing the house calls.

But we were doing house calls in their front yard, the backyard, the garage, the porch, somewhere. We pitched a tent and we started seeing patients in our parking lot. We did drive-up flu shots. People still wanted to get their flu shots, but they didn’t want to go inside a building. We did drive-up flu shots, but we did that for the community. A thousand people we did in the first year.

Bonnie: When you say community, in case people don’t know.

Nitin: So it was not just my patients.

Bonnie: Yes. Yeah.

Nitin: So it was to anybody who wanted a flu shot. There were times where we lost money on those flu shots. There were times where we made some money, but we serve the community for that because nobody else could get a flu shot. When you are not bound by insurance and by those demands of like well it has to be in an office visit when you write the 11 on where was the place of service, 11. By not taking insurance, I was free. I didn’t have any billing codes.

Bonnie: And you could be creative and innovative.

Nitin: I could be creative. So we were always the first to give out Covid vaccines for the pediatric population. We became the largest Covid vaccine provider in the county for an independent practice. That’s coming up against these big hospital systems. We were administering the vaccines before the big hospital systems were doing it.

We ended up having drive-up Covid vaccines for our patients. In the first weekend we had a bunch of other pediatricians and other physicians volunteering to administer. In one weekend, this was including the 15 minute observation, 280 kits in that first weekend. And these were the things that I could do because I didn’t take insurance, because I’m not bound.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: Last night, I don’t know, I love these antique shows. I was sitting there watching one of these antique shows, I love it.

Bonnie: I don’t even know what that means, but okay.

Nitin: Oh, yeah, Antique Road Show, have you ever seen it? No? Oh my God, it’s a great show. Anyways, I’m sitting there, I get a text from a patient. “Oh, my girl has been coughing badly for the past two days.” She said, “It sounds like she’s wheezing.” So I called her, I said, “Hey, can you just hold the phone next to her?” And I could hear an inspiratory and expiratory wheeze. I was like, “Meet me at the office in 15 minutes.”

Sure enough, she was having an asthma attack and it was bad. And so I turned on Moana in our waiting room, gave her two NEBs and she was clear and sent her home with a nebulizer machine, which I just provided with her, and an Albuterol. And that was something I could do at 8:30 at night.

And that’s something I want to do. Not that I had to, but I want to do it because I’m serving my patient. I’ve been her doctor since she was born and she absolutely hates me. She hates my guts because all I do is give her shots, apparently in her mind. But last night she was actually happy with me. Who knew?

Bonnie: Yeah. Yeah, so actually, this is a perfect segue into the last thing I want to talk about before I want you to give any tips for anyone who might be contemplating but afraid to make that leap.

One argument that I hear, and I’m sure you heard, but I feel like you kind of addressed it with what you said about the community is, okay, if you’re taking cash, this sounds great in terms of you being able to do what you want, patients getting what they want. But then what about the patients who can’t afford it, who don’t even have insurance? Are you just serving rich people?

Nitin: Ah, well, that’s where the key word is sustainable, right? So am I just serving rich people? I do have very wealthy families and I do have families who really don’t have a whole lot of money. And with my rates, obviously, I’m not charging $40 a month, that’s not sustainable. But it is a rate that works for the majority of the patients.

Honestly, since a lot of my patients don’t have insurance, I don’t know, for a lot of my patients, okay, if they don’t have insurance, I’m the perfect person to go to. If you don’t have insurance, and your kid is sick, you want to talk about going bankrupt, go to an urgent care or go see a doctor who actually takes insurance, they’re going to send you a $300, $500 bill right there right off the bat. I’m far more affordable than that.

Bonnie: It’s also transparent, right? Because they might not know they’re going to get this huge bill.

Nitin: Transparent. Oh yeah, that surprise bill, right? Go to urgent care, you’re looking at 750, $1,000. Go to an ER, good luck. So about 25% of my patients are uninsured or Medicaid, a small subset of those patients can’t afford to pay the full rate. Some can’t afford to pay anything right now, we all fall on hard times.

A lot of those families who can’t afford to pay right now, it’s because they may have lost a job, something has happened. They try to do their best to try to pay me something. Or if they really have nothing, they will get me back later.

Bonnie: So you have a sliding scale if it’s absolutely needed, basically is what you’re saying?

Nitin: So once you’ve established yourself with me, like I’ve known your kid since birth, right? Unless we absolutely hate each other or you’re moving across the country, I’m still going to be your doctor.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: Because I can do that. Now let’s look at the evils of the health insurance industry, you lose your job, you lose your insurance or your insurance changes, well, guess what? Your doctor is no longer your doctor. For me, that’s the difference. You lose your job, you lose your insurance, I’m still your doctor.

Bonnie: You can do whatever you want is basically it, right? You can do whatever you want.

Nitin: Yeah, nobody is telling me what to do.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: I’m in a good spot.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: I’m in a good spot.

Bonnie: And you can help the patients and the families that you just talked about, right? You have the freedom to do that without going bankrupt.

Nitin: I hear this argument all the time, especially from physicians, like, well, how’s that going to solve the problem? I’m not here to fix any problem.

Bonnie: When you say problem, what do you mean, the system?

Nitin: Like the system. How’s that going to serve the needs of everybody? I can’t, I’m just one person. And that thinking of we, that one doctor needs to serve all 30 million children or whatever in New York State, that’s exactly what’s wrong. That’s exactly why we’re getting burnt out. That’s the whole lean operations thing that we’ve all been indoctrinated in.

No, we can’t do more with less. How about we actually do more with more? We need more doctors.

Bonnie: Yeah, and you’re giving excellent care for the population that you serve.

Nitin: Yeah, I’m still removing, you know, so we have 320 patients right now for this practice. We’re removing those 320 patients from clogging up the ER or the urgent cares.

Bonnie: Yeah, I love that.

Nitin: And so let’s think about that. I’m removing them from clogging up other systems because I’m doing a much more thorough job. I’m removing them from clogging up the specialists appointments because when we’re spending more time, I don’t need to refer to as many specialists.

Bonnie: I think this is a great point.

Nitin: Yeah, I mean it’s quality. For me it’s quality over quantity. I mean, look at what we’re doing, we’re too focused on quantity that quality is suffering. And it shows. We have an access to health care issue in this country right now. If we keep focusing on getting everybody insured, okay, cool. We got everybody insured, but those patients can’t get an appointment. Those patients, if they need a specialist they can’t get it.

So instead of trying to focus on quantity, let’s focus on quality. Maybe if we focus on quality, maybe we can get more doctors to go into primary care because primary care is absolutely needed because we don’t have to send everybody to a specialist all the time.

Bonnie: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like we could just wax on about everything. Okay, so what do you have to say? What advice do you have, motivational sentences to any doctor listening who has been thinking about making the leap and scared or have been delaying that decision?

Nitin: You have done so many incredible things in your life, you’ve gotten to this point by hard work, by sheer will, by sheer determination. You have burnt out, you’ve picked yourself up, this is probably the easiest thing you could absolutely do. But it does take a little bit of courage and a little bit of self-confidence. You’ve got to believe in yourself and you’re going to have to put in the work, but in a different way.

Bonnie: Yes.

Nitin: With marketing, with figuring out ways to pivot to get your message across and really doing the best you can for your patients.

Bonnie: Yeah, one thing that I want to say and then we’ll close is when you’re focusing on quality over quantity, which is kind of what this model is about, you have the time to be creative and problem solve at a much higher level.

This is something I talk a lot about with my clients because they’re just working like dogs, right?

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: Everybody wants to work less, but then it’s like but I can’t because of the money.

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: And so what I say is like, okay, I totally get that. And what if you need to work less in order to make more money? To have that space and time where you can think about different ways, and it’s not just money, but just like your life in general. I imagine as a concierge physician, everything you just said about the things outside of the box, the Covid vaccines, how you pivoted, you can’t even do that if you don’t have time to think about it.

Nitin: Exactly.

Bonnie: And you’re just on the hamster wheel.

Okay, anyway, I think this was a super valuable conversation. And first of all, I’m just so grateful that you are Jack’s doctor. I’ve just really enjoyed chatting with you, because, obviously, he’s your patient but there’s the parent, right? And so I just feel so taken care of and I’m so grateful that I can afford to do this.

Nitin: Yeah. I’m grateful I have you as a patient and I expect to finally see you at one of our movie nights.

Bonnie: Yes. Yeah. Another thing that you can do. Oh, yeah, he has movie nights. I went to one for the adults.

Nitin: You did for the adults, yeah.

Bonnie: Yeah, but there’s one for the kids.

Nitin: But I want Jack to come over.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Nitin: Yeah, it’s a patient appreciation thing. Like look, through thick and thin my patients have been with me, and so why not have a playdate, a big giant playdate with all my patients. That’s the difference, I want to spend time with my patients. I want to see that kid at 8:30 at night. I want to make sure that my kids, and they are my kids too, are well taken care of. And that includes having some happiness.

We just came out of a pandemic and the reason why I was doing those movie nights, renting out that movie theater, is because we still have a lot of families who are still scared to come out. So I figured, okay, let me rent out a movie theater. If they see me out there with 100 kids watching a movie, then they’ll know it’s safe if their doctors think it is safe. So that’s why I did it.

And it’s a lot of fun and I’m actually thinking I might have to rent two theaters at once because of the capacity.

Bonnie: Everyone wants to come.

Nitin: Yeah.

Bonnie: The new Paw Patrol movie, is that the next one you’re thinking about?

Nitin: I did not know about that.

Bonnie: Well, I think there is, I could be wrong.

Nitin: Oh boy, okay, well, I’ll have to get on it.

Bonnie: Okay. All right, well thank you so much for being here.

Nitin: Yeah, thank you.

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Wealthy Mom MD with Bonnie Koo | Mom Guilt 2.0

169: Mom Guilt 2.0

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As women, we're socialized throughout our lives to take care of everyone else. And then, if there's anything left over, maybe we can take care of ourselves too. We're conditioned to listen to the opinions of others and disregard our opinions about ourselves. This needs to change because these beliefs we have are only magnified when we become mothers, making mom guilt unavoidable.

Mom guilt is part of the experience for breadwinning moms. The truth is, it not only impacts how you show up as a parent, but it also has a profound effect on your bank balance and your ability to create wealth.

Tune in this week to discover how you can pursue your goals, earn more, and invest how you want to without it affecting how you show up as a parent or your opinions of yourself as a parent. I'm showing you how to decide what putting yourself first looks like and giving you some practical tips to overcome your mom guilt.

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, even if you aren’t a mom, you aren’t immune to guilt about putting yourself first.
The way we’ve been socialized, as women, around parenthood.
Why mom guilt has a direct impact on your wealth.
Some of the thoughts you may have about mom guilt that you’ve never questioned.
Why you actually owe it to your kids, especially if you have daughters, to prioritize yourself more.
How to stop your mom guilt from limiting your earning potential.

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Read the transcript

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. It is officially summer. Summer is in full swing. Jack is in camp, right now. And all the summer activities are happening. And so, I did a two-day birthday retreat recently, and I want to talk about that. But I thought before I air that episode, that I actually re-air an episode I did quite a bit ago on mom guilt.

Because I know many of you out there, and whether you're a mom or not, I think a lot of us have a hard time doing things for ourselves because of the way we're socialized as women. So, go ahead and listen to this short and sweet episode. And I will see you next week to talk all about what I did on my retreat, and why.

So, in this episode, I'm mainly talking about moms. But even if you're not a mom, I still want to listen because you are not immune to these thought errors. First, I want to say, that as women we are socialized to basically take care of everyone else. And then, if there's anything left over, maybe we'll take care of ourselves too.

We are socialized to care deeply about other people's opinions, and not care or even have an opinion about ourselves. And well, we need to change that. And these types of deep-seated beliefs we have as women are only magnified if you're also a mom. And that's why there is even a phrase “mom guilt”.

This is why many moms stop dreaming. Because we often think that if we do dream and go for it, that it will be at the expense of our families. Not only that, other people believe this about us. Other women, too. It's just in the air. And we are socialized to believe that we are selfish, if we're not amazing mothers, whatever that means.

But basically, society thinks that means we should be not working or have a full-time job, we should just be home with our kids and not do anything else. So, in case you're wondering, how does this tie in with money? Keep listening.

First, there are two quotes that kind of struck me and were sort of the inspiration for this episode. And so, the first quote is a composite quote from speaking with so many moms, mostly single moms or breadwinning moms.

It goes something like this, “I'd love to do something, like start a business, or do something else. But I don't have the energy because of the kids. And I'm the main source of income. I just need a job where I can go in, work hard, and earn a good living.”

And whenever I hear some version of this, first I just want to say it just breaks my heart. Because it comes down to what I think are two belief errors. That we can't make more money without sacrificing something. Whether it's time or time with our families or our families or being a mom. And that it's going to take a lot of work. Which, related to what I just said, is going to be part of the sacrifice.

Now, here's this other quote, and this is from Suze Orman-- or is it Suzy Orman, I always forget, but I'm sure you guys all know who she is. She's a sort of well-known financial expert that's on TV and has written lots of books. And so, this is a quote I read by her that really struck me. And this is in regards to what she sees as the biggest difference between men and women with regard to money.

She says, “Women will always think, especially if they have children, that their money is for their parents, their spouses, their brothers, their sisters, their pets, and everybody but them. Because a woman's nature is to nurture. Men, on the other hand, know absolutely that the money they make is for them. They don't have trouble saying no. They have no problem keeping it for themselves, investing it for themselves, and not sharing it with their spouses.”

I'm actually going to read that quote again so that it sinks in. Okay, here we go.

“Women will always think, especially if they have children, that their money is for their parents, their spouses, their brothers, their sisters, their pets, and everybody but them. Because a woman's nature is to nurture. Men, on the other hand, know absolutely that the money they make is for them. They don't have trouble saying no. They have no problem keeping it for themselves, investing it for themselves, and not sharing it with their spouses.”

I don't know about that last part, about not sharing with their spouses, but the rest of the quote, I do agree with. And so, we are more likely to think that the money that we create isn't for our enjoyment, but it's for everyone else's enjoyment. Or that we need to make sure we take care of everyone else.

But we all know that the real truth is that we can't take care of others well if we don't take care of ourselves. If we don't put ourselves number one. Yes, even you as a mom. Now, I just want to say that prioritizing yourself will look different for everyone.

For me, it looks like this. I personally need lots of time alone. I need time away from my family. I take trips without them. This year alone, I think I've taken three. Now, most of these are for business, like my business masterminds and retreats that I attend. But I always schedule extra time for just me at these things.

And a few weeks after this podcast comes out, I'll be going to Cabo, Mexico, to meet with my business mastermind, and I'm going to be gone for seven nights by myself. Once a week, my mom who lives nearby, takes my son Jack for the evening. This gives me and Matt, each other's alone time and then time for ourselves to work on our relationship. And I can't tell you how amazing it is to wake up and have that morning time to ourselves.

I have so many clients and friends who have not even had an evening away from their families, let alone a solo trip, or even a solo trip with their partner. And so, if this is you, start small. Now, I can already feel some of you feeling uncomfortable about prioritizing yourself. And so, I want to just tell you that this is normal.

We women, especially moms, we're not used to doing this. We're literally socialized not to. Meaning, that we literally think that taking time for ourselves, putting ourselves number one, is being selfish, it's bad, we shouldn't do that, and we should be prioritizing our families.

And here's what I want to tell you. This might sound harsh, but hear me out. What kind of example are you showing your kids if you don't prioritize yourself? Especially if you have daughters. Because then we just keep the cycle of women not prioritizing ourselves, right? And we need to break the cycle, the socialization.

What if we get to show our daughters that it's okay to prioritize ourselves? It's okay to take care of ourselves? And this goes for whether you have daughters or not. I don't have daughters, I only have sons. And the example I'm showing him is that it's okay for a woman to put herself first, to take care of herself first, and that it's normal.

Not that it's even okay, that it's normal, right? Because if we do this for ourselves, and we have children, they grew up thinking this is normal. And I can't think of a more beautiful example to show our children this, about taking care of ourselves.

And so, going back to that composite quote that came from single moms and breadwinning moms, about not being able to make more money without sacrificing their families or time with their families. A lot of women think, a lot of moms think, that if they have a dream of creating lots of money, lots of wealth, that it's going to come at the expense of their families.

So, I just want us to question that. Is that even true? And if you remember my last episode, are you willing to be wrong about this? Maybe we're wrong about having to sacrifice. Because what I do know is that if you don't do something different, nothing is going to change.

Meaning, what if maintaining the status quo of just working, about putting your head to the ground, picking up more shifts, what if that is actually sacrificing? Instead of doing something new, doing something different, that over time can actually create so much more time for yourself and for your families.

And so, how can you carve out some more time for yourself? How can you take care of yourself? What would that look like? Would it be texting your friend to go out for dinner? Would it be organizing a group brunch with your local girlfriends? Would it be scheduling a weekend trip with your friends? Would it look like planning a weekend getaway with your spouse? It's going to look different for all of us.

Okay, everyone, I will talk to you next week.

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 podcast, 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 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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Wealthy Mom MD with Bonnie Koo | Perfectionism and Pursuing Goals with Dr. Priyanka Venugopal

168: Perfectionism and Pursuing Goals with Dr. Priyanka Venugopal

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If you consider yourself a high-achiever or type-A perfectionist, this episode is for you. I’m joined by an amazing guest, and we’re discussing how our high-achieving brains impede us from reaching our goals, especially when it comes to money, which is my specialty, and weight loss, which is my guest’s area of expertise.

Joining me in this conversation is Dr. Priyanka Venugopal. Priyanka is an Ob/Gyn physician-turned-coach for high-achieving professional moms who want to lose weight without a calculator and create more sustainable ease at work and home. Over 10 years, she has talked with thousands of high-achieving professional women and gotten to the root of the high achiever's biggest obstacles in hitting goals at work and on the scale.

Tune in this week to discover how perfectionism could be stopping you from building wealth. You’ll discover why high-achieving perfectionists often don’t take the action that moves the needle, the beliefs that lead to mistakes and imperfect results derailing your progress, and how to develop a more positive relationship with yourself as you work toward your 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:

What perfectionism is and why it’s unhelpful for achieving your goals.
How perfectionism shows up for high-achieving professional women.
The passive action you may be engaging in as a result of perfectionism and procrastination.
Why planning feels useful, but there are more important things when it comes to achieving goals.
The importance of clearly visualizing what you want to achieve and what your goals look like.
What properly evaluating your progress towards your goals looks like.
Why this work isn’t about never being a perfectionist.
How to prevent imperfect results from derailing your progress towards your big goals.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Website | Instagram | Podcast
Learn more about The Unstoppable Group here!
Get Priyanka’s free perfectionism and procrastination training here!
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Read the transcript

Welcome to episode 168. So, in today’s conversation we’re going to talk about how being a type A perfectionist, how it really impedes us in reaching goals like money and weight loss. And the reason why I say weight loss is because my good friend today is Priyanka and she is a weight loss coach for high-achieving moms.

And since both of us have clients who are high-achieving perfectionistic women, we decided to put our heads together and see how this plays out with our clients. And so what I really hope you take away from this episode is to see yourself in the things that we talk about and think about how you can solve for it when it gets in the way of pursuing wealth.

This is something I always have to have in check. I don’t think perfectionism ever goes away, it’s more that I have an awareness around it now and many times I have to pause and really notice it, right? It can be so insidious because it’s just the way we have been our whole life. But when I notice that I’m stalling, and what I mean by stalling is I’m not getting closer to the goal that I want, that’s an opportunity to examine why. Why did I stop taking action?

Now, at the time of this recording it’s actually right before my birthday, which is the end of June. And one thing I decided to do for myself is I actually booked two nights at a luxury spa resort, Miraval actually. Not the Miraval that I’m having the conference at but another Miraval, there are I think three across the country now. And I’m going by myself, without the family. Kids aren’t allowed anyway.

And I really want to encourage if you’re listening and you haven’t done something for yourself, it doesn’t have to be what I’m doing because I think what fills our cup and our desires looks different for everyone. Like some people going away by themselves is not something they want to do. But maybe it’s going away with some girlfriends, maybe it’s spending more time with your loved ones, it can look like many things.

And so I guess the point of my story here is spending some time thinking about what you need, what you’d really like and try to separate that from what you think you can do or any guilt you might feel about doing it.

Besides the fact that it’s my birthday I was also like, well, this is a good time to do it because Jack is starting camp. And we enrolled him in a camp where they pick them up, they feed them, they drop them off. It’s priceless to have that kind support and not have to worry about any of those details. So I at least timed it where it would be less stressful for my partner.

Anyway, that’s what is going on. I will tell you more about how the trip went. I do plan to do some self-reflection and relax. Okay, here’s my episode with Priyanka.

Bonnie: All right, Priyanka, welcome.

Priyanka: Thanks for having me.

Bonnie: So, before we get started why don’t you introduce yourself?

Priyanka: Absolutely. So I am Priyanka Venugopal, I am an OB/GYN physician turned a mind and body health coach for high-achieving professional moms who really want to feel better in their body, lose weight without a calculator and ultimately feel better at work and home. And I’m the founder of the Unstoppable Mom Brain. And friends with you, which is so fun.

Bonnie: Yes, Priyanka and I are friends. There’s like a theme here, I basically bring my friends on who I feel like we could have a very interesting and valuable conversation for my listeners.

So, in case everyone is wondering why she is here on the show when it on the surface does not look like money. But since we are friends we’ve been talking a lot about things that we have seen show up for our clients because they’re both type A, perfectionistic women. Obviously physicians aren’t the only people who are perfectionists, right?

So I think this is going to be an amazing conversation and we’ll both make analogies to how it applies to our clients. And I think what’s great about that is I think having examples helps people learn better, right? That’s really what it comes down to. Examples, metaphors, et cetera.

Okay, so since I led with our clients being perfectionistic women, it shows up in so many ways, right? And actually, I was just coaching yesterday and I noticed that this client was having what we call all or none thinking, I don’t know if you call it black and white thinking. But she was looking to start a business. And basically her thinking is, well, I can’t start it until I have all the pieces in place.

So in her mind it was like the website, she was uncomfortable having her name out there, her picture. So in her mind she had to figure that all out before she could start a blog. And so I explained to her the concept of all or none thinking, I’m like, but there’s so many things in between. It’s fine if you’re not comfortable.

I was like, you could just start the blog and use your first name, or I did recommend not being anonymous because people don’t generally want to work with people if they don’t know your name and who you are. But that was just an example of needing to have everything perfectly in place before taking action. So how do you see that in your clients, Priyanka?

Priyanka: Yeah, I think this is such a good topic because I find that with high-achieving professional women especially, there are a few key and common trends that hold back hitting goals and I think you just kind of touched on one.

So perfectionism is a big one and procrastination, which is interesting, they seem almost like two different ends of the spectrum but they go very hand in hand. Because we have these perfectionist brains, which I want to just define that the way that I think about perfectionism is not just that you want to do really well. I think high-achievers think I want to get the A+, the gold star, the accolades, the recognition.

The other side of perfectionism is avoiding imperfection, avoiding mistakes and avoiding the possibility of failure. And I find that that, actually that second half, is the real reason that high achievers will hesitate on taking needle moving action.

So what I find a lot of the time is we have this idea, this desire to hit a goal, whether it’s to start a business, to lose weight, to maybe create something more for yourself at work or at home. And the only reason that we want to have every single piece in place, again, this is like the planner’s dream, like you want to plan it all out, is simply because we want to avoid the discomfort of possibly failing.

The discomfort of possibly making a mistake because we think that that is going to be associated with a really terrible feeling. And we imply that mistakes and that terrible feeling means we’re not going to actually achieve the goal. And so it’s almost like very protective, if you think about it.

The idea of mistakes might mean that I’m not going to hit my goal, but it’s like let’s just not start. Let’s just spend a lot of time, and high-achievers do this a lot, in consumption and in planning because we think it’s super useful. But what it ends up doing is it puts high achievers in consumption, a lot of non-needle moving action. And so then their goals stall.

Bonnie: Right. And how we define this is passive action versus massive action. Obviously, some passive action is necessary, but I’m sure you see like my clients are stuck in like, well, I’ve got to learn more. Especially like, I need to learn more about real estate or I need to learn more about XYZ before I can invest in it. And so they’re just spending months learning without doing something but it feels like you are doing something because you are taking “action.”

Priyanka: Absolutely.

Bonnie: But they’re not taking needle moving action, right? That’s so good.

Priyanka: I mean, you tell me, Bonnie, but does it feel like people – At least I know this was me, like just this addiction to learning and planning because learning feels so useful, right? It’s like, but don’t take away my learning and planning because it feels so useful that it sometimes is hard to stop learning to take the massive action that you’re talking about.

Bonnie: Yeah, And I’m totally into planners and I still remember studying for step one, like I had a very elaborate table and plan. One thing I was proud of is I built in some wiggle room because a plan looks good on paper, but then that assumes you are going to execute perfectly. So I put in a few, and I’m only saying this because I have a funny example of I think two or three days where if I fall off track. And one day I ended up staying literally all night watching 24. Do you remember that show?

Priyanka: Oh yes. Oh yeah.

Bonnie: So literally I was just like binge watching it and went to bed at like three or 4am. So that obviously derailed the whole day. And I was like, I’m so glad I did this.

Priyanka: That was Alias and West Wing for me. So I would have my study schedule, and for me I didn’t use book planners because I knew that I was going to redo it and we don’t want red marks on the planner. So I used to print out monthly calendars. You know those monthly, you could just go to Google and print it out.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Priyanka: So I’d print out this calendar, I would have my study schedule, this was for boards after medical school. And I would write out all the chapters and practice bulletins that I had to read by specific dates. But Alias and West Wing just took over my life. And then I would reprint out brand new calendars because, again, perfectionist brain, I wanted a fresh start. I didn’t want red lines. And I know I want the green check marks, so yeah, I mean, absolutely.

Bonnie: Have you heard of erasable pens?

Priyanka: Listen, erasable pens don’t fully erase the pen. You know what I’m saying? Like you can see the redness underneath.

Bonnie: The marks. Yeah, you couldn’t have that. You couldn’t have the dents.

Priyanka: Oh no. Oh no, I don’t want that. It needs to be perfect. Clean, crisp paper, it feels really good. I love fresh starts.

Bonnie: All right, so speaking of plans, you and I talked about how when you are so elaborately planning, it’s almost as if you think or they think the plan is what’s going to be the thing that gets them to the goal. And that’s just one part of it, right? And they kind of ignore the part that isn’t the plan. So let’s talk about that a little bit.

Priyanka: Yeah, so I think that the plan or the strategy that we have is 30% of what’s required to hit a goal. So we don’t want to poo poo the plan or brush it under the rug, your strategy really does matter. But I think instead of us spending 30% of our bandwidth on the plan, most high achievers are spending 95% of their bandwidth on the plan that’s only going to create 30% of the impact.

So the other pieces that I think are really important are to know that the plan is 30%. The other piece of it has to be implemented consistently, so really following through on what you said you were going to do. That’s the other 30 or let’s be 33.333%. And then the last piece of it that I find, again, for my clients and high-achievers that want to hit goals is leveraging imperfect moments.

So you’re going to have this plan. If you follow it, you’re not going to follow it perfectly because, again, we’re humans and have human brains. We’re going to have mistakes, we might go off plan, we might again have an Alias West Wing or 24 binge and go off plan.

And most high achievers don’t have a very clear and specific process for how they’re going to evaluate that. Evaluate their results, evaluate the fact that they’ve gotten behind and then, again, what most of us will do is we’ll go back to the plan, fresh start, print out a brand new calendar rather than leveraging and understanding, I wonder why I went off plan.

Bonnie: Or they just throw the plan away and say, I can’t do this.

Priyanka: Throw it away. Yeah, exactly. Or they’ll give up on the goal. And then eventually some point will come along where they’re like, actually, I do want the goal and then again, fresh start again. So I think that’s a big piece of it that most high achievers don’t have part of their plan is to evaluate implementation and to evaluate results routinely.

But the other one that I find creates a lot of wobble is most high achievers haven’t truly visualized where they want to go. They have this kind of vague idea of what their goal is, but maybe there’s a little bit of fear. Like I don’t want to say it out loud because if I say it out loud, if I don’t hit it, I’m going to be disappointed. There’s that piece of it.

And then I think high achievers are so practically minded that they can’t imagine or visualize themselves at a goal. So then they just don’t set the goal. And when you don’t set a goal, you have a lot of wobble in your strategy and in your plan because you don’t have direction. So that’s the other piece of it.

Bonnie: Yeah, I literally just coached someone on this this week. So when I work with clients, obviously, the goal at large is financial freedom, more money, work less et cetera, right? And those all sound great, but they’re very vague. And so I literally asked her like, well, what do you actually want? And I just said, you might not know what that is, but we have to pick something specific.

And then she was saying that she works locums and is starting this new business. And I was like, okay, well, what do you want your life to look like? What do you want it to look like? And she was like, I would love to work maybe half the locums shifts and have more time to work on our business. I was like, okay. And she wants to maintain the same level of income, right? Because that’s also important too.

And so I asked her like, okay, so if you drop by half, what is that amount? Like that’s something you could calculate. And then she was like, oh, and then she told me the number. I don’t remember, it was like 100k. It doesn’t matter, right? And I said, okay, so then the question is, how can you have 100k of income that’s not coming from locums, right? It’s such a very specific question. And then I was like, and by when? I’m like, you have to pick a date.

Priyanka: Absolutely.

Bonnie: So she picked five years. And then I explained to her why this is so important. This is going to be valuable for everyone listening, is like I think of, and I’m curious to hear how you explain it to your clients. I’m like, a goal gives you direction because if it’s just work less, it’s like you’re in a forest. You’re like I don’t know where work less is.

Priyanka: What does work less mean? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Bonnie: And then I said the timeline, because I told her you’re going to make very different decisions now if the goal is one year versus five, versus 10. So that’s how I explain it. How do you explain it?

Priyanka: Yeah, so I think about if you imagine running a marathon or running a long race and you have this goal at the end. Then I think about having a timeline as like the mile markers along which you’re going to get to that goal.

And I think that this is especially important, at least I see this with weight loss and I’m sure it’s also true with business. But let’s say you have 10 pounds to lose or 50 pounds to lose. You can see they’re both very different goals, but we want to attach a timeline because that’s how we are going to evaluate more with higher quality evaluations.

If I don’t set a timeline for my 10 pounds down or my 50 pounds down, then the evaluation also becomes vague. So that’s, again, remember that 33% of hitting goals is being able to evaluate. I wonder how the last mile went? Did I slow down? Did I get really tired? Did I not pace myself well? Did I forget to drink water? Am I not breathing the way –

I mean, I’m not a runner, by the way, for anyone listening. I’m not a runner, but there are certain pieces of your implementation for the last mile that you might want to evaluate. And I think that having the timeline allows the quality of our evaluation to level up. If we don’t put the timeline, then I think that we stop really giving ourselves the information of the last mile that’s going to help us run better the next mile.

So it’s not just a timeline for the goal. But I think the other piece of timelines is having regular intervals that you’re evaluating and putting that to a timeline as well.

Bonnie: Yeah, no, I love the mile marker analogy. Yeah, I remember giving a talk and asking people what they would love to do. And someone said to travel more, which is a very common answer. And I was like, well, how much more? Let’s get specific. And she was like, oh. Right? Because people don’t think about that. Basically I was like, well, how will you know that you’re traveling more to the extent of what you just said?

Priyanka: Yeah.

Bonnie: But exactly, I think the punchline here is to get really specific with your goals. So I’ve been helping people do that, you know, just like, oh, this is what I want, what is that number because it comes down to a number that’s like, well, how fast do you want to get there? And then I was explaining, and then she was telling me she wants to look into this type of investing.

And I just was like, in order to reach the timeline you want, you know, different investment vehicles have different speeds of making money is really what it comes down to. And unfortunately, the ones that make money the fastest require a lot more time and effort. But you have to remember that right now you’re doing a direct time for money exchange and that’s never going to change. The increments aren’t going to change. In fact, you get paid less the longer you are a doctor per unit of time.

Priyanka: Right.

Bonnie: We’re like the only profession where this happens, I believe. It’s like reverse inflation.

Priyanka: Yeah.

Bonnie: Anyway, that’s a whole other conversation. And I was like, yeah, there’s going to be some initial effort, you’re going to have to learn things. Which type A experts, doctors, they’re used to being experts, so to be a beginner is not exactly pleasure inducing. But I try to remind them like, it’s not like you have to do this sustained effort and time in order to do that.

And so, actually, I was posing to this client the question is, are you willing to do that to get the result that you want? Because we know what’s going to happen if you don’t, right?

Priyanka: We already know that, yeah.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Priyanka: And I think the other thing that I love that you just said about the timeline is it really helps you see whether you’ve hit what you wanted to hit. I had a client, this was so fascinating. Her goal was, before we started working together, that she wanted to lose I think it was like 1.4 pounds a week. And we evaluate every week and every month.

Bonnie: Such a weird number, by the way.

Priyanka: I know. I think that she had done some, again, as we do, we do some random math, you reverse divide and you come up with a number. So she had 1.4 pounds. And again, evaluation is a very key part of what I do with my clients, so we evaluate every week and every month.

So in our monthly evaluation she said I’m so disappointed in my results. I thought I would be, these were her words, “I thought I would be further along. I feel so disappointed. I kind of feel like it’s not working.” And I was like let’s evaluate this. What’s the math? She lost 1.4 pounds per week over the month. And when she actually saw the numbers –

Bonnie: Which was her goal.

Priyanka: But in her mind and, again, I think high achievers do this, we have this lens of thinking that what we’re creating is not good enough. But having specific goals to set to a timeline, we had to show her brain how she was so steeped in it’s not going to work, it’s not working, it’s not fast enough.

Because, again, listen, we all wanted results yesterday. We all wanted more money yesterday. We wanted to have lost the weight by yesterday. So it makes a lot of sense that our brain is like, it’s not fast enough. I’m like, but you hit your goal. And literally her mind was blown.

She was like, oh my gosh, I didn’t even see it like that. I wasn’t even looking at the numbers, I just had this perception. Because that’s what vagary does. Vagary is just like, my perception is something is not working. And I think getting specific is actually being like, wait, actually maybe it is.

Bonnie: Yeah. Yeah because exactly, when it’s vague you can’t measure it. Like the sample of travel more, I’m like what does that mean? Does that mean like a week more? Does it mean like half the year, et cetera?

Priyanka: Yeah.

Bonnie: Yeah. Okay, awesome. So one thing that you told me that I thought was really, I just love the way you thought about it, is what you call future-aligned decision-making. So let’s talk about that.

Priyanka: Yeah.

Bonnie: Actually, you explain it since this is your thing.

Priyanka: Yeah, so I think about future-aligned decision-making as kind of getting wisdom from the version of you that has achieved the goal. So the way that I think about this from, I’m going to use weight loss as an example.

If your goal is to lose 10 pounds, I want you to imagine that that’s done. You’re living in the life of someone that is 10 pounds lighter. You feel better in your body. Maybe you feel more energized. And that version of you is the version of you that you can imagine sustaining that lifestyle.

So you’re not doing a crash diet or a juice cleanse to lose 10 pounds. You’re eating in a way that truly feels like your ride-or-die BFF lover for life, you can sustain it forever. Imagine that that was done. And now reverse engineer how you got there.

So I think about a lot of times what high achievers do is we set into plan making now, looking at our results now. And we think about all the things we have to do. So we end up overloading our action plan to create the goal, rather than the reverse, which is what I call future-aligned decision-making.

Imagine you’re already there. It’s sustainable. It’s done. How did she create that? That version of you that’s 10 pounds down, how did she get there in a way that felt simple and sustainable? What hard decisions did she have to make? What decisions did she make that felt really simple?

And I think it was nice for me to think about this in my own personal journey. A big part of what I had to say no to is I used to love Cool Ranch Doritos. And what I would often do is make Cool Ranch Doritos dinner. Cool Ranch Doritos dinner was my thing.

Bonnie: What is that?

Priyanka: Okay, so for those of you that really want to know, you take a Kraft cheddar cheese, the shredded kind, and you sprinkle it on top of Cool Ranch Doritos. You make a nice big plate of it, you pour a glass of wine, you settle in with Netflix and you just have a night. You have a night of it.

Bonnie: Do you melt it first?

Priyanka: Of course. Oh yeah, you have to microwave it for about like 45 seconds. You don’t want it to get too, too melted because the cheese burns and then that messes up the whole thing. So 45 seconds is like the perfect melted cheese. But I used to do this all the time.

I used to get home from work after a busy shift at the hospital or maybe a late-night delivery and I felt like I just wanted a break, I wanted to treat myself. And this was my best way of doing it. I had no other ways, until I discovered coaching, that this was how I got to treat myself.

So that plan that I had made Monday morning, which was like let’s eat really healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner. And we’re going to do no flour, no sugar. I had all these ideas Monday morning. Wednesday night I was like, screw that. Cool Ranch Doritos dinner and a glass of wine sounds really good.

It was very easy for me to kind of quit on the decisions that I made Monday morning because those decisions, I had made those decisions from hating where I was right now as opposed to like future-aligned decisions. I want you to think about it like, okay, for me, I wanted to lose 60 pounds. I used to weigh 200 pounds when I created this.

I was like what is the version of me, she’s lost the weight and she’s learned how to take care of herself. She’s lost the weight and she’s had this late-night delivery and she wants to feel better. How did she solve this without the Cool Ranch Doritos dinner? Like I wonder.

And all of a sudden, you’d be surprised how brilliant our brains are at solving that problem. So I still, I mean, let me just be honest, I still do Cool Ranch Doritos dinner every now and then.

Bonnie: I was going to ask that.

Priyanka: I totally do. And again, I totally still enjoy two glasses of wine, my margaritas, and I’ll do Cool Ranch Doritos dinners every now and then. But I’m able to do it in a way that doesn’t affect my goal because of this future aligned decision making that I’m talking about.

Bonnie: Yeah, so I do something, it’s basically the same concept, like a future self meditation or visualization. And you said it so well, it is amazing how much wisdom and knowledge that people already have once they just put themselves there and they can see that version.

Priyanka: Yeah.

Bonnie: I remember doing this at my retreat last year and I had everyone share. And I’m just laughing because she was like, because I had them visualize this person, like what is she wearing? How does she look, et cetera? And then she was like, “She looked just like me.”

Priyanka: Oh, I love that.

Bonnie: I’m like, well, of course, it is you, right?

Priyanka: Yeah.

Bonnie: But I think sometimes we think like – Anyway, I thought that was just funny.

Priyanka: It’s like a whole different person.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Priyanka: And I think the other piece of the future-aligned decision-making, the reason that it’s so powerful in following through in the moment, like that Wednesday night that you’re like, oh, I just deserve a break. The reason that it’s easier to follow through when you’re thinking about your future is that your brain is naturally hardwired for immediate gratification.

So, you know that. I’m sure you’ve talked about this on your podcast, that the motivational triad drives us to have an immediate reward. And the reason for that is because we have given delayed rewards no value and no significance.

It’s like evolutionarily I think humans are just like, I might get eaten by a lion or a bear, so immediate reward is more valued. So we have to do the lifting, the heavy lifting, the work of giving it more significance and more value on a daily basis. It’s a natural way of following through when you don’t feel like it when you remember delayed reward.

Bonnie: Yeah, and I think especially with, well probably your clients too, I think they have this thought like, well, I’ve worked so hard to be where I’m at, I’ve already delayed my gratification. And so there’s that sort of micro quit that happens, right?

Priyanka: Absolutely, because they want to feel taken care of. And eating, drinking, scrolling, shopping, spending, you name it, is a very, very quick way of solving the problem. So it makes a lot of sense that we have these habits of overeating or overspending in the moment because it does help you. There’s a reason that we’ve developed those habits.

But what we’re talking about is, if those habits are creating undesirable results, they might be worth challenging. And what if there was a way to be taken care of now, but it means doing the work of un-wiring your brain, unlearning habits and learning new ones so you can actually also have the results that you want. Maybe that’s more wealth, maybe it’s to hit your body goal, maybe it’s to feel better at work, at home, bringing that back into the mix.

Bonnie: Yeah, and one thing you said that I really liked is you talked about how you think about yourself in the future who has the result and is also taking care of yourself because you were saying that a lot of us make these plans from a place of, what was it? I don’t have it or something like that. I forget exactly what you said.

Priyanka: Yeah, we make decisions from like right now. We kind of hate where we are right now.

Bonnie: Yes, hate where you are, that’s it.

Priyanka: And we’re so desperate to get to the goal. Like I remember for my wedding I worked out six days a week, I did those 100 calorie oatmeal packets. I was like, I have to hit, like it’s my wedding day, the photos. It was like a big vanity metric. I want the photos, who cares what angle it is? I wanted to feel comfortable and confident.

I was willing to, I counted every point and calorie I ate. And I remember every time that we would go out on a date I was like, oh, I might go over my calorie allotment, let’s just really be super strict with it because I was in such a rush. And I was willing to eat 100 calorie oatmeal packets for months to hit my goal weight.

And then not surprisingly, the day after the wedding you better believe I stopped eating the 100 calorie oatmeal packets and gained 60 pounds over 10 years because I had a strategy that was not sustainable, a strategy that I didn’t love. Of course it wasn’t sustainable.

So it’s very interesting how we make plans from our current self, hating where we are now because we’re in such a rush. Versus what small tweaks would happen if your future self was making these decisions in a way that felt so sustainable.

Bonnie: Yeah. And one thing, as you were talking I also think it’s hating where you are but also hating yourself, right? It’s like a form of these plans that are completely unrealistic and unsustainable, like no spend months, for example. Like everyone in January was doing a no spend month. I’m sure they’re doing some version of that for weight loss.

Priyanka: Yeah, absolutely.

Bonnie: And yeah, it comes from, I think, a combination of hating where you are, but also it’s a way to beat yourself up by creating these crazy, unrealistic action plans that are 100% destined to crash and burn, which then creates more beating of the self, right? You’re like, well I couldn’t even follow this plan that was completely unrealistic and would require a super human or robot to do, right?

Priyanka: Absolutely. And it’s actually, I feel like a piece of that, the hating yourself piece, which I think again for some high achievers this is very obvious, you have a very strong negative self-talk. For someone like me, my negative self-talk was very subtle. So it was very, very subtle. It wasn’t very obvious. But the one for me was, you should have figured this out by now. You should be further along.

And that would be the reason that I would be like, maybe if I did like 800 calories a day, maybe if I did no carb, maybe if I stopped eating potatoes, which is like literally my favorite food of all time, then I will lose the weight. So that was my way of having negative self-talk or not loving myself, was I should have figured this out. Everybody else seems to be figuring this out so easily. It must just be this unique defect of mine and so let’s punish ourselves.

I didn’t think of it as punishment at the time. I was like, this is just what I have to do.

Bonnie: Yeah, no, I totally see that. I think a lot of my “negative” self-talk was, part of it was like it didn’t seem that mean to me. But also what I’ve realized is you get used to that way of thinking, it doesn’t even seem mean.

Priyanka: Exactly.

Bonnie: Until you say it out loud because even just verbalizing it out loud, you can just be like, oh, that’s not nice, right?

Priyanka: But it’s so common because you see other people doing it, right? You see other people doing no spend months so you’re like, oh, that must be just the thing we do nowadays. Or you see people being like no carbs, right? Like high protein, what is it? Keto, like I’m going to do protein. It seems so normalized and I think that that creates this conditioning.

For women, we look around us thinking that, oh, that’s the right way or that’s the normal way. So I might as well hop on that bandwagon and try that out. The idea of challenging that, I think, is very uncomfortable.

Bonnie: So another thing that I thought would be really good to talk about, and I don’t even think I’ve specifically talked about it this way. So the money analogy is that it’s like giving money all the responsibility for making you feel secure, right? Because everyone’s trying to feel – They want more money because they think it’s going to make them feel secure, right? Even though there’s evidence that that didn’t happen when you went from a resident to an attending, right?

And I do this too, we’re abdicating everything to money as if money is going to make you feel better, as if it has nothing to do with you. And I think basically what you and I are helping our clients with is like, it’s not money’s job, it’s your job to feel secure.

Priyanka: Yeah.

Bonnie: But it’s so tempting.

Priyanka: I love that you’re saying that. That’s so good.

Bonnie: Once I have a certain amount of money, then I will feel safe and secure. And then people are surprised when they don’t feel better. I mean, maybe you’ll feel a little bit better, right? For sure. But then this is kind of also a bit of scarcity, having not enough money. I’ve seen it just morph into I’m afraid I’m going to lose all my money.

Priyanka: And I think it also turns into like a line in sand, it kind of keeps moving. So you might make 100k. And you think that, oh, that’s when I’ll feel secure. And then you make 100k. And you’re like, actually, because I don’t feel secure yet, maybe it’s 200k. And then you’ll make 200k and maybe you’ll feel that security for maybe all of a day, and then your brain is like, maybe half a million.

And I think the same thing happens, I think, with any goal. If you think that the goal, losing the weight, making the money, is what’s going to create your feeling of security or certainty, it’s going to be the constant hustle because it’s constantly a moving line because humans are designed to keep growing. So your brain is naturally thinking about the next thing.

And I think my Cool Ranch Doritos dinner is a good example. Cool Ranch Doritos, a glass of wine and Netflix was my way of feeling taken care of. So that’s the language that I would use for me. It was like I wanted to feel taken care of, I wanted to feel relaxed and secure. I finally put my kid to bed and I’ve been dealing with maybe some difficult cases in the OR or that challenging patient or something my colleague or boss said. I’m like this is my time, I just want to relax.

And what we’ve done, and this has been, again, socialized in every part of our culture, is we’ve just given food a job or money a job that it was not meant to have. We’ve just given these jobs away that we didn’t know was actually our responsibility.

And what I think you and I are talking about in our podcasts and what we want to share with the universe is what would it look like to take that responsibility back? What if it didn’t have to be so hard, but what if we took the responsibility back? Then you could actually just enjoy your Doritos dinner or spending that money on something and take it or leave it? You’re taken care of. You feel secure either way. I mean, to me that is just priceless.

Bonnie: Yeah, well, it’s basically having agency. Realizing that it’s in your power because it’s a very powerless position if it’s something else outside of you that you feel like, well, that is external, right?

So I’m curious, we’re not going to, obviously, be able to explain this all at once on a podcast, but this is obviously part of the work that we have to help our clients with, right? So I’m curious, what are some of the first things that you do with your clients to take that responsibility back?

I think maybe number one is just even telling them like, hey, this is what we’re going to work on because it’s not food’s job, it’s not money’s job.

Priyanka: Yeah. Well, I think it’s important. Yeah, so I think that that’s an important piece. But again, I think for our high achiever brains, we do better when we have tangible, specific strategies ready to go. Like a framework that we know that we can follow.

So the first thing that I like to do with my clients is actually help them create a strategy. And I use the word strategy on purpose because it’s not just a meal plan, it’s a strategy that has folded in your way of eating. Remember that ride or die BFF lover for life. And eating in a way that will promote fat loss.

So I teach my clients a very specific way of eating that they can fit into their real life where they eat the cuisines that they love that they can customize to them, that they can actually imagine eating in the long run. So that’s the first thing.

And what that does, I think that that creates a kind of security and safety like, okay, I’m not going to be eating canned green beans or, I don’t know, frozen peas as my way of eating. I can eat potatoes. I can have a glass of wine. I can even have Doritos if I want them. There’s a way of eating that will support me hitting my goal. And that, I think, creates, again, that safety and security.

And now what we get to do once that plan is secure, is now we also have to fold into our strategy how are we going to be evaluating this on a regular basis? That goes into our game plan. Where on your calendar are you putting this? I think, again, what we do is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m going to evaluate. And it’s like, when? Where? How long are you going to take?

Bonnie: And how?

Priyanka: How are you going to do it? So I really want my clients, and again I think it’s so important to get super specific about this. When do you have 30 minutes in your whole week that you’re not folding laundry or checking your email that you can actually dedicate to this? To this goal that you really want. And putting it on your calendar, blocking it off like it’s the most important meeting you’re going to have with the CEO of your life, which is you.

So it’s these other pieces that I think we often overlook because we go right to the plan that I help my clients do. And then what I really like to share is guess what we get to do now? We get to go implement messily, which they hate. Which I think, again, high achievers hate messy implementation, we want to implement perfectly. But I’m like, it’s just not going to be the way that it goes.

I want you to have imperfect moments. I know, you don’t want to have imperfect moments. I want you to have imperfect moments so that I can now coach you on exactly what happened and we can iterate on it and leverage those moments and then go again and again and again. Imagine if you did that, where you’re going to be six months from now. It’s like so far.

Bonnie: Yeah. It’s so funny, I was thinking about, like as you were talking I was like, did we take imperfect messy action in our medical training? I mean, for sure, none of it was perfect. I mean, I feel like we all had that person in our class that seemed to do everything perfect.

Priyanka: I think that this is so good for physicians especially. And this was why this was probably one of the biggest personal barriers I had to overcome to lose the weight. With my physician’s brain, we are, I mean, imperfect moments are absolutely not recommended. A patient’s life is on the line or your patient’s health, which is important, is on the line. Imagine as a surgeon you’re like, let’s take imperfect moments in the OR. No, right?

There’s a reason that I think physicians especially really strive for perfect moments, to have perfect implementation. But what we’re talking about is imperfect moments is not the goal, it’s just a part of being human. So I think what’s important to know is that we’ve been steeped in the tea of wanting to do perfectly because of our physician upbringing, our physician education.

But what would it look like if we stopped really hiding from the mistakes we have made? Like even with a patient, in the OR, with your colleague or boss? What if we stopped hiding from those imperfect moments that actually do end up happening and didn’t make it mean anything about our capability, about our skills, about ourselves as humans? What would we then get to learn from moving forward? So there’s a reason that physicians are so focused on doing perfectly, it’s like part of our training.

Bonnie: Oh, yeah, no, for sure. And also minimizing risk as much as possible, which unfortunately does not work when it comes to growing your money, I should say specifically because I guess you could just keep working as a physician.

Yeah, as you were talking, and this is completely like a side note. And the public, I think, expects perfection out of doctors. Like we’re not seen as humans. And so the unfortunate reality is no doctor is going to be 100% perfect. Things happen, mistakes are made and I think that almost reinforces our need to be perfect.

Priyanka: Absolutely. And it’s like this impossible standard. When you hear, and it’s not just in a couple of places, people in general are like, doctors should not make mistakes, right? I think that’s probably a pretty common standard phrase that you might hear someone say. And the trouble is that physicians start believing it too and start operating from this impossible standard that I’m not supposed to make any mistakes.

Again, this is not to say that we are trying to make mistakes, right? Again, that would be very all or nothing to think I’m being complacent now, I don’t care. That’s not what we’re saying. I think what we’re saying is that we don’t want to make mistakes but know that they will happen. And we don’t have to hold ourselves to an impossible standard, we can just challenge the standard and start feeling better right now.

Bonnie: And one thing that I think is sort of weaved into everything we talked about, is helping our clients like themselves more, love themselves more. The word love feels weird to me, that’s probably my own, like that’s what I have to work on, right? But just like themselves more, taking care of themselves more, right? Because you can’t reach these goals hating yourself the whole time. It just doesn’t work.

Priyanka: Yeah. I actually think it’s kind of funny because, and I was like this too, this idea of self-love. I’m like, what does that even mean? Like self-love, what is that, right? I mean, I know I love my kids and I can feel that for them. But I mean, self-love feels a little bit indulgent or a little silly.

Bonnie: Weird.

Priyanka: And I realized over, I think, the last few years and especially as I was losing all of the weight, it wasn’t just feeling love for myself because that felt, again, foreign to me. What, for me, it turned into was how I talk to myself generally on a day to day basis.

So before coaching and before a lot of this work that we’re talking about, I didn’t even realize this but I had kind of this not enough, critical lens, pressuring like go get more, go do more, go do better was the constant monologue that I had in my mind, which feels, if you feel the energy and the texture of that, it just doesn’t feel very good.

Rather than what I’ve really worked on over the last few years is like, I always have your back. I’ve got you all the time. Like, let’s go, let’s go hit that big goal. Let’s go do this hard thing. I’ve got you, I’ve got you. And it’s like this constant monologue of I’ve got you. I mean, I just feel so taken care of and cared for.

And I think that that’s been my expression of self-love. Even for me, self-love is still like, what is that? But it’s that monologue of how I talk to myself now that has really shifted. And it’s not surprising, it’s kind of crazy, but I don’t crave Doritos dinners anymore. I’m like, I don’t need it anymore because I’m like, listen, the way that I talk to myself is so different. I naturally feel more taken care of. And it feels so much better.

Can you imagine with your kid, it’s like I use children’s analogies a lot because I work with professional moms.

Bonnie: Me too.

Priyanka: And I think that they’re so good because the care that we have for our child is so available to us. Like, would you ever say to your kid like, “I cannot believe you screwed up. You’re probably never going to make that team. I can’t believe you. It didn’t work, don’t even try again.” You would never say that to your child. But do you know how often we’re saying that to ourselves? It’s like all the time.

Bonnie: No, totally.

Priyanka: Which is crazy.

Bonnie: Yeah. So it’s funny, again, I’m like, self-love, it just felt like something high up there or like super like granola crunchy stuff.

Priyanka: Yeah, yeah.

Bonnie: And I love what you said, like it’s the way you’re talking to yourself. And actually the way one of my mentor coaches said, and this is great, she’s like, self-love is not a destination. And she said that and I was like, oh. Because I think in our minds we think it’s this destination that once we get, well, I don’t know. I’m not even sure what we think is going to happen, but something great.

And she said it’s simply the relationship you have with yourself. And as you and I know, relationships are basically thoughts about a person. And so self-love is really the relationship you have with yourself. And the way you know how your relationship is, is by how you talk to yourself.

Priyanka: Absolutely.

Bonnie: And it’s so funny, when I meet new people who are newer to coaching, they’re like, what do you mean talking to yourself? I’m like, all the sentences in your brain that are happening right now.

Priyanka: They’re like, what do you mean?

Bonnie: Yeah, they’re like that –

Priyanka: This is so crazy, I remember before I discovered coaching I was like, this is just who I am. I mean I was like, that’s just me. That’s just me, My husband calls me, I’m like so stubborn. I’m like, I’m just a stubborn person. I’m just rigid.

And it was so crazy when I first discovered coaching, which was through a podcast like this, I was like, “Wait a second, my thoughts are optional? What?” It really blew my mind to even understand as a concept that thoughts are just sentences in our brain that we have on repeat that we’ve been so unconscious of, which I think is crazy.

And just one thing that came to me when you were speaking about our monologue, the analogy that we had at the beginning, the race that you’re running, you have this goal. And as you’re the runner in the race, the way that I like to think about your monologue is your coach running alongside you is yourself.

So every time that you’re running, can you imagine that coach being like, “Let’s go, you’ve got this. Let’s go. You know what? That meter, let’s just amp it up. Let’s get 10 seconds off our goal. Come on, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.” Or like you fumble, what will that coach say to you? They’re not going to be like, “You loser. I can’t believe you didn’t figure that one out, just quit the race now.”

That version of you is going to be like, “Listen, okay, you stumbled on it. Let’s figure this out. Let’s go.” That is how you hit goals. It is fundamentally changing that relationship with yourself. But I think people are so unaware of how to do that, which is why coaching is magic.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Priyanka: That’s my thoughts about it.

Bonnie: Yeah, no, totally. Obviously, we wouldn’t be coaches if we didn’t see the magic in it. And yeah, a lot of us think that the way to get to our goal is by shitting on ourselves.

Priyanka: Yeah.

Bonnie: As if that’s going to create the motivation, right? And it might get you started but, again, as we’ve been talking about, it’s unsustainable.

Okay. This is such a good conversation and. It has been really good for me because, obviously, I’m a perfectionist.

Priyanka: As we all are. I mean me too, I still have that.

Bonnie: Yeah. So it’s not about never being, you know, I think it’s something that’s always going to sort of be there, but it’s more like the reminding of ourselves and getting out of that perfectionist thinking.

Okay, so is there anything that you think?

Priyanka: I think that this last piece is important. The goal is not to not be a perfectionist. The goal is to recognize your tendencies and how they might be creating obstacles and become so aware of them that you can engage with them and change the way you show up.

So I still hate failing. I still hate mistakes. I hate imperfect moments. I hate it. But now, instead of hiding from them, I’m like, ooh, that felt terrible. Ooh, that feels kind of vulnerable. Ooh, that’s kind of embarrassing. And I can just, again, imagine the person talking to me like, “Okay, it makes a lot of sense you hate this because, remember, we love perfect things. And also, let’s just go solve this.”

So I think the goal is not, again, it’s very all or nothing to assume that coaching will change all of that because this is not something to be fixed. It’s just the way that I think humans are designed and high achievers just have a higher amped up volume on the perfectionist tendencies. But it’s not to get rid of it, it’s just to know it and understand how to manage it.

Bonnie: Right. Awesome. Okay, how can people find you, Priyanka? Because obviously, you’re awesome and amazing.

Priyanka: Yeah, so I am the Unstoppable Mom Brain everywhere on the internet. I have my podcast, The Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast. And The Unstoppable Mom Brain on Instagram and on the worldwide web. On the Google’s.

Bonnie: On the Googles, yeah. No, it’s easy when it’s all the same thing.

Priyanka: It’s all the same. And I do have training on this specific topic, on perfectionism and procrastination. So if anyone here is interested in that, you can get that at theunstoppablemombrain.com/training. And I kind of walk you through how to manage your perfectionist brain.

Bonnie: Okay, Priyanka, thank you so much for being here.

Priyanka: Thank you so much for having me. This was awesome.

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Wealthy Mom MD with Bonnie Koo | Relationships and Money Disagreements with Maggie Reyes

167: Relationships and Money Disagreements with Maggie Reyes

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For my clients in long-term relationships, talking to their spouse or partner about money can be incredibly tricky, especially when they don’t find themselves in agreement in these conversations. So, this week’s episode is all about relationships in general, as well as talking about money within your relationships.

I’m joined by Maggie Reyes, a Master Certified Life Coach and Modern Marriage Mentor who specializes in helping driven, ambitious women create their best marriages without waiting for their partners to change or adding more work to their lives. Maggie is full of tips for having productive, healthy conversations around money, even if it’s an area where you and your partner have had disagreements in the past.

Even if you aren’t in a long-term relationship, today’s show will transform how you talk about money with anybody in your life. Discover why the way you show up in your relationship as an individual can change everything, the importance of understanding your thoughts about money when a disagreement arises, and how to start meeting in the middle when it comes to money.

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What You'll Learn from this Episode:

How Maggie coaches her clients as individuals, rather than in couples.
Why it’s so common for couples to be on different pages when it comes to money.
The most common money disagreements couples have.
Maggie’s tips for dealing with general disagreements in a relationship.
How to start getting on the same page as your partner, one decision at a time.
Maggie’s tips for getting clear on your thoughts about your disagreements with your partner.
What you can do to bring real context to the conversations you have with your partner about money.
How to thrive in your relationship and build wealth as a team.

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113: The Truth About Financial Security
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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 episode 167. So today we’re going to talk about relationships in general. And then we’re also going to do a bit of a dive into probably one of the most common things my clients bring to me when it comes to money, and these are for clients who are in a long-term relationship, whether they’re married or whatever, which is talking to their spouse about money, especially when they don’t agree.

And so we’re going to go into that. And so you’re definitely going to learn some tips, et cetera. And I recently had Maggie inside of my paid program, Live Wealthy, where she did some teaching but also got to coach some of the ladies who are experiencing some disagreement with their spouse.

Now, at the time of recording this, about a week ago is when the smoke coming from Canada basically, the wildfire smoke. I’ve never experienced anything like this. I’ve never really paid attention to air quality. I mean, I look at my weather app every day and it always gives a number. But I never really paid that much attention to it.

And now I’m paying a lot of attention to it and reading more about it. And also reading about how bad air quality affects us. I think we all know that it does, but I did a deeper dive into sort of those effects. Also, I just want to share with you I definitely had symptoms. In fact, I thought I was coming down with a cold. But as soon as the air got better, my symptoms literally disappeared overnight. I felt congested. I had a sore throat. I just didn’t feel well.

Now, we already have air purifiers inside our apartment and we were running them on high. And I don’t know if the air inside was also bad, because I was sort of going outside a few times to bring Jack to school and errands et cetera. But I recently bought some new ones and one that actually can measure air quality. And so that is super nerdy and exciting.

There’s an app on my phone and I can see what it says. The brand is Blue Air, and so they do have certain lines where you can have it connect to Wi-Fi in your phone, et cetera. And it’s really fun.

One thing I noticed, and this is totally not on podcast topic, but I know this is something that a lot of us are thinking about in the Northeast specifically, is you may have also heard about how gas stoves are supposedly also bad for us.

I feel like everything that we’ve been doing, basically at some point is poisonous and is going to kill us and reduce our lifespan. But we do have a gas stove. And as someone who loves to cook, I’ve been really resistant to not having a gas stove. But I’m definitely rethinking it after reading about it. And also looking at the air pollution in my indoor space, as soon as I stopped cooking.

Now obviously, depending on what you’re cooking, it releases some smoke. I was specifically frying up some salmon and so I like to get the skin all crispy. So obviously some things are released in the air. And the air quality dramatically spiked. And they’re set on auto and so I noticed that it was working a lot harder.

And I didn’t think to do an experiment or whatever you want to call it to see if it indeed went up. So I’m curious if it’s going to do the same with cooking something that doesn’t really release any smoke. And that’s sort of what I’m doing at home these days.

Okay, so let’s get going with my conversation with Maggie Reyes. She is one of the speakers at our Live Wealthy Conference in 2024 to speak on this topic about talking to your partner about money, but also to talk about how to have better relationships. I mean, it’s such an important topic.

And we all know that when we have fully fulfilling relationships, when we are feeling connected, we just feel so much better. And humans, we are meant to be social, we are meant to feel connected. So I hope you enjoy this episode.

Bonnie: Welcome, Maggie. I’m so excited that you’re here.

Maggie: Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to talk with you today.

Bonnie: Yeah, so why don’t you introduce yourself since not everyone knows who you are?

Maggie: So my name is Maggie Reyes. I am a marriage life coach. I help type A women have better marriages. And usually I talk a lot about what is healthy communication. How to understand how your nervous system affects your relationship. How to have conversations about things like money, or sex, or kids, or all those stressful things that we have conversations about.

And I really love these types of conversations that I know we’re going to have, because it’s going to be simple but it’s going to be deep. And my intention for everybody listening is that whether you’re in a long-term relationship or not, everything we talk about today will apply to the relationships that you’re in.

So it could be a family member. It could be a friend. It could be just your relationship with yourself or your relationship with money. So keep an eye out for which relationship you want to improve. And how is one of the things we’re going to talk about next going to help you improve that? That’s my invitation to everybody.

Bonnie: Oh, that’s so good. So obviously, we’re going to, in terms of the topic matter, we’re going to focus on I guess you could say romantic partners, marriage, et cetera. So I wonder if some people might be wondering, okay, so she’s a marriage coach – Oh, they might not know this because I know so much about you and it’s easy to assume. Do you work with just the women or the couple, or both?

Maggie: Yeah, so I actually have a coaching practice where I work with humans who identify as women. So I work with individuals. So what that means is we work together in a group with a room full of women who want to improve their relationships.

Sometimes they do it in conjunction with therapy or counseling, and then they have the support for themselves. Sometimes they do work with me when their partner isn’t interested in doing couples work with them.

And what most people don’t realize is that they have so much more influence on how their relationships go than they think they have. Whether it’s with your romantic partner, with your boss, with your cousin, with your friend, whoever it may be, we sometimes don’t realize there are so many things we can do to influence the course of the relationship.

And that’s really what I help people understand and then implement, is what is in my power to do here? And then what are some of the simple things we can do every day to just make things better?

Bonnie: Yeah, well, I think this is an important point because I think a lot of us think of relationships as, well, you need both people involved. So they might, I’m just guessing some are like, well, how is she a marriage coach if she only works with the women and not their partners, right?

Maggie: Yes.

Bonnie: So I know that’s a question many people have, because I think when people think of help for their relationship, they’re thinking of couples counseling or marriage counseling where both people are present.

Maggie: Yes.

Bonnie: Tell us a bit more about why it is so effective to just work with one person. Not that it’s not useful to work with both.

Maggie: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So there’s a fabulous theory called systems theory in psychology, which very simply states that when one element in the system changes, the other elements respond to that change.

So anybody right now, think about whether it’s a family, maybe a family reunion, or whether it’s a meeting at work, think about that person who brought the doughnuts. And everybody is smiling, eating the donuts at the meeting and having a good time and just kicks it off with this positive energy. And then think about the person who walks into the room and everybody sort of clams up, gets serious, gets nervous.

So we could be that person who either walks into the room with love doughnuts for everybody, just brightening their day. Or we could be that person who walks into the room and is like a black cloud, right? That idea or that experience is basically a way to think about how systems theory works. We show up and everyone around us responds to however it is that we’re showing up.

And it’s kind of the same idea when you do the wealth programs that I know that you do so brilliantly, you’re going to affect your whole family, generationally in many ways, when you do the work with Bonnie. How do you do that if the whole family isn’t doing the program with you?

It’s because you’re managing your money differently. You’re thinking about wealth differently. You’re engaging in your relationship with how you make money and how you just make decisions about money very differently. And then everyone else just responds to your upgraded approach.

Bonnie: Yeah. So we recently had you coach in my program because definitely one of the things that come up for those who are married or in a long-term relationship is the sore spot, or I should say one of the most difficult conversations is about money. So the common things we hear, and we saw evidence of that on our call, like mostly when people aren’t on the same page.

And because of the women I work with and they’re in a program for money, usually they’re the ones who are wanting to take control and get annoyed when their partner isn’t interested. Or it might be the other way around, there are many different permutations.

And so I think the most common question is, well, we’re not on the same page and so how do I navigate that? They basically get annoyed and think there’s nothing they can do because, well, I can’t invest since he says no.

Maggie: So let’s take investing as a specific example, and we might alter it as we keep talking. But first of all, it’s very, very common. Spenders marry savers, night owls marry early risers. Opposites attract is a cliche because it’s true. So for anyone who feels like I’m so alone in this, please know you’re not alone in this. This is very, very common. So that’s the first thing I want everybody to know.

So when we’re not on the same page, or I want to invest and my partner doesn’t, or my partner wants to invest way more aggressively than I do, it’s also like what is our risk tolerance for different things? What we want to do is really get specific.

So on the same page, think about a book with 300 pages in it. And our marriages have all kinds of, just even in money, right? There’s the money we set aside for vacations, or the money we set aside for education, the money we set aside for our kids, the money we set aside for our home, the money we set aside for our car. These are all different pages of that same book where we can have all kinds of different opinions about how to spend and invest the money for all of the different things that matter to us.

So the first thing I would suggest always is just get specific about which page you need to be on the same page about. And don’t try to solve the whole bulk of 300 pages in one conversation or one decision.

Bonnie: Yes, I remember you saying that. Just pick one specific thing to talk about verses bringing all the baggage to one conversation then getting frustrated.

Maggie: Exactly. Because imagine if we were trying to decide what car to buy, but we’re also deciding to see what investment property. It’s too complicated, no one can make all those decisions at one time. It’s like there is something about how our brain works, it’s called cognitive load.

It’s like think about a muscle. If you can lift five pounds or 10 pounds, does that mean that you could lift 100 pounds? No, it’s too much and then you drop it. So some of these bigger conversations, it’s like trying to lift 100 pounds before we’ve lifted five pounds. Let’s go with five pounds first.

So get on the same page about one thing. So if it’s investing, one investment. Not your whole investment strategy forever. Just one investment or just one thing. That often is very helpful because then you’re making just one or two decisions about that one thing as opposed to 30 decisions. And we all know we get decision fatigue, too, right? It’s the same idea.

Bonnie: Okay, awesome. So that makes sense in terms of a practical tip. I think that’s going to be super valuable.

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: Okay, then what about when they don’t agree with you?

Maggie: Yeah, that’s so good. So I’m going to give some general ideas for everybody. And please know that there’s always nuance and some things will work differently for different people. And this is why when you do a program like Bonnie’s, she has months and months of support. She has all kinds of calls and resources to help you figure this stuff out.

So in general if you don’t agree, the first place you would start is what do you agree on? Let’s just find what we do agree on, right? Neither of us wants to be homeless. We agree on this, right? We don’t want to risk the mortgage or something, we agree on this. So even if we’re really far apart in our risk aversion or our risk tolerance, we can agree that we want to eat three meals every day. We agree on this, right?

Bonnie: Can I just pause you for a second?

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: And this is just what came to mind, is this might sound so basic.

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: Like, well, of course, we agree on that. And I think the verbalizing of agreeing on it is so important because it sets us up for a better conversation.

Maggie: 100%. And it sets us up for being allies, for being on the same team, as opposed to me against you. So any relationship coach that you ever talk to is always going to say let’s position ourselves as a team, it’s you and me and the problem, versus you are the problem, or I am the problem. So then what do we agree on? That’s a great place to start.

And then you can assume that if your partner doesn’t agree with something you want to do, the only reason they don’t agree is because they perceive a threat of danger. The type of danger might be different. It might be financial danger, it might be emotional danger.

But if you’re saying I want to invest $10,000 in this new property that I have great reports on, it’s going to be so profitable, whatever. And your partner says no, they perceive that as a threat. They perceive danger. They perceive that they will lose that money and not gain any money.

So when you’re talking about something like making an investment where you are very diametrically opposed, what you want to do is ask yourself how can I create safety around this for my partner? And an example, just a random example. If you’re a doctor who does shift work, for our example let’s just make you an ER doctor because that’s easy for me to talk about.

So you tell the person, your partner, listen I want to invest in this thing, and here’s my plan. My plan is I have signed up to do these extra shifts in the hospital. And this is the capital I’m going to use to make that investment. So it doesn’t affect the mortgage. You’re going to eat three meals a day like we always do. I’ve then created safety to do this thing that really means a lot to me, without putting my partner mentally, they’re not in actual danger, but mentally, they think there’s a perceived danger. I have removed the danger for them.

So I’m not saying everybody should go out and work more shifts. What I’m saying is to just give you an example of how we can create more safety around making the decision. Does that make sense?

Bonnie: Yeah, it makes sense to me. I’m just wondering if, because I’m always thinking about the people listening. Because I think it’s easy for us to kind of get into coach lingo, right?

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: So I just want to make sure everyone understands what safety is. I did have an episode where I did talk about safety and security because money really sets off that danger feeling and that’s why there’s so much fear around money.

Maggie: Yep.

Bonnie: And so I like what you said that if they’re disagreeing or however they react, that it’s because there’s something they’re scared of. I guess my question is, is there some way to navigate that conversation without putting them down? This is just what comes to mind. Like well, you’re scared and I’m not or something like that.

Maggie: Oh, totally. Yeah, we would never want to do that. So first of all, don’t do that. Never utter those words, you’re scared and I’m not. Scaredy cat. Don’t do that.

Okay, so you would come at it with compassion. So I know most of the people who listen to this podcast are doctors. You’re used to having these conversations with your patients all the time. You know exactly how to tell somebody some difficult piece of news or some difficult conversation without making them feel bad for not knowing something that they were doing, right?

So I’m thinking like if somebody’s like a smoker or something, it’s like smoking kills you. You’re not just going to open the meeting with, “Did you know smoking kills you? What are you doing?” Right? You would never say that, right? You would come at it with compassion and with kindness. And you would really try to tell them in a way that it would land for them.

So this skill that you already have is really, really well built at work every day, I would just invite you to use that skill then with your partner and say, “Hey, I understand. That makes sense if you’re scared about this.” Oftentimes, it’s very useful for you, even before you talk to your partner, to ask yourself why would my partner disagree? How can it make sense for them that they disagree?

Oh my gosh, I’ll give myself as an example. I’m the daughter of a single mother. I used to have one pair of shoes growing up. I had a lot of financial insecurity when I was a kid. So if I was scared about something, it would make sense, right?

So finding the place where, like, how can it make sense that my partner has this concern, puts you in a place where you can have compassion and love for your partner. Which is a great place to start a conversation from.

Bonnie: Yeah. It’s like lots of what we’re saying is semi-obvious, but I think it’s easy to kind of get in your head and go somewhere else.

What’s coming to my mind is since, obviously, I do talk about thought work and how thoughts create feelings and actions. Basically, it’s like what are they thinking or believing that’s having them say no, or whatever they say about the disagreement.

Maggie: Yes.

Bonnie: So just like you said, it makes sense that you are scared because of how you were brought up. And everyone has deep-seated money beliefs.

Maggie: Yes.

Bonnie: You know, if they’re not in the program with my client. But yeah, I think having compassion for it’s like it makes sense that they’re not on board because of XYZ. And just understanding that they’re not just saying it to not agree with you, right?

Maggie: Yeah, they’re saying it’s sometimes very upsettingly, but they actually could be very loving and protective because they think you’re going to be in danger if you do this thing sometimes.

And something that you said is, what are their thoughts and feelings that are creating the action of saying no to you? A great question to ask if you are wanting to do something financially that maybe you’ve talked about before and you’ve gone in circles and you just don’t know how to move forward. It’s like, you know, it’s still on my mind. You just tell your partner, it’s still on my mind. We talked about that, what are your thoughts about it?

Because sometimes we come in guns blazing, sort of like ready to go, like here’s what we want. And sometimes just slowing down and saying, hey, I just want to better understand, what are your thoughts about whatever the thing is? And allowing yourself to listen without judging your partner.

So that’s the part where if they then pour out all the fears of their heart into you, you don’t want to receive that like judging them or belittling them in your mind. You could imagine, sometimes it’s useful to imagine them as a child.

So if you had an eight year old child telling you all of these things, would you berate them for being afraid? Or would you try to comfort them and be with them? That sometimes helps you just have that image, not to treat our partners as children, I want to be really explicit. But just to cultivate compassion for that part of them that feels tender or feels scared, sometimes it’s useful to imagine them where you can access that protective energy much easier.

Bonnie: Yeah. So I think this is a really important distinction because what I find in a lot of my clients, because they get so frustrated they just end the conversation. And then what I imagine is their partner doesn’t feel seen and heard.

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: So even asking the question like, tell me more, why don’t you want to do that? Because I’m guessing a lot of people don’t even go that far.

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: And my guess is, obviously I don’t have data, but you do since this is what you do. My guess is even giving them a space to verbalize it will lead to a much more productive conversation. And maybe that conversation is still a no.

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: But it’s like, I don’t want to say planting the seed because it’s not about convincing and strong-arming them. But yeah, you’re just going to have a much more productive conversation and make progress when the partner feels like you’re taking them into account, versus like I can’t do this because of you or whatever else comes up for people.

Maggie: Yes. The difference between blaming them for stopping you versus collaborating with them and moving forward as a team towards things that you want to do just in general in your life. That’s a huge, big deal. And there is research, actually I love the work of the Gottman Institute and I quote them all the time. They have found that couples who thrive are open to each other’s influence, which is exactly what you said.

It’s like I want to listen to what my partner thinks about this, whether I’m going to do what they’re suggesting or not. I’m just going to take it under consideration as I make my decision. So I’ve certainly had times when my husband and I have been talking about something we wanted to do. And it’s like, oh, we want to do this thing. And then we’re like, actually, we can totally do that, but let’s wait until December.

It doesn’t become a yes/no if you ask your partner their thoughts and they’re like, no, absolutely not. I don’t want to do this. And then you’re like, oh, you know, in October, we get the yearly bonuses. What if we did it then? And then it becomes, well, maybe, right? It’s a different conversation when you get their thoughts about why to proceed or why not to proceed about whatever it is you’re trying to negotiate.

Bonnie: Oh my God, I feel like, even for me, right? Because it’s like giving the space to allow them to kind of, or even just being curious about it, right? Because I think a lot of times they just don’t feel heard or seen. Okay.

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: What are some, I’m trying to think of some other scenarios. But I feel like we kind of talked about the meat of things, to be honest.

Maggie: I have one more thing to add just hearing you talk that I think will be useful for everybody. And I have a rule when I’m coaching someone, but everyone is going to take this rule in a different way. So I’m going to tell you my rule first, and then we’re going to apply it to this.

My rule is no conclusions without context. And I’m going to explain how it works in coaching, but then we’re going to talk about how it works with money. So I’ll be coaching someone, we’ll talk for an hour, and we’ll unpack some really big thing. And I’ll give an example, so I took my husband on a trip to where he’s from, which is Nicaragua.

And I had already read all about it and saw how we could go and did all these things. And then I told him, surprise, we’re going to Nicaragua. I gave him the conclusion without telling him all of the reasons, what I had studied, the resort we were going to go to, how it was going to work, and why this was a good time to go. And then he was really, really shocked. And then afterwards, I told him all the ways I got to that conclusion.

In coaching sometimes we’ll talk about something we’ll unpack and we’ll say, okay, so my wealth coaching I’m going to be in, now I’m going to invest $5,000 in this thing, right? And I go to my partner and all I say is, “I’m going to spend $5,000,” with no context whatsoever. And then they freak the freak out, as one should when they have no context.

So the rule is no conclusions without context. So if you’re thinking of investing in real estate or the stock market, or changing your 401K to a Roth, or all these different financial moves that you can make, right? When you want to sit with your partner, you want to be able to walk them through how you came to the conclusion.

Any pros and cons evaluated, any reasons why this is a good time versus another time, whatever the thing may be. If you just remember no conclusions without context, that will eliminate like half of your fights.

Bonnie: I could totally see that, right? Because usually the conversation that we’re just bringing into I want to invest $50,000 into this real estate thing. And they’re like, what?

Maggie: Yes. So if you come with, even if it’s bullet points, it doesn’t have to be some formal presentation or anything. And leave the amount till the end, right? And it’s very different, for example, my husband and I have conversations about all this stuff all the time. And when he studied his MBA, one of the principles they taught him in his leadership development was the idea of guided learning, which is the same idea, but in sort of a business realm.

But let’s say $50,000 for an investment, right? If I come to you and I say, “Bonnie, I want $50,000.” You’re going to say, “Maggie, I love you and no.” But if I say, “Bonnie, I want $50,000 and we’re going to invest in something that in 10 years is going to be worth 2 million, and your part of that is going to be 500,000.” You would be like, “Where do I sign?”

Bonnie: Tell me more.

Maggie: Tell me more. So that’s what we’re talking about when we say no conclusions without context. You give the context, how is this beneficial? What’s going to happen? How does it work? What have you investigated about it? Versus just like this, the final thing.

Bonnie: Yeah. So I’m working with a parenting coach, I don’t know if I told you.

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: And I’m learning so many things very similar to different sorts of concepts. But I remember being overwhelmed because there are so many things you can do. And so I’m just guessing some of the people listening might be like, okay, these all sound great. And I know one of the things that you teach, unless I misunderstood, is just try to work on one thing in the next conversation, right?

Maggie: Yes. Yes, that’s so important. So anything we talk about or anything you learn on any podcast, pick one thing that feels doable and just do that. It’ll still be better than not doing anything. You’ll still make progress. And that one thing will then lead you very organically to what the next thing is.

Because imagine this, you go to your partner, you explain the situation or you just ask them, what are your thoughts? And you just listen. Now that you know their thoughts, you will have other things you need to do. What do I want to do with those thoughts? How do I want to approach it next?

So it’ll become very obvious whatever your next step is if you just do one thing at a time. And I always invite you to do the simplest, most doable thing that does not overwhelm you. Whatever that may be, do that first.

Bonnie: Yeah, pick the simplest thing that seems the most accessible to you right now versus like, I’m going to have to think about that a little bit.

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: I definitely have one in mind that I definitely want to practice. Okay, is there anything else that you think would be useful when it comes to conversations about money?

Maggie: Yeah, I think the one thing is to just expect it to be uncomfortable, it’s okay. It’s so interesting for me because I am the daughter of a single mom who was really not very good with money and had bankruptcies and all kinds of stuff. Like I said, I had a lot of financial scarcity when I was growing up.

My husband is the son of a banker and an accountant, okay? So from very low financial literacy on my side to very high financial literacy on his side. And there are things where I’ve come more around to how he thinks about things. And there’s things where he’s come more around to how I think about things.

And just the fact that you will have different points of views on a problem, it’s okay. If it’s uncomfortable, it’s okay that it feels uncomfortable. I just want to really let people know that it’s not a verdict on your relationship if you have to figure out how to navigate money together, or parenting together, or any of these other sorts of issues where we might have different points of view.

And I just want you to know, you can figure it out if you set the intention to act as a team. Remember, it’s us with a problem, not us as the problem. If you do that, I think you’ll make so much more progress.

How can we collaborate as a team to figure out how we want to spend or invest our money? And that’s a very different question than I want to spend this, just say yes, right? It’s like how can we collaborate as a team? What matters to you? What matters to me? How do we want to make these decisions?

Bonnie: Yeah, that’s so great because I feel like what you just said is kind of a culmination of everything that we talked about. I think hearing a bit about your story, because you did come from such financial scarcity – And the one thing I remember and I think it’s kind of a cute funny story that really kind of like got you to do something about your finances is, all I remember is something about the pool makes more money than I do.

Maggie: Oh yeah, totally. So I’m 49 now and when I was like 21 I was the receptionist at a law firm and I answered the phone. And I answered the phone for the contractor who was working on the owner’s pool. And I remember very vividly they were faxing, back then there were faxes, okay? So they were faxing the bill for the work they were doing.

And I had this moment where I was like, the pool makes more money than I do. What they were paying for the pool was more than my whole yearly salary at the time. And it was one of those like water in your face moments that I was just like, this cannot stay this way. I knew I was 21 and learning and starting out, but I was like, this cannot continue. I do think it was one of those moments where I was like, this is not how this is going to go.

Bonnie: Yeah, that you were like, I need to do something about it. I’m not okay just making, I forget how much you were making. But obviously the pool was making more money than you so it wasn’t much.

Maggie: Yeah, it was very little. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that was, I think it was very pivotal. And I do think that one thing we have to give ourselves permission to do is just be messy with money because then I’ve always put myself on a track to grow and make more money and have the opportunity to make more money.

And sometimes I’ve made not the best choices. And sometimes I’ve made better choices. And I think one thing I’m learning in this chapter of my life, I do have more money now. And then it’s kind of like forgiving myself for making money mistakes if I make them, but allowing myself to just be in relationship with my money in a different way.

Bonnie: Yeah, there’s a lot of fear about losing money. And what I’ve realized is, it doesn’t feel good to lose money in general, obviously. But I think the fear is that it’s like a permanent loss where they’re going to have to work twice as hard to get it back or that it’s irrevocably backtracked them. Because of the way we’re taught about money, it’s like an exchange of time and effort, right?

So it makes sense that they’re so scared because if they lose money, then it’s like, oh my God, I’m going to have to work so much more to get it. So that’s one thing that I want to get better at explaining to people, or really just help them get over that fear. Because it also has to do with what you just said.

I just tell them you’re going to make some decisions that you’re not going to like, because basically the fears that people tell me are like losing money, making bad decisions. And I’m like, that’s all going to happen.

Maggie: Yeah, let’s just assume it’s going to happen, right?

Bonnie: Yeah, it’s like, now what?

Maggie: Yeah, help me, Bonnie. Now what? She’s going to help me in real time and everybody’s going to benefit from hearing her coaching.

So we have this fear of this permanent loss. I’m going to ask on behalf of everyone who’s listening, you know that meme, asking for a friend. I’m asking for a friend.

Bonnie: I’m asking for a friend.

Maggie: I’m asking for me, Bonnie. But so we have the fear of permanent loss, what do you suggest we do when we have that fear?

Bonnie: I think it’s just noticing that you have it. But ultimately, I don’t think the goal is to get rid of it because you’re going to be waiting a long time if you’re trying to get rid of it.

But I also, as someone, you and I have been in business for a while and we sort of might know how people think of us. I think a lot of people think that people like me don’t have any fear around money. And that is just not true. I still feel a whole lot of scarcity. I’m always afraid of losing money. I’m always afraid of not having enough. Like, it’s just always there.

The only difference is that, and not 100% of the time, so I think that’s also important. I’m not perfect at this, but I think what is different about me is that I catch myself thinking those things. And the only thing that happened is that I believed those thoughts, in terms of the fear.

Maggie: Yeah. That’s so good.

Bonnie: But I don’t have to believe it. But I think I’ve just told myself it’s going to happen. And I don’t judge myself for that happening.

Maggie: Yes, that’s so good. Oh my gosh, I love that so much.

So if we think about talking with your partner about money, think about all of our experience with money, right? Our ups and downs, our fears, our worries.

Bonnie: Baggage.

Maggie: Yeah, our baggage. Our partners have all of that too.

Bonnie: Yeah.

Maggie: You just want to remember that. And their fears are also not going to go away and they’re going to come up around different things. And even if you made five investments that were huge and had huge returns and then you want to make a bigger investment, they’re still going to freak out for that one too. It’s just part of life. It’s okay, nothing has gone wrong if we experience fear as humans.

Bonnie: Yeah, I mean, there’s ups and downs. A lot of my clients do want to start a business, and I’m not trying to poo-poo it. And I don’t even want to say warning them, but maybe a little bit. Because I think people, I bet a lot of people think we make it look easy.

There’s a lot of ups and downs. Like there are times where I really didn’t make money or lost money. Wait, have I lost money? I think for me, it was more of an overspending problem. And that’s something I have to always keep in check, right?

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: So it’s not about becoming perfect with money. It’s about learning and then, honestly, actually, I think the number one skill honestly, is not beating yourself up.

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: Because conversations about money and parenting and sex, like because they are uncomfortable, that’s why people don’t have them. And then it just becomes this bigger and bigger elephant in the room. And that’s, I think, what creates distance between people. And just assume that it’s not going to be a comfortable conversation.

And what I mean by that, I want to provide a distinction, is not that you’re going to fight that’s uncomfortable, it’s like how you’re going to feel. That’s not going to feel great inside to have those, because I think a lot of people are waiting to feel great inside to have those conversations.

Maggie: And also, your capability does improve over time. So everybody listening if you remember the day you graduated from med school, right? And then you think about yesterday, you are much more capable in many of the things that you do on a day-to-day basis than the day you graduated.

So having difficult conversations allows you to feel more capable of having other difficult conversations. It is a skill that you build. So a 100-pound weight is still going to be a 100-pound weight. If you’ve lifted 75 pounds over and over and over and over again and you go to reach for that 100 pounds, it is going to be easier.

Bonnie: Yeah, so basically practice and it’ll be easier.

Maggie: Yeah. And sometimes, like you said, it will still feel hard about certain things or in certain contexts. That’s okay that it still feels hard. It’s like if you have to give somebody bad news after a medical exam or something, that’s not the most fun part of your job. It’s still an uncomfortable part, but you’re so much more skilled at it even though it remains uncomfortable.

Bonnie: Yeah. This was so good. Like I said, I’m learning a lot. Hopefully you learned something about money as well.

Maggie: I did.

Bonnie: Okay, so how can people find you?

Maggie: Okay, so MaggieReyes.com, M-A-G-G-I-E-R-E-Y-E-S.com. You can find whatever I’m up to there. If you love Instagram, I’m also on Instagram, @TheMaggieReyes.

Bonnie: That sounds fancy.

Maggie: I know it does, doesn’t it? And I always joke around because Reyes for Spanish people is like Smith for English speaking people. And I’m like, I’m sorry, to all the Maggie Reyes out there, but I am the Maggie Reyes on Instagram. So there you go.

Bonnie: I love it. I love that you even were able to get that handle, to be honest.

Maggie: Yeah.

Bonnie: And so for those of you who don’t know, Maggie is going to be one of the speakers at the 2024 Money and Wellness Conference For Women Physicians. So obviously, we’re going to be talking more about this.

Maggie: Yes.

Bonnie: And so you definitely want to be there if this is a skill you want to work on. And not only are we going to talk about navigating money conversations with your partner, but we’re going to talk about relationships in general because they are the biggest determinant of our happiness and quality of life in our lifetime.

The Harvard Happiness Study I think is the one that people quote a lot. Having relationships, having high-quality relationships, because being lonely is a very sad place to be. And lonely just means feeling lonely, not actually being lonely because you might be surrounded by people and have “friends,” but you can still feel lonely.

And hopefully, people are seeing the theme that relationships are never on autopilot. They have to, you’ve got to grow them. You’ve got to, I was going to say prune, but maybe that’s not the right word. But you’ve got to grow them.

Maggie: But you do prune them, yeah. There’s space that you need to make for the types of relationship you want. And sometimes you’re pruning attitudes or ideas. Sometimes you’re literally pruning friends, like sometimes you’re taking people out of your life and putting other people in your life. I love the whole gardening thing. I’m all about it.

Bonnie: Yeah, I just got a basil plant and apparently you have to water it every day. I’m like, oh, I hope I remember because I kill plants all the time. Okay, thank you so much for being here and I can’t wait to hang out with you in March.

Maggie: My pleasure, thank you.

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