The Second Annual Summit is Here – 348

In today's episode, John provides an overview of this year's Summit designed to make your clinical practice great or move on to a better alternative.

With a lineup of expert speakers and a comprehensive agenda, the Summit aims to equip attendees with actionable strategies for improving job satisfaction and exploring nonclinical opportunities.

The second annual Nonclinical Career Summit runs this week. It’s not entirely nonclinical in its scope, however. We have several presentations about starting and running a cash-based private practice. It features twelve experts who share inspirational messages and valuable know-how live over three nights.

It's called Clinical Practice: Make It Great or Move On

And beyond building your cash-based practice, our speakers will show you how to create an asset that can be sold later. Other experts will discuss MedSpas, Infusion Lounges, and other cash-only businesses, using Real Estate to diversify your income and assets, and several nonclinical side gigs including Expert Witness and Medical-Legal Prelitigation Consulting, Medical Affairs Regulatory Consulting, and remote SSDI Application Reviewer.

To learn more check it out at nonclinicalcareersummit.com. Remember that there is NO cost to attend the live event. And if you can’t participate in the Summit, you can purchase the All Access Pass videos (only $39 until April 16, 2024, when the price increases to $79).

Our Episode Sponsor

Dr. Debra Blaine is a physician like many of you, and her greatest challenge was fear. The whole concept of leaving clinical medicine was terrifying. But she is so much happier now as a professional writer and a coach. According to Debra, “It’s like someone turned the oxygen back on.”

If fear is part of your struggle, too, she would like to help you push through those emotional barriers to go after the life you really want. Click this link to schedule a free chat.

Or check out her website at allthingswriting.com/resilience-coaching.

Trends in Addressing Physician Burnout

Physicians have faced increasing stress and burnout in recent years due to corporate employment structures in the healthcare industry. There are several basic approaches to preventing these common consequences of clinical practice.

1. Aggressive Contract Negotiation: Physicians are placing a greater emphasis on negotiating employment contracts to safeguard against burnout inherent in corporate settings. While not discussed extensively in the summit, this strategy is crucial for those considering employment.
2. Identifying Root Causes of Dissatisfaction: Physicians are focusing on identifying and addressing the underlying causes of dissatisfaction, whether it's related to the nature of their vocation, organizational policies, or interpersonal dynamics. Analyzing these factors allows for targeted solutions to alleviate stress and improve job satisfaction.

Highlights of the NonClinical Career Summit

The Nonclinical Career Summit starting on April 16th features a lineup of expert speakers covering various aspects of nonclinical career options for physicians. Here's a sneak peek at what attendees can expect:

1. Speaker Sessions Overview: The Summit will host twelve live presentations, spanning topics from evaluating the need to leave clinical medicine to exploring diverse career paths outside traditional practice settings. Each session offers actionable insights and practical advice tailored to physicians and other clinicians seeking alternative career paths.
2. Logistics and Registration Details: The Summit will run over three consecutive evenings, starting on April 16th, with sessions starting at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. Live attendance is free, but registration is required to access the sessions. Attendees can opt for the All Access Pass for $39, providing access to session recordings and bonuses.

Summary

This week's podcast previews the 2nd Annual Nonclinical Summit featuring 12 expert speakers addressing ways to create a clinical practice outside of the corporate style of healthcare and nonclinical career options. Attendees are encouraged to register early to secure their spot and gain access to valuable resources aimed at supporting career transitions and enhancing job satisfaction.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Reserve Your Free Spot at the 2024 Nonclinical Career Summit
• Purchase Your All Action Pass Videos and Bonuses from the 2024 Summit
• Information about the Nonclinical Career Summit
• Dr. Debra Blaine's Coaching Services

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Episode 348 Transcript

Over the past few years, I've noticed that there is a backlash to the increasing stress and burnout in physicians resulting from employment by large corporations. It seems like the burnout's getting worse and it's related to being employed, losing their autonomy, and really working in that sort of healthcare industrial complex, seeing as many patients as you can in every hour. So in response to that, I think physicians have begun to implement various strategies to prevent or address the burnout, the stress, and the dissatisfaction that's coming.

So these are some of the four trends that I have seen. It's not everything, but I see these as something that's getting more and more common. So first is a bigger emphasis on aggressively negotiating employment contracts.

After all, if you understand that employment leads to dissatisfaction and burnout, and maybe if you've been through it once already, to some extent, you should be able to address the cause of that burnout by building safeguards into your contract. We won't be addressing that in this summit, but it is something I've noticed, and you can take a listen to my interview with Ethan Encana, who's an MBA slash JD, which was posted in February 13th of this year. So if you listen to that, we'll be talking a lot about trying to protect yourself from the things that cause your burnout in your contracts, if you decide to go with the employment route.

Now let's move on to the next one, which is more in keeping with what I want to talk about today. And that is a big thing that physicians are focusing on now, and people are teaching about is finding, identifying, and somehow preventing the root causes of your dissatisfaction and addressing it in new ways. So is it your vocation itself? Is it the practice of medicine? Or is it the organization you're working for and their policies and procedures? Maybe they don't staff properly.

Is it the boss that you report to that's causing your stress and anxiety? Sometimes a fierce conversation can solve the problem. Sometimes moving to a different clinic or hospital will work, but you need to spend the time really analyzing what's, what, what it is about the work that's making things worse. And is it something that you can resolve either in the current situation or at a future one? So that's something we don't talk a lot about on the podcast, although I have had one of our summit speakers, Dyke Drummond, on the podcast to talk about that, but that was several years ago.

Number three is the physicians are implementing new or updated practice models that put more control in the physician's hands. Things such as direct primary care, concierge medicine, and other forms of cash only medical businesses. And this can solve the problem in two ways.

Number one, a lot of times doing that requires you to be in your own practice. So you're starting your own business. So you're not working for someone.

Doesn't mean it's not busy. Doesn't mean it's not challenging, but now you have that autonomy and you're in control. And the other reason is that it's oftentimes the insurance companies, which are driving this whole approach to medicine, where you've got to see as many patients as possible, because they have certain schedules, payment schedules that are difficult to, you know, earn a living on.

And a lot of the drive to see a lot of patients is because of either Medicare and counting it worked RVUs or trying to see so many patients an hour. And that can be overcome by starting your own business and taking cash. And you figure it out in that setting.

Since you don't have to hire two or three people per physician to do the billing, you can cut costs in that way and you can generate income. So it's another thing that I see growing in the past two or three to five years, even. And then the other one is just finding a part-time job.

It's something you can do on the side because you can then either cut your clinical back to part-time also. And then you get to do two different types of jobs. One, a clinical, one, a non-clinical.

You can find, you know, you feel like you're seeing a little more variety of things. You have better hourly compensation sometimes with the non-clinical side, especially those we're going to be teaching at the summit. And again, if it involves starting something like either a practice that just doesn't bill insurance or a med spa or an infusion lounge or a weight loss clinic, you're still at the end of that able to sell it.

And that's a big asset that can really be a big chunk of your retirement and really builds to what I would call it through that process, some career diversity. The other thing that's nice about doing something like one of these side gigs or side jobs is that they can grow to be a little more part of your week as you retire from clinical, let's say, as you get older. The other is it's protecting you so that if your clinical job, which may depend on employment by a hospital or part of a group, that would be protected.

That gives you that leverage, that independence that you otherwise wouldn't have if someone decides to fire you. Okay. So that's why, because of those last three issues that I've been noticing, Tom and I both, that's why we're calling this year's summit clinical practice, make it great or move on.

So there are ways to improve your practice as it is, where it is, or ways to improve it by moving and doing other things. And there are ways to make it better by splitting it with another non-clinical career. And so that's what we're talking about at the summit this year.

And I think it's very apropos. And the tagline is recognize dysfunction, fix it and protect yourself or seek better opportunities. So you can see, as I go through what we're covering during the summit, it kind of brings all of those in and those kinds of terms will probably make better sense to you.

So let's get into the specifics of this year's summit. Last year, we were, just like last year's summit, we're holding it on three consecutive evenings, starting the day after this episode, day or two after this episode is released. I might be releasing it a little early to give people a chance to go through this before the summit actually starts.

And we're doing it that way in the evenings live to enable as many clinicians to attend the free event. So as many people can come for free, making it because we know that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday evenings are the best time. If we do it during the day or on a weekend, people usually cannot even come for one or two of the hours of presentations.

But by doing it in evenings and doing it live at night, people can carve out some time and maybe at least watch one or two or three of the sessions each night. Now it starts on April 16th at 7 p.m. Eastern time with four live presentations at the top of each hour. They'll end 50 minutes later, followed by a 10-minute break.

And each presentation includes a live Q&A during the last 10 or 15 minutes. It continues on Wednesday, April 17th and Thursday, April 18th, obviously each night starting again at 7 p.m. Eastern. We're holding it on a typical Zoom meeting platform that most of you are very familiar with.

Questions will be submitted using the chat. It could get a little bit confusing if you got a we're going to use the chat and either myself or Tom Davis will curate the questions. You know, sometimes we get two or three that are very much similar and we'll kind of bunch those together.

But that way we can spend 10 minutes at least getting, you know, answers to really the burning questions that come up during the presentation. I think I mentioned earlier, live attendance is absolutely free, but you have to register in advance to attend. That's the only way we can get you the link to attend.

So you just sign up on the link that I'll give you in a minute. And once you're registered, you can come and attend as many or as few sessions as you like. To save your spot, you're encouraged to register using the link that one of our speakers may have sent you.

You know, you might be watching this, but maybe you're already a student of Dr. Drummond's or Dr. Unachukwu or anybody that's helping us here, which I'll be going through in a minute. And you definitely can use their link and then they get credit. If it's easier or if you don't have any link from anybody else, then you should just go to nonclinicalcareersummit.com and you'll be given an option to sign up for the live free event.

And that's also the same link for purchasing the All Access Pass, because we understand that not everybody can attend all the live sessions. So we're making the recordings available for a very low price. That's just $39.

And given all the work that goes into putting this together, that's pretty darn reasonable. Now it does increase on the day that the summit starts. On Thursday morning, the price goes up to $79.

I'm sorry, not Thursday morning, on Tuesday morning, when the summit is starting later that day. But in the morning, it jumps to $79. That's on April 16th.

So if you want to get that really best price, you should sign up for the All Access Pass by Monday, April 15th. And again, it's $39. So you have to get that registration in by midnight on that date.

And again, it's also available at nonclinicalcareersummit.com or by using any speakers affiliate link if they're sending those out to you. All right, well, let's get into the details about the speakers and the lectures. Basically, like I said, we have four presentations per evening.

They're all live except one is being recorded ahead of time because the speaker is actually not available during the summit. But we didn't want to not include him in this thing. So let's just start with the first one.

And I'm going to say that these are not in the order in which they're being presented, but kind of in the order that they flow in my mind in terms of addressing the main thing we're trying to do for the summit. So for example, Dyke Drummond, Dr. Dyke Drummond, very well known. HappyMD is what he's known for.

He's got a podcast. He's been doing this a long time. He's coached thousands of physicians.

And he's going to be speaking on Tuesday night, the first night. And he's going to be answering this question. Do you really need to leave clinical medicine or is it just the job? And the official title, is it just a shit job or boss you want to escape? So really, it's not necessarily clinical medicine or clinical nursing or other clinical specialties that you're working in.

It's oftentimes other things that lead to the dissatisfaction and the burnout, the anxiety, things like that. So he's going to take that question head on. And how do you determine if this is really you should leave medicine or whether you should stick with it, but resolve the problem in a variety of ways.

And some of the ways he's going to talk about is just how you take control of what you're doing, listing the alternative practice models that might solve the problem. And if it is time to leave, let's put out that ideal job description process. So you can assess when you're going somewhere else, is it likely to be a better situation? So the next speaker I want to talk about is Mike Wu Ming, a very good friend of my podcast and myself, and he's written a book.

And he's going to build on what Dyke is telling us from the standpoint of what his experience has been with owning cash-based medical clinics. Okay, so it's still a practice. It's a medical clinic.

And he just describes sort of the mindset changes you have to go through to make this happen. He'll list the four or five financial levels of a physician, what that means, what it means to be a CEO, not only of your business, but of your life. He'll talk about ways to provide medical services outside the insurance industrial complex, if you want to call it that.

Let's see, he'll compare different types of cash-based medical clinics and where he sees future growth. All right, the third one, again, an expert on business in general, Dr. Una, Dr. Nneka Unachukwu. She goes by Dr. Una.

She has one or two podcasts. She's coaching a lot of physicians, and she's got many courses. And she's an expert and does a lot of speaking about creating a successful business.

In her case, I think is a good mix of people she's worked with who have created healthcare businesses, not necessarily a medical practice. Some have created different medical practices. And so she's going to talk about the business practices you must adopt to be successful, to get into a little bit about the importance of branding and marketing.

And again, she likes to focus, and I think she'll touch on this as well, how to build a practice or a business or both that has value and then eventually sell that business for cash out at the end, which again, I've mentioned earlier, is a great way to help segue into your retirement. And I've got just a hint of this because I'm currently in the process of helping my wife sell her own business, which she's been running for 15 years. And so we're going to just find out what it's worth at this point.

And it wasn't really something that we dwelled on up until the last couple of years. And I guess I'd mentioned now that if you do build a business of any sort, you should really always try to think of the eventual selling of that business because we all eventually go away. And even if it means turning it over to a partner in a medical practice, how does it happen? What's the value? Thinking about those things.

So those are the kinds of things that Dr. Una are going to be talking about. Then to kind of round that out and from another perspective, Joe McMenamin, who just was on my podcast, I think last week, but yeah, and he's going to be talking about corporate entities, meaning, you know, LLCs, corporations, things, how to create a legal situation for your business that makes it safe, protects you financially, keeps the tax concerns in mind. He's also going to touch a little bit on contract negotiations or starting a new business, other things to consider besides just the corporate structure.

And he'll be comparing those different legal entities that can help make your business successful. So the next is we're going to get even right into the nitty gritty of some of these cash-based businesses. See now a med spa, many physicians are familiar with, I wouldn't call that a medical practice.

And I don't think you need a license to run a med spa, although it helps if you're a medical director, if you're doing procedures that obviously are licensed and you have insurance for that. Now practice insurance, but she's going to talk about this. I believe she owned her med spa for 15 years.

She started it from the ground up. She grew it, she marketed it, she branded it and she sold it. And they happened not too long ago.

And she actually was able to segue into staying on as a part-time medical director. And so it really worked out well. She's very happy with how things went.

And again, I don't think she was thinking about the sale of it when she started it, you know, 10 or 15 years ago, but it worked out well for her. So she's going to share some of her experiences with that. Next two guests, our speakers are Jennifer Allen and Kimberly Lowe.

Now they're actually each doing an individual presentation because Jennifer is a physician and Kim is a nurse. They're going to discuss their particular experiences and reasons for going into starting an infusion lounge or an infusion center. And both of them will spend a little bit of time talking about what the heck is an infusion lounge.

And it turns out it can be a lot of different things. And let's see for Jennifer, she's going to be focusing too on the basic services they usually provide and how hers is different and who's sort of best qualified, or let's say has the best background and personality to do something like this. And a little bit about the first three steps, prepare to open your own infusion lounge if you decide to do that.

Now during Kim's session, and Jennifer's I think is on the first day, Kim's is on the third day. Again, she's going to tell you why she thinks it's a great investment and describe how the partnership model, you know, is working for them, for her in particular. She's going to hopefully mention some of the other businesses that nurses might be able to get into in healthcare that, you know, not everything is open to a nurse, you know, medical practice per se isn't.

But even in some places as an NP or an APN, you can do something like that. But she's going to talk about, you know, nurses and kind of side businesses that they might be doing that are similar to what she's doing. And she might end there with three mistakes that you should avoid when starting an infusion lounge.

Well, that brings us up to Paul Hercock. He's been on the podcast twice. He's from the UK.

And he created, well, he has a business that uses medical regulatory consultants or medical affairs, regulatory consultants to help meet the needs of the MDR regulations, medical device regulations in the UK and in the EU. Paul is a physician and he's been working in this field for a long time. And so he started hiring people to do this for him, for his business, which is called Mantra Systems, I believe, Mantra Systems.

And then because he was having difficulty finding people, he created a program to teach people how to become medical regulatory affairs consultants. So that's what he's talking about. And I think it's going to be very interesting.

You'll be working remotely for companies that are mostly in the UK and the EU, but you can work from the United States. In fact, we have a lot of people that contact me that are from the EU. You know, they maybe have traveled, they've immigrated to Europe and then they decided to come to the US and they may have a degree from somewhere in Europe, UK, France, you name it.

And there's no reason why they can't continue to do work back there remotely because things are just so easy to do in that way these days. And in fact, Paul told me that they often look to hire American physicians to do this because they have a lot more experience in dealing with the FDA. The MDR regulations are actually relatively new in Europe and the UK.

So that's going to be an interesting one. Very useful, very practical. Then Dr. Armin Feldman is going to come on.

He's been on the podcast a couple of times and he's going to tell us all about medical legal pre-litigation, pre-trial consulting. And I've discussed this before, but it's an awesome side hustle. Don't have to be licensed to do it, but you definitely have to have a medical background.

And he's going to explain exactly how that works, why there's a growing need for the service and how to get the necessary skills to do it. That brings us to Gretchen Green, who's pretty well known for teaching hundreds of physicians, how to become expert witness consultants. She's run her course nine or 10 times.

And so she's going to give us a quick overview of how to become an expert witness, how to build the business side of that, what to do, what not to do, what it entails. And so this is going to be really interesting and an overview for what she does. And then the last one is Tom Davis, known to many of you, I hope, as my past business partner in Newscript, which we've closed down back a few months ago.

But he's here helping with the summit. And he's been involved with companies that provide social security disability reviewers. And it's something that I didn't quite understand or wasn't well aware of.

I'm definitely aware of an independent medical examiner, but there are also other layers of the process of becoming, let's say, qualified for disability payments from social security. And it's a very niche area, but you can definitely get a remote position as a social security disability application reviewer. And it really piqued my interest.

I want to learn more about that. And so this is something that almost any physician can do. I believe they need to be licensed to start out, but I'm not sure you have to remain licensed.

And there are full-time jobs available as well as some part-time jobs, from what I hear. So I'm really interested in hearing Tom describe exactly what that entails and who's qualified and how we would apply for that. And then finally, did I say finally with Tom? There is one more, and it's kind of the icing on the cake.

And it's a little different, but we thought it would be nice to have Dr. Pranay Parikh talk about real estate and how it can make physicians' lives better. So we're not talking about becoming a full-time real estate investor or manager, but as I spoke about earlier, when you can build different sources of income, different sources of assets over time, then why not do that and add that to your portfolio of income streams? And so we thought, well, it's not a clinical type of thing. It's something many physicians are interested in.

So he is going to be talking about real estate. He spent, I don't know, the last five or 10 years in real estate. He actually has a real estate company that he's partnered with.

He's worked with others that you have heard of on the physician side of things. And there's so many different ways of investing in real estate. We thought, okay, Pranay, come on this summit and talk about how a side hustle in real estate can bring emotional and financial rewards, list the benefits and challenges of investing in real estate and describe, we're going to have him describe the three most popular approaches to investing in real estate.

That wraps it up. That covers the 12 lectures that we're bringing during the summit. I'm really looking forward to learning from all of our speakers.

They'll be sharing their wisdom. You'll be able to follow up with them later if you want to. Some of them are going to probably be promoting the summit with us.

Some of them are going to be providing their own bonuses. So if you are already following some of them or on their email list, watch out for their emails because they will be helping to promote it. So even if you're using the free version, if you register through them, you can get any bonus they might be providing as being part of this.

Our team is really excited to bring you this year's summit. We're doing our very best to bring you actionable advice that will help you to improve your current situation, establish your own practice or healthcare business, or create a lucrative side gig so that you can maintain your autonomy, improve your income and satisfaction and support your transition when you withdraw from clinical practice. So there's a lot of benefits to this year's summit.

Sign up for free right now or purchase your all access pass by going to nonclinicalcareersummit.com. The day that this is being released, the all action pass still only costs $39. And I think it'll be that way for another day or two. But if you're listening to this later, you'll have missed that $39.

So on Tuesday, April 16, the price will jump up to $79. Still a very reasonable price if you need to get the recordings. And then after that, when the summit's done, they'll actually jump up in price again.

But for right now, if you want to get in early, go to nonclinicalcareersummit.com. And to make things easier for you, instead of remembering that link, you can find the show notes and some other links by going to nonclinicalphysicians.com/make-your-clinical-practice-great.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so does not affect the price you are charged. I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post Make Your Clinical Practice Great or Move On appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

This week, we revisit Dr. Ronnie Shalev as she explains how to use real estate investing to find financial freedom in this week's interview from early 2022. 

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

How to Use Real Estate Investing

However, after spending years learning about alternatives to clinical practice, she found a way to deploy her earnings to create a passive income stream. Through passive real estate investing, she was able to quit her grueling emergency room job and move into a less-demanding role at a medical device company.

Ronnie has devoted the past few years to investing in syndications, in which investors pool their resources to purchase apartments. When done properly, this approach can provide the following benefits:

• cash flow
• appreciation in value
• tax benefits
• diversification
• capital preservation

Finding Balance

Ronnie was able to leave emergency medicine and overcome burnout. She found balance by working in the medical device industry while investing in passive real estate.

Now, she helps frustrated physicians who feel trapped to earn income with passive real estate investments. She teaches others about real estate and provides real estate investment opportunities through her company, Shalwin Properties.

Summary

Dr. Ronnie Shalev was able to escape her “golden handcuffs” by investing in passive real estate. Over time, the income from real estate enabled her to find a more fulfilling job and eliminate her burnout. Now she has created a new business to help other physicians do the same thing.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Shalwin Properties
• Dr. Ronnie Shalev's LinkedIn Page
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 307

How to Use Real Estate Investing to Go from Burnout to Financial Freedom

John: Let's hear about Dr. Shalev's transformation. Dr. Ronnie Shalev, welcome.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Thank you so much, John. I am so honored to be here. I'm an avid listener of your podcast. It has helped me for many years. Before I was ready to jump ship and leave clinical practice I listened to many episodes and I don't know if you remember, but we had a nice offline conversation where you mentored me about whether I should go into business school or get a master's degree. And so, you've really been an integral part of my career transition. I'm really, really excited to be here.

John: Well, that is very nice of you to say. I appreciate that, but I do love seeing people that maybe I've run across over the years and where they were struggling. And then two, three years down the road, they've made some changes. They've learned some new things. Maybe they've taken a course. Maybe they've gotten a degree. It doesn't really matter, but they've made changes that have made their lives more balanced and more enjoyable, I guess, is the bottom line. So, I'm really happy and I would say I'm proud of you for having gone through that. You seem to be very happy with what you're doing now, and that's what we're going to learn about today.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: I am very happy. I'm excited to be here.

John: All right. I do a separate intro in most of these, and I will be giving you listeners some background on Ronnie. But why don't you give us the thumbnail in terms of your background, your clinical career, maybe even where you went to med school and so forth, and bring us up to where you are now?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Sure. Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to be a doctor. It was like, "What are you going to be? - A doctor." My father is a physician and for many years tried to dissuade me. "You're not going to like it. You shouldn't do it. You won't have a personal life. You won't have kids. You'll never get married." Whatever he could throw at me, I blocked and I was not able to be dissuaded. I was going to be a doctor no matter what. And that determination carried me through high school, through college, and to medical school, I got into medical school. I went to Texas Tech, in Lubbock, and in El Paso.

And suddenly I was at a crossroads, like, "Okay, I'm a doctor now. I did it. Now what?" Then it was really a hard choice that I never even considered. Like "What kind of doctor are you going to be?" And after really going through the pros and cons of the different fields I decided to go with, well, I like procedures, I want flexibility in my life. Everything that my dad had thrown at me to dissuade me was like, "Okay, it's not going to apply. I'm going to find a career that gives me the flexibility, the time, the money to have the freedom to be a doctor, and also be a mom and also have a family and everything."

So, I chose emergency medicine, and I went on to a residency in Philadelphia, at Drexel University, studying with really the father of emergency medicine and really great attendings and had a great education that came out of there. Fired up, ready to take on the world.

I moved to the Bronx and I worked in a hybrid hospital where I was in a community setting, but I also had academic responsibilities. I was working with residents. I was the residency site director. I was doing grand rounds in teaching and doing bedside teaching and lecturing and things like that.

And after two years, I really started feeling a lot of early symptoms of burnout. Only two years there. And I thought, "Oh, it must be living in New York. It must be working with residents." I didn't know what it was, but I ran, and I moved back to Dallas where I grew up. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to be with my family. I'm going to be in a city that I like, where it'll be like coming home. And I'm just going to be a straight-up community ER doctor."

And 12 years I worked in the ER here in various settings, high trauma centers, high volume, low volume, free-standing emergency rooms. And really that burnout never went away. I kept on saying, "Well, maybe it's the patient population. Maybe it's the administration. Maybe it's this hospital versus this hospital. Maybe the shifts are too stressful." I really just tried it all. And then I started fantasizing, maybe I need to open up a restaurant.

John: Oh, no. That's a big jump.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Maybe I should open up a car wash. I started looking into that really heavily, like, "Okay, I just want to do a mindless job."

John: Let me jump in there before you finish up with where you are today. First of all, when you talk about knowing the grandfather of emergency medicine, I had forgotten that emergency medicine is actually a relatively young specialty. When I was finishing my family medicine residency, I think they were just the first one or two full-blown ER residencies. That was a long time ago.

The other thing, when you're talking it seems like, "Okay, I have shift work. I can do eight hours. I can do 12 hours and do those three days a week. That should be fine. I can make money and I should be able to unwind." But I'm telling you, it just blows my mind that hospitalists and ER docs I hear so often from are just super burned out. And I don't know if it's just because of the way medicine is paid for by CMS, mostly in the hospital setting and other insurers, but just there's high volume. I would think it'd be great to be a hospitalist or an ER doc, if you didn't have to try and squeeze in six patients an hour, half of whom are critically ill. I guess that's part of it from what I know.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah, definitely. I felt like I was being treated like a commodity. I was being traded. Resources were taken away from me every single year. Every single year I got a pay cut. Every single year they told me I had less support, fewer nurses, fewer scribes. Went downtown from the zero scribes, I would have less physician hour coverage. They even took away my mid-level assistance. It was just the way that the administration burdens you and you're just pushed and pushed and pushed. And if you don't break, they push you further.

John: Yeah. It really irritates me when they talk about, "Well, what we need to do is teach physicians how to be more resilient." It's like, no, you need to cut their hours back and give them time to document and not burn them out. It has nothing to do with resilience. Physicians are already super-resilient to begin with.

But tell me what are you doing today as you sit here and just briefly what you're doing, and then we'll come back and find out how that evolved. And we're going to focus on just one of the fields that you're working in right now. But give us a quick snapshot of where you are now.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah. Ultimately, I left clinical medicine. I actually have two parallel careers. In one of them, I'm the director of post-market surveillance of a medical device company, where I run five teams of engineers and another team for revenue cycle. And so, I have about 120 people under me. That's one of my careers. The second one is I'm a real estate investor. I focus on workforce housing and apartments syndications.

John: Okay. The second one is what we're going to focus on today because in our offline conversation beforehand, it seemed like you were telling me that it was really the real estate and the ability to generate some income while not having a huge demand on time, that actually allows you the flexibility to do the other things and still maintain. Tell me about that. How did you come to this combination of careers and what are the pros and cons of doing it the way you're doing it?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: What I'd like to say is that there is no right way. There's no wrong way. There's just a way. I had a barrier because I was the primary breadwinner and I had these golden handcuffs. I made a lot of money, and every career choice that I looked at was a 50% pay cut. I said, "Okay, well, maybe I can start working and doing things simultaneously, doing two careers at once. I'll work nights, I'll work weekends. It'll still bring in that income, but then I'll work in the other job."

And what I came to realize is that I need to figure out a way to work when I'm not at work. Make money when I'm sleeping. How do you make recurring income that you're not actually doing something directly for it or where you're not trading your time for money?

That's where I started investing in real estate and was able to generate enough recurring income that I had the freedom to look at other job opportunities, other careers that I hadn't considered before because of that salary barrier that had existed prior. I did get a lot of freedom by getting recurring income that I wasn't trading my time for money.

John: And it's not that this passive income, which I'm assuming does require some upfront work. It doesn't just happen spontaneously. Maybe you can tell us about that, but I take it that you just need to earn enough doing that passive to give you that flexibility, that the other job may not pay as much. It's enough combined to maintain your standard of living.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah. I would agree with that. When you're a doctor, there's a lot of upfront work. You're going to medical school, college, residency, but then you continue to work. With investing in real estate, there's upfront work. You have to learn what are the investing options and classes of apartments or whatever classes of real estate and what you want to do. But then you do it and then you can just sit back. So, you do the work and it doesn't continue. There is work. There's always work to learn something. Nothing's 100% passive, but it doesn't require a lot of time after you've done the initial investment.

John: All right. Stage one, if I put it in perspective, is you're clinically working and you're noticing that things aren't going well, you're not that happy. You might become burned out. You've maybe tried some shifts moving around doing different things. And it's still not getting better and then it's like, "Okay. One of the things I've got to do is put some of this cash aside because I'm going to need it to generate some passive income and the future might be with real estate."

Now tell us about the real estate side. There are at least 10 different ways of investing in real estate from just buying it on stocks that hold investments to flipping a house to everything in between. How did you choose what you're doing? Tell us a little bit about the options that you looked at and why you decide to do what you're actually doing now.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Initially I was saying that I don't have the time to be flipping houses, to do house hacking. I didn't want a house hack. With house hacking, you have to rent out your rooms in your own house. I didn't want anybody living with me. I didn't want to live next to a tenant. There are a lot of ways that you can buy a duplex on one side and rent out the other side. And I didn't want to live next to my tenants. If they're not paying rent or they're being loud. I just didn't want that life. And I didn't want to be renovating. I didn't have the time. I'm a mom, I'm an ER doctor.

I was looking at really fewer hands-on options. And the most hands-off option is commercial real estate, and specifically syndications. There are a lot of other options you can do, like turnkey investments and things like that, but I wanted a large scale. I started investing in commercial real estate through syndications. I really didn't know much about which asset class. I invested in all of them. I did self-storage. I've done retail centers. I did a standalone building. I've done industrial, I've done RV parks, I've done assisted living.

And ultimately, I got involved with apartments because I felt like they were more stable than the rest of the asset classes. I really fell in love with the stability of it. I think after so much risk with the stock market or my portfolio swings so many ways, I was just desperate to get out of medicine and I didn't want to risk losing any money. I felt like apartments were the most stable of the assets that I tried. That's where I've focused most of my portfolio. We sold a lot of our stocks, a lot of my retirement and put it all in apartments. And with that recurring income, I was able to really step away from clinical practice.

John: Okay. Now that brings up a question that's applicable to me. That is that most of my retirement money, and I'm a lot closer to retirement than you are, is in an IRA or some kind of tax-deferred thing. Just as an aside, can you buy those syndicates or get involved or buy the apartments or get the syndicates within the tax-deferred account? Or do you have to pull the money out, pay the taxes on it and then invest it in the apartment?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah. That's a great question. Actually, there are special accounts where you can invest your retirement accounts and alternative assets. You can buy Bitcoin and silver and gold, and you can do real estate. You need a special account. And I have an EQRP, but it's like a self-directed 401(k) and there are special accounts that you need in order to do that. But it's definitely possible.

John: So if you're interested in this and you're not using, let's say, already tax money that you put aside, then you should just basically talk to wherever you have your IRAs or those tax-deferred accounts. And there should be an expert there, obviously, that can explain how that can be done and that sort of thing.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah, absolutely.

John: What is a syndication? A syndicate? It doesn't have anything to do with the mob, I take it.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: It's such a scary word, isn't it? Syndication. No one knows what that really is, but it's really about partnerships and teams. And it is basically investors that pool their money together to buy a large asset. And there's a lot of people that do that kind of partnership and they buy hospitals, they buy surgical centers, they buy freestanding emergency rooms. I'm involved in a syndication for a free-standing emergency room.

You basically buy shares of an entity, which is a pre-existing business. A syndication is when you're buying commercial real estate that's $30 million, $100 million, whatever it is. And you can't just buy that by yourself. You make a partnership with basically 50 to 100 people, and you all buy it together.

John: Okay. Were those ER facilities, freestanding, are those in Texas?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yes.

John: There are not many states that let people create these large networks of ER. In Illinois, it would never pass. You have a certificate of need. They don't exist at all. Interesting. Because I talked to a guest who was in Texas, who was actually a CEO for a company that opens those kinds of facilities. So, I thought it might be in Texas. All right, I'm digressing.

Now the thing is to me, somebody's got to manage the whole thing. And a lot of it's based on their experience, based on their integrity, do they know what they're doing? Can they be trusted? How do you sort through all that?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah, that's a great question. Really there's the active team, which are the sponsors, and then there are the limited partners that are not the active ones. And you really do need to vet your sponsors, the sponsorship team, and look at what's their track record. Talking to people that have invested with them, even Googling them, seeing what their portfolios have done, seeing what is their track record, what kind of returns are they getting for their investors.

I started really investing with so many different syndicators, in so many different groups that I learned what I liked and what I didn't. I like that some of them are automated. Some of them are sending checks. Some of them are wiring money. There are different things that I prefer. And that's just going to be more convenient for me. The rate of communication that they have with their investors, how responsive are they. I think all of that is important. Basically, I've done so much passive work that I decided I want to offer this to other people and I learned how to be an active syndicator. So, I'm a sponsor now. I've taken mentorship and conferences and seminars and basically, now I can do all the things that I wanted in my sponsorship. I can do that for my investors.

John: Okay. What does that look like? Being active, you have to recruit investors, you have to do some marketing, I take it. Is that complicated?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yes. I didn't learn any marketing in medical school. But it's really fun. You're meeting a lot of different people. You don't have to do it all yourself. And this is where I'm really leveraging teams. I'm partnering with different groups and we're splitting up the work. They might do acquisitions and banking. I might do the investor relations and the capital raise. I might go do the due diligence. I might help with the renovations, whatever it is at the time you have the flexibility, as long as you're working with a great team, then you can choose what you want to do and it's okay to learn. It's okay to be uncomfortable. I learned to ease that discomfort.

John: Now, we didn't talk about this beforehand, but you have a website. Of course, we talked about that, but that has something that people can download if they're interested in learning more about this whole process, is that right?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yes.

John: Okay. Because it says several reasons why multifamily investing makes sense. So, let's mention the website. shalwinproperties.com is the website. Although I think you're going to be sending people to something with a similar name. So, tell me about that.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah. It's going to be invest.shalwinproperties.com.

John: Okay. And what will the listeners find when they go there?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: They're going to get really a video of pretty much consecutive webinars, mini webinars that teach you about real estate and why real estate and why apartments and why syndications? And what kind of returns are you expecting? And what is the terminology? And why really apartment investing is a great hedge against inflation. I have a lot of good content there. It's short, really digestible, educational materials.

John: Excellent. Listeners, it should be live. This is probably going to be posted three or four weeks from when we're recording it. I'm giving Ronnie enough time to get this done here since she's made that commitment. But it's invest.shalwinproperties.com. I'll put that in the show notes.

I guess I do have a question. I'm actually buying a house right as we speak, which is weird, and also selling a house and buying another house, not for investment purposes, but downsizing, and then getting a place in Scottsdale, which is a lot warmer than the Chicago area, which is miserable in the winter. And so, I'm really concerned about interest rates and loans. And luckily the loan rates are still quite low. So that helped me in buying the house in Scottsdale, but inflation and all that.

To me, we still have a shortage of homes I think, in this country, which drives a lot more people into renting. And I don't see that changing even if inflation comes and causes some kind of issue. Explain in your way, again, this is not investment advice per se. We're not doing that, but I'm just trying to understand your perspective on, like you said, why would apartment investing and doing a syndicate in that be pretty safe and good in an environment where maybe we're going to have some inflation growing for a while?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah, absolutely. I love apartments for many reasons, but one of them is that there is a high demand for apartments. Single-family home prices are going so high that people can't afford to buy their own homes, which is forcing them to be runners. Then there's the population that chooses to be renters. There are millennials that don't want the headaches of owning a home. They don't want toilet leaks and plumbing issues and roof leaks, and they don't want the headaches. They just want a nice place to live and just to pay rent. They're the ones that are choosing to rent. There are also the seniors. Seniors also might need the money. They might not want the headaches. They might want to change of scenery or whatever it is, they're choosing to rent.

So, there's a lot of demand. And right now, the building material and the building costs are so high, especially because of inflation, that things are not getting built. It's what the inventory is right now, which is creating a higher demand. You're building that and you're building that. And so, I'm in an asset where my occupancy rates are going to go up. And when there's so much demand, my rents are going to go up. We're seeing rents jump up right now in Dallas like 9%. In other markets, like 12%.

I have a deal in Las Vegas and the rents there are jumping 12% over the last year. Because there are so many people moving to different areas and there are just not enough places for them to live, the rents are shooting up, which is great because that actually translates into an increase in value.

There are a lot of sales going on right now. With interest rates being so low, and rents going up, it's causing a lot of trading of these properties. People are selling and buying larger properties or selling and buying nicer properties or younger properties or whatever it is that they're doing. So, there's a lot of movement within the apartment world right now. As the rents go up, the value goes up and it basically helps you just like the dollar is losing value through inflation. If the rents keep going up, you're not losing money because you're investing in a property that's going up in value.

John: Yeah. And I take it from what I've read in the past that when you go into a deal with certain parameters and if something changes such that the rents can be raised, that's just gravy there, right? You can usually go into it saying, okay, it's going to be 3% or 4% per year, maybe for the next three to five years, but lo and behold, no, the market for houses has gone crazy. Therefore, secondarily, the apartments are being snapped up quickly and the rents are going up. That's just a positive for everybody. At least from the investment standpoint, not from the renter.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Absolutely. Not from the renter's perspective, but from the investor's perspective, the rents go up. But part of the business plan in a lot of these deals is doing something called forced appreciation, where you're renovating the properties and making them nicer and raising the rents. If you can raise the rents and not do that, that's even better for the bottom line. But you basically mitigate, it'll go up with the renovations and then with market trends, with the organic rent growth. And if you're in a market that's hot like Dallas or Vegas or Arizona, Phoenix, those markets are just exploding. They're in high demand for sure.

John: Well, I know from just the housing market in Phoenix, Scottsdale, they've had two years in a row of double-digit increases in home prices. It's just unreal. It's crazy. People are like, I can't buy a home there. They've gone up $200,000 in a few years. Wow. So that then also translates into the entire real estate, I'm assuming.

The other reason I'm concerned, and this is a little hint for those who want to start a podcast, if you have a question and you're looking to do some research, just start a podcast and get a guest like Ronnie on, and then you can pick a brain for free.

Pretty much my retirements are in stocks and some bonds. And I would like to be a little more diversified and I'm afraid we've had basically double-digit stock market increases in the last two years and that never goes on forever. It always comes down. I think that's why many of us are thinking we should try and diversify if we're not already.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Oh yeah, for sure. My portfolio is heavily in biotech. And it is way down. Currently, whatever I have left is trapped until there's a turnaround, which is exactly the opposite of what I want.

John: Right. You don't want that. All right. Well, this has been very interesting. Listeners, again, invest.shalwinproperties.com. Sounds like we can learn a lot just by going through the videos. Now, I'm sure it's going to be a sales pitch involved with that, but again, why not work with a physician that have some level of integrity that we can at least be assured of? And so, that's good.

I just want to go back to the original beginning of this whole thing about being burnt out and stressed out and crushing your soul and that sort of thing in working in medical situations. Tell me if you have any advice for people that are just finding themselves, physicians that are in that position now. Maybe some words of advice and encouragement.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah. I think the biggest thing is that you have a lot of options. You're not just a doctor, which was my limiting belief that I was saying, like "What do I know? I don't know marketing, I don't know business, I don't know real estate. What do I know?"

We're physicians that have a ton of resilience and we learn how to study and we're highly motivated, disciplined, and smart, and are good under pressure. So, you can really learn a lot of different things. Really talk to as many people as you can. I think that is the biggest thing. When I was on my journey, I was on the phone with so many people, including you, John.

John: That's true.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Trying to figure out where do I go? What should I do? And I think that those conversations are very important because you have options.

John: Excellent. That fits right in with what we do here on the podcast. And that is one of those beliefs of physicians, "I don't know anything but medicine". They forget that they're really the cream of the crop. And I'm not trying to be supercilious or condescending to people that aren't physicians. It's just a reality. To get into medical school, you have to jump through so many hoops and maintain such an intense and rigorous learning process that you can learn almost anything you put your mind to. Let's put it that way. I want to thank you again for being here today and sharing all this information.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Thank you so much, John, for having me. I am so honored.

John: You're welcome. It's been my pleasure. And with that, I'll say goodbye.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post Revisiting How to Use Real Estate Investing to Go from Burnout to Financial Freedom – 307 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's episode, Dr. Pranay Parikh explains how to integrate real estate into your overall investment plan.

Pranay is a practicing nocturnist. In addition to his medical background, he recently completed a Master's Degree in Medical Management from Carnegie Mellon University. He is the host of the From MD to Entrepreneur Podcast and the co-founder of Ascent Equity Group, founded by physicians to help other physicians diversify their investments using real estate.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Ways to Integrate Real Estate Into Your Investment Plan

Pranay explains the different types of real estate investments and the pros and cons of each. He also discusses how the real estate investing landscape has been affected by economic conditions, bank failures, and rising interest rates.

And he clarifies for us how achieving real estate professional status can optimize the benefits of real estate investing for those who can meet the strict requirements.

Ascent Equity Group

Pranay described why he helped found Ascent Equity Group, and its philosophy concerning real estate investing. The firm strives to buy cash-flow-positive, tax-efficient alternatives. That allows investors to develop and maintain their capital outside of the stock market.

With years of expertise specializing in single-family, multi-family, and mixed-use properties, the company can optimize capital appreciation, rental income, and tax benefits for its investors.

Dr. Pranay Parikh's Advice

It doesn't have to be perfect… Just realize that no matter what you do, you're going to have some success that you're going to be able to carry over into the future. So just start something.

Summary

Pranay is a good example of a physician who has been able to cut back on his clinical activities while starting and growing a nonclinical business. He shares his expertise and promotes his business with his podcast. And since he can integrate real estate into his plans, he diversifies his investments while creating passive income.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode. 

EXCLUSIVE: Get a daily dose of inspiration, information, news, training opportunities, and amusing stories by CLICKING HERE.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Ascent Equity Group
• Join Dr. Pranay Parik's Mailing list
• Dr. Pranay Parikh's LinkedIn Page
• How to Use Real Estate Investing to Go from Burnout to Financial Freedom – 229
• How to Build a Thriving Real Estate Passion Project Without Being a Landlord – 193
• How to Boost Your Income With Short Term Rentals – 167
• Why Should I Invest in a Passive Private Real Estate Deal? – 154
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 295

How to Integrate Real Estate into Your Investing or Career Pivot

- Interview with Dr. Pranay Parikh

John: Today I'm very excited to welcome a physician colleague, a fellow podcaster and real estate expert. We'll learn how he built his real estate investing business and how he balanced his clinical and nonclinical work. Dr. Pranay Parikh, welcome to the show. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Hey, John, I'm super excited to be here. 

John: I've been looking forward to this. I love to hear about real estate. I have not invested a lot in real estate, although I own two homes. I guess that counts for something. But as I'm getting into retirement, I'm thinking maybe I need to diversify a little more into real estate. I just want to see what you have to say today. I'm really glad you're here. 

Well, let's start like we always do. You tell us a little bit about your education and your clinical background and then if you want, you can segue right into what you're doing now and that whole transition, because I know it's a pretty interesting story. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Yeah. Everyone knows, your listeners know that when you go into medicine, they want you to be nice and well-rounded. And somehow medical school residency, they shave off all the edges. All the things that made us interesting. I kept some of those. I kept some of those edges. It actually hurt me I didn't match at the top place that I wanted in residency. I ended up not getting a fellowship because they looked at my application and they're like, “It doesn't look like critical care medicine is the only thing you want to do in life.” Yeah, that's true. I like all these other things. I like spending time with my wife and all this other stuff. 

I came out of residency. I was a hospitalist. I was doing well. But I was expecting a much larger salary after I had done critical care. I looked around, I was like, “Okay now I could do the traditional doctor route, save 20%, put it into the stock market, and maybe 30 years, 35 years in the future, I'd be able to enjoy that money.” It didn't seem very appealing to me. So I looked around to see what can I do? I didn't have a business at the time. I wasn't good at stocks. I didn't really understand it. I thought real estate, that's something I could probably figure out. My sister-in-law was a real estate agent. I trusted her implicitly, and she was my unfair advantage. Because people didn't know that we were basically family members. 

I bought my first property and I went to the final inspection. I was like “I have zero idea what am I supposed to do? What is all this stuff?” I was like “Is this normal?” Fortunately my sister-in-law had warned me about the inspection report because it was bad. There were like a hundred things on there if anyone's ever bought a house. It was like foundation cracking, roof leaking. I was like “What am I buying with this property?” She's like, “Okay, be prepared. It's going to look bad.” I was like, “This is horrible. It's going to fall apart.” And fortunately after the inspector who's like, “Eh, this place looks pretty good.” I was like “That's not what this thing says.” 

John: How old was the house?

Dr. Pranay Parikh: It was old. It was like in the 1920s.

John: Okay. There you go.

Dr. Pranay Parikh: But most of it was brand new, new roofs, new plumbing and all that stuff. But the reason for that, now I know, is that we got a discount. Paint it as a bad picture. So we got a discount. And so after that, I'm flying high. I'm like, “I got this discount. I'm the best. I'm going to own a real estate empire.” And I realized that I just had gotten lucky. I got a home run. And after that I spent hundreds of hours trying to find my next property. And as physicians know, that's tens of thousands of dollars of opportunity cost. That's when I looked around, I was like, “Is there anything else for me to do?” And that's when I found syndications. 

Syndications means you buy a little piece of a big company, big real estate, but you get all the benefits tax and all that stuff. But at the time, there wasn't a ton of education. I know you've had some great real estate physicians on your podcast before, but at the time there wasn't any of that. Peter Kim, the Passive Income MD, him and I created a course. We've taught thousands of doctors how to find deals, vet them and invest. 

But over time, after we had people go through, they're like, “Hey, we're busy doctors. We know how to do this. We want to just invest with you. Maybe we can all come together, invest together, get better deals, better terms.” That's kind of what we did in the starting. We were a very small piece of a much larger deal, but over time, we've been able to come together and have enough doctors that now we can buy the whole deal ourselves.

John: Nice. Nice. Why don't you explain a minute about what the syndication is and how it might be different from other things? And then I might circle back after that to your background. Go ahead and just tell us that because you used that term.

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Yeah. When you think of buying a house, think of your primary house. You buy it, you're the landlord, your name is on the lease. Anything breaks down, you have to be the one that does that. That's often called active real estate. You're the person in charge. Now say you buy a rental property, and you have a property manager. The buck still comes to you. You have the liability. You have the property manager. Even though they're going to handle the phone calls, something goes wrong, all it needs to be fixed, something needs to happen, they are going to call you.

On the other side, now, instead of the phone calls going to you, there's a team. They manage everything. They find a property, they renovate it, they handle all that stuff, and they sell it. And they're the experts. They also hold all the liability. And you as an investor, just like I'm investing in Apple, I'm trusting the Apple executives, Tim Cook, to manage the company. Here you trust the experts to run the real estate business. And normally you buy big apartment complexes, which is nice because say there's 2, 5, 10 vacancies, there's 300 units, you have a lot of economics of scale. But that comes at a cost. You pay a little bit more in fees to those people to run it, but it's usually pretty minimal. And all the benefits of owning real estate, the returns you get being tax deferred, being able to do something called a 1031, which means you're deferring your taxes potentially forever on that specific property. So, it's nice and it's a lot more accessible since the laws changed in 2012, which actually wasn't that long ago. 

John: Okay. Yeah. I went to the website, which let's see if I've got it right. ascentequitygroup.com/start for our listeners purposes. Is that right? 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. ascentequitygroup.com is our website. You'll see me and my wife right at the top with our son and the rest of our families. But at ascentequitygroup.com/start, that's how you join our mailing list, and that's how you can get more information. We really pride ourselves in not just having the best investments, but making sure that our investors sleep well at night knowing that they understand what they're investing in. 

John: I kind of brought it up because I was just looking at it earlier. And you have a team there. I know you mentioned your wife, but it looked like there were four or five people. You've got everyone monitoring these things, looking for new things. Syndication, it sounds like just like you said, a group of people investing. So there must be syndications or syndicates that are various sizes, like the number of units or the number of investors. Tell me where you are on that spectrum and what's happening with that. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: We are very fortunate. There are three parts of the business, we think. One is finding the good deal called acquisitions. Two is running the deal and enacting the business plan called asset management. And three is raising the money for it called capital raising. Most companies are good at acquisitions and asset management. And then there's other companies that do the raising the money. We are in a very unique position that we do asset management. We really trust and verify, make sure that plan is being enacted, and we raise the money. Because we do that, a lot of people bring deals to us instead of us having to go out and handle acquisitions ourselves. The type of deals that we do, anywhere from 200, 300 units, we're actually looking at right now in early 2023 a 500 unit in Texas.

John: Okay. I've read a little bit about syndication and owning a large building like that. So, you go in there, you might do a little bit of upgrades, you've got time on your side. You can raise the rents. And hopefully anything doesn't crash in a tornado or something. Of course, you have insurance to cover that thing. So, that's kind of how it works, right? 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Yeah. And what you mentioned is called value add. We go in and we make the place better. You pay a little bit, maybe $50, $80 extra a month, but you get a brand new unit. So, it's not just a win for us, but it's a win for our tenants. And we look at things, and we do this a lot differently because all of us, Peter and I are all doctors. 

So, let me give you a quick example of a deal that makes us a little bit different. Someone brought us a deal, it was in Portland, Oregon. It was an affordable housing place. The owners got decrease in their taxes because they had this affordable housing, but their tax refund or tax abatement, it's called, their decrease in taxes was running out. So they planned to sell. This person that came to us, they were like, “Hey, we're going to buy this property. We're going to kick out all the affordable housing people. We're going to raise rent $600 and we're going to make a fortune.”

And on paper, the business plan itself looked great in terms of making money, but it's something that just didn't sit well with us and wasn't according to our values. We skipped it. It's a deal that we passed on. We tell people that we do real estate a little bit different. 

John: Okay. Now this is the part where I want to circle back. I know that you have been practicing in the past. I don't know if you're still practicing and I wanted to just hear how you talked about getting invest interested and moving into it. You must have started working full-time with your clinical and then segued, but how did that work?

Dr. Pranay Parikh: John, you have to sacrifice somewhere.

John: Yeah. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: I wish I could say I bought that house, I flipped it, and then I was financially free in a couple years, but I wasn't. First, I had to pay off my loans which were six figures. Low six figures, but still six figures at 7%. I had to then raise a down payment for the property, which was in the low six figures as well. And I did both of those in about 14 months. The only way I did it is I worked like a resident. You hear a lot to live like a resident, but I thought I used to do 26 shifts a month. Every month for three years.

You get a golden weekend, you get two grades and a black. That's the internal medicine residency life. So I thought, if I can work maybe 20 to 24, I'm doubling my vacations. But I'm going to just set myself up for success. And that's kind of what I did for my first year and a half or so. And I paid off my loans, I bought my property, and slowly I've been able to decrease my time. Now I'm down to about part-time and I'll probably get down to a certain number and then just stay there just because I enjoy it, not because I have to.

John: Yeah. That's really the goal, right? To get to the point where working is optional, but if you like it, you want to keep doing it. We all love to take care of patients generally, and that's why we went into medicine in the first place. And then you have that balance. I've seen a lot of my guests who they're doing two or three different things. They seem to have hit a spot where they're just happy. Because each one just brings different things to their life and they enjoy it rather than saying, “Oh, I'm just going to work 50 hours a week in this job and then not do anything else.” You're getting close to that, if not at that balance right now, you're balancing it out. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: My wife says I try too many things. Because the problem is, the way we get paid for ascent is that we give out a preferred return. That means every dollar that comes out of the property goes first to the investors. And then we say after you've got let's say 8% to 10% of return per year for that property. So if it's a $100,000 investment, four years, that means you've got $8,000 a year. And then we say, okay, after that, you get all your money back. So you'll get $100,000 back. 

John: Nice. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: And then we'll say, okay, maybe we'll do 70/30 or 80/20 meaning that you get 70% or 80% of the returns, and we'll get 20% or 30% of the returns. Our compensation is really on the back end. And we believe that's fair because as an investor, you're taking the risks because you don't have control like we do in the deal. And we believe so much in our deals that we're like, “Okay, we'll sit back and wait to be the very last person that gets money.” That goes all to say, we're still waiting for it to make our returns for ascent. And it's just a different way. Some people don't give a preferred return, they'll just do a straight split. But we think that we know because we're doctors, we're stable, we don't have to work at the real estate company to pay rent, that we can really, really be investor focused. 

John: Okay. Well, I was going to ask you two scenarios about different people, what they want to do, physicians, I'm thinking of, of course, because my audience is either looking for a side gig or they're looking to diversify their income or they're looking at retirement. 

So, if you were looking at let's say someone who just wants to diversify. I think you've already answered the question because syndication would be a great thing. Someone who really doesn't want to deal with it, they've got a chunk of money. Like for example, myself. My wife owns a business and she's going to sell her business. I own a business. I'm going to sell my business. We're going to have some cash. It's not going to be in an IRA or anything. And then we're going to be like, “Okay, what do we invest that in?” Are there other things other than syndications or you feel like this is probably one of the top one or two for that situation? 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: I think diversification is important. And obviously I'm a little biased, but even within syndications you can do self-storage. Public storage, you've heard about. I would stay away from hotels, I would stay away from office. But you could do multi-family. Apartment complexes like I do. You could do mobile home parks. There's a lot of diversification. 

And I think especially in 2023, we've seen that the 60/40 portfolio has not been great. You really have to have some diversification outside it. And our real estate portfolio's been doing pretty well. So it's nice to have it. It gives you cash flow. Its tax deferred because you have depreciation, the government says, “Hey, these buildings are going to depreciate over time even on paper even though it actually appreciates.” They're able to take a “loss” against the returns you're getting. Basically, the government is giving you a tax free loan for however long you own that property. 

I think it's a big plus especially because you don't necessarily need to wait till you're 65 to take the money out like you do in your retirement accounts. So, I definitely think everyone should have a little exposure, but at the latter stage, it makes a ton of sense. Especially if you don't want to spend time to do real estate yourself. 

John: Okay. Then let's look at another scenario. Let's say they've already figured out, they're going to cut back on their first career, whether it's medicine or something else, and they decide, “Okay, I want to become an active investor.” Now, of course, you're chest deep in it, but if you were looking at someone that just because you have a good knowledge of real estate that wants to get actively investing, what would you kind of steer them towards? Well, I'm not even going to mention anything. I'm just going to leave it to you to tell me. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: There is something called real estate professional status. That means that you are able to take the negative losses and depreciation that I talked about earlier against your active income. Most people aren't able to do that, but these people who are “real estate professionals” are able to do that. There's a couple different rules. One, you have to spend 750 hours doing the real estate. Two, you can't spend more than 750 hours doing anything else. So, this has to be your main job. Three, you have to spend 150 hours at least materially participating. So, you got to go to the property. You can't just be managing everything from home. And then the fourth most important thing, it doesn't have to be you, it could be your spouse. 

We recommend if you're really gung ho, you want to do it, do enough active real estate, buy your own real estate till you meet that criteria of 750 hours, all that other stuff, and then just do all passive because that depreciation is the same. It doesn't matter if you own it or if you do passive, it's the same. 

So what is really powerful is when someone has a good salary, like a doctor's job, maybe their spouse, either husband or wife, no judging, wants to stay at home, work part-time, and they are the real estate professional. And now you have this big depreciation, this big paper loss you can take against your W2 salary. So, if you're making, let's say $600,000 as a surgeon paying $200,000 in taxes, if you can get rid of that $200,000, that's very powerful. 

John: That sounds awesome. What was it? Real estate professional?

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Real estate professional status. Yeah. 

John: Yeah. You have to have that professional status. I'll throw another ringer at you. I think we both know people that have done short term rentals, basically Airbnbs, but they have really nice ones. Where do you stand on that? That takes a lot of management if you have two or three of those.

Dr. Pranay Parikh: There is something called a short-term rental loophole. You can get real estate professional status for spending way less hours. Don't quote me on this. I think it's like 150 hours or really 100 hours instead of the 750. So, what in the ideal world would happen is that you would buy it at the end of the year, get your 100 hours in, you would qualify for real estate professional status. And then because it's at the end of the year, when you do your rolls around, you have someone professionally manage it. And you could do it again and you could do it again. I don't know how long that loophole is going to be around, but that's why you see a lot of people who are in medicine try to get into it because that loophole is great. You can do that pretty easily because 750 hours is a lot of time, right? 

John: Yeah. Almost halftime really.

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Yeah. And the 150 hours of material participation, that's like you walking the property, you have to almost do a pretty large renovation. But this loophole is just so much easier. But the tides seem to be changing in terms of short-term rentals. People are starting to realize that it's not as big of a money maker as it always is. So you got to be careful and don't just jump into it. 

John: My wife and I own a property in Scottsdale and we get flyers every week. I don't even think I can do a short-term rental. I'm in an HOA and I think they don't even allow it, but I just see these things keep coming like nonstop. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, because the management companies, which is probably who you're getting a flyer from, they charge up to 30%. 

John: Oh yeah. Okay. They make some good money there, don't they? They're motivated. All right. Well, we'll end here pretty soon. Any other things we haven't really covered from your perspective, especially for physicians who are trying to sort through how to build real estate into their whole approach to financial planning? And then I'll have one more question for you after that. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: If you're like most doctors trying to get into something, you're probably going to go buy a couple books, buy a course. 

John: That's right. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Maybe think about “Do I need to get a master's degree or take a course on this?” The answer is no. What you need to do, if you don't know anything about real estate, go on Amazon, figure out what the top two books are, whatever they have the best ratings for real estate. Buy them, read them. And that's 80% of the way there. And then the rest is just buy the real estate and learn on the job because the chance of your real estate investment going to zero is very low. It still has a lot of value. Maybe you'll lose 20% or 30%, but that's the cost of education. How much did we pay for med school?

John: Yeah. A ton.

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Yeah. I have a master's degree. I don't know if I'm ever going to use it.

John: That didn't help with your real estate? 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: No. It's in medical management. We are so used to paying for stuff, but we get very stuck. We're very risk-averse, but the people that are killing it are the ones that got started. A lot of people compliment me on how nice my background is for podcasting. That's because instead of starting my podcast, I did a lot of research. I was like does this plant look nice? Should I buy another plat? What microphone should I buy? And I could have been a year and a half further along but I didn't because I was stuck. I would say just get started, get a book, read it, and then start doing. 

John: Yeah. That's good advice. I remember being in practice for three or four years and I realized that my two partners and I, we had no pension. We had nothing to put away. And it's like, I have no idea what to put, but I must have read 50 books and watched every video I could find. A year later I was kind of a semi expert. We can all do that as physicians. We can learn anything if we put our mind to it. 

Okay. My last question. Well, first of all, let's talk about where we want to find you. On the podcast, it's from MD to Entrepreneur podcast. You're up at about 50, 60 episodes now, I think. You might have more, right?

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Yeah. Totally. Yeah, yeah. 

John: All right. They're great. They're weekly, right? 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Yeah, they’re weekly.

John: Yeah. That's good. And then again, the website we should go to, to just check out this whole real estate thing, the syndications.

Dr. Pranay Parikh: ascentequitygroup.com/start. 

John: Okay. Well, for sure, I'll put that in the show notes. I'll mention the podcast and some other things, anything else we referenced today. 

My last question is let's go back to another physician who might be like you were 10 years ago, or whenever it was. Medicine's great. I like it, but I just want to diversify. I want to do something else. I'm just getting really burnt out and I just don't know what to do. Let's say it's even way before deciding on real estate. Any advice for that kind of physician who just doesn't know where to start. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: It can be overwhelming when you're burnt out. I call it burnt to a crisp where you're thinking, “Hey, I'm so busy. I can't do anything.” But it's almost like when you're depressed, you feel like nothing is going to work. It's opening yourself up to something, to anything and letting the universe speak. I had a blog before I started my podcast, and it sucked. Every week, like Tuesday night, I'd post on Wednesday. I'd be like, “Ah, shoot. I need to come up with a blog post.” It was like scratchy nails on a chalkboard. 

But I skipped that. And then I did podcasts, and now it's just so much easier. It feels nice. But I had to go through that experimentation. Actually, when I was doing my master's, I realized I had forgotten to submit one of my essays, and I was like shoot. I was like oh, yeah I forgot to do that. I'll have it to you shortly. Let me just find it. An hour later, I was able to bust out a five page essay, which may not sound like much for other people, but it used to take me like two weeks to write that. 

But I had learned those skills because I would always be blogging at the last minute. And I didn't realize I had built up that skill, even though it was a failed project of my blog. And you could see that at pranayparikh.com if you want to look at my failed blog. But I gained all these skills. It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be a top 1% podcast. Just realize that no matter what you do, you're going to have some success that you're going to be able to carry it over into the future. So just start something. 

John: Yeah. It's so true. If you want to be a better writer, write. If you want to be a better podcaster, podcast. We all start out as not great. And hopefully it gets a little better over time. And that applies to everything in life. 

Excellent. Well, I guess that's all I have for you today. I'm really happy we were able to get together and I could pick your brain. Boy, that's a lot. A lot of advice I got from you today. I'm going to have to go back and listen to that myself after I'm done editing it and see what I want to do with my future real estate efforts. Thanks a lot for being here today, Pranay. 

Dr. Pranay Parikh: Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. 

John: All right. You're welcome. Bye-Bye.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post How to Integrate Real Estate into Your Investing or Career Pivot – 295 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev explains how to use real estate investing to find financial freedom in this week's interview. 

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Learning to Use Real Estate Investing

However, after spending years learning about alternatives to clinical practice, she found a way to deploy her earnings to create a passive income stream. Through passive real estate investing, she was able to quit her grueling emergency room job and move into a less-demanding role at a medical device company.

Ronnie has devoted the past few years to investing in syndications, in which investors pool their resources to purchase apartments. When done properly, this approach can provide the following benefits:

• cash flow
• appreciation in value
• tax benefits
• diversification
• capital preservation

Finding Balance

Ronnie was able to leave emergency medicine and overcome burnout. She found balance by working in the medical device industry while investing in passive real estate.

Now, she helps frustrated physicians who feel trapped to earn income with passive real estate investments. She teaches others about real estate and provides real estate investment opportunities through her company, Shalwin Properties.

Summary

Dr. Ronnie Shalev was able to escape her “golden handcuffs” by investing in passive real estate. Over time, the income from real estate enabled her to find a more fulfilling job and eliminate her burnout. Now she has created a new business to help other physicians do the same thing.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Shalwin Properties
• Free webinar describing passive real estate investing (invest.shalwinproperties.com)
• Dr. Ronnie Shalev's LinkedIn Page
• NewScr!pt

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription PNC Podcast Episode 229

How to Use Real Estate Investing to Go from Burnout to Financial Freedom

John: Let's hear about Dr. Shalev's transformation. Dr. Ronnie Shalev, welcome.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Thank you so much, John. I am so honored to be here. I'm an avid listener of your podcast. It has helped me for many years. Before I was ready to jump ship and leave clinical practice I listened to many episodes and I don't know if you remember, but we had a nice offline conversation where you mentored me about whether I should go into business school or get a master's degree. And so, you've really been an integral part of my career transition. I'm really, really excited to be here.

John: Well, that is very nice of you to say. I appreciate that, but I do love seeing people that maybe I've run across over the years and where they were struggling. And then two, three years down the road, they've made some changes. They've learned some new things. Maybe they've taken a course. Maybe they've gotten a degree. It doesn't really matter, but they've made changes that have made their lives more balanced and more enjoyable, I guess, is the bottom line. So, I'm really happy and I would say I'm proud of you for having gone through that. You seem to be very happy with what you're doing now, and that's what we're going to learn about today.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: I am very happy. I'm excited to be here.

John: All right. I do a separate intro in most of these, and I will be giving you listeners some background on Ronnie. But why don't you give us the thumbnail in terms of your background, your clinical career, maybe even where you went to med school and so forth, and bring us up to where you are now?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Sure. Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to be a doctor. It was like, "What are you going to be? - A doctor." My father is a physician and for many years tried to dissuade me. "You're not going to like it. You shouldn't do it. You won't have a personal life. You won't have kids. You'll never get married." Whatever he could throw at me, I blocked and I was not able to be dissuaded. I was going to be a doctor no matter what. And that determination carried me through high school, through college, and to medical school, I got into medical school. I went to Texas Tech, in Lubbock, and in El Paso.

And suddenly I was at a crossroads, like, "Okay, I'm a doctor now. I did it. Now what?" Then it was really a hard choice that I never even considered. Like "What kind of doctor are you going to be?" And after really going through the pros and cons of the different fields I decided to go with, well, I like procedures, I want flexibility in my life. Everything that my dad had thrown at me to dissuade me was like, "Okay, it's not going to apply. I'm going to find a career that gives me the flexibility, the time, the money to have the freedom to be a doctor, and also be a mom and also have a family and everything."

So, I chose emergency medicine, and I went on to a residency in Philadelphia, at Drexel University, studying with really the father of emergency medicine and really great attendings and had a great education that came out of there. Fired up, ready to take on the world.

I moved to the Bronx and I worked in a hybrid hospital where I was in a community setting, but I also had academic responsibilities. I was working with residents. I was the residency site director. I was doing grand rounds in teaching and doing bedside teaching and lecturing and things like that.

And after two years, I really started feeling a lot of early symptoms of burnout. Only two years there. And I thought, "Oh, it must be living in New York. It must be working with residents." I didn't know what it was, but I ran, and I moved back to Dallas where I grew up. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to be with my family. I'm going to be in a city that I like, where it'll be like coming home. And I'm just going to be a straight-up community ER doctor."

And 12 years I worked in the ER here in various settings, high trauma centers, high volume, low volume, free-standing emergency rooms. And really that burnout never went away. I kept on saying, "Well, maybe it's the patient population. Maybe it's the administration. Maybe it's this hospital versus this hospital. Maybe the shifts are too stressful." I really just tried it all. And then I started fantasizing, maybe I need to open up a restaurant.

John: Oh, no. That's a big jump.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Maybe I should open up a car wash. I started looking into that really heavily, like, "Okay, I just want to do a mindless job."

John: Let me jump in there before you finish up with where you are today. First of all, when you talk about knowing the grandfather of emergency medicine, I had forgotten that emergency medicine is actually a relatively young specialty. When I was finishing my family medicine residency, I think they were just the first one or two full-blown ER residencies. That was a long time ago.

The other thing, when you're talking it seems like, "Okay, I have shift work. I can do eight hours. I can do 12 hours and do those three days a week. That should be fine. I can make money and I should be able to unwind." But I'm telling you, it just blows my mind that hospitalists and ER docs I hear so often from are just super burned out. And I don't know if it's just because of the way medicine is paid for by CMS, mostly in the hospital setting and other insurers, but just there's high volume. I would think it'd be great to be a hospitalist or an ER doc, if you didn't have to try and squeeze in six patients an hour, half of whom are critically ill. I guess that's part of it from what I know.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah, definitely. I felt like I was being treated like a commodity. I was being traded. Resources were taken away from me every single year. Every single year I got a pay cut. Every single year they told me I had less support, fewer nurses, fewer scribes. Went downtown from the zero scribes, I would have less physician hour coverage. They even took away my mid-level assistance. It was just the way that the administration burdens you and you're just pushed and pushed and pushed. And if you don't break, they push you further.

John: Yeah. It really irritates me when they talk about, "Well, what we need to do is teach physicians how to be more resilient." It's like, no, you need to cut their hours back and give them time to document and not burn them out. It has nothing to do with resilience. Physicians are already super-resilient to begin with.

But tell me what are you doing today as you sit here and just briefly what you're doing, and then we'll come back and find out how that evolved. And we're going to focus on just one of the fields that you're working in right now. But give us a quick snapshot of where you are now.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah. Ultimately, I left clinical medicine. I actually have two parallel careers. In one of them, I'm the director of post-market surveillance of a medical device company, where I run five teams of engineers and another team for revenue cycle. And so, I have about 120 people under me. That's one of my careers. The second one is I'm a real estate investor. I focus on workforce housing and apartments syndications.

John: Okay. The second one is what we're going to focus on today because in our offline conversation beforehand, it seemed like you were telling me that it was really the real estate and the ability to generate some income while not having a huge demand on time, that actually allows you the flexibility to do the other things and still maintain. Tell me about that. How did you come to this combination of careers and what are the pros and cons of doing it the way you're doing it?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: What I'd like to say is that there is no right way. There's no wrong way. There's just a way. I had a barrier because I was the primary breadwinner and I had these golden handcuffs. I made a lot of money, and every career choice that I looked at was a 50% pay cut. I said, "Okay, well, maybe I can start working and doing things simultaneously, doing two careers at once. I'll work nights, I'll work weekends. It'll still bring in that income, but then I'll work in the other job."

And what I came to realize is that I need to figure out a way to work when I'm not at work. Make money when I'm sleeping. How do you make recurring income that you're not actually doing something directly for it or where you're not trading your time for money?

That's where I started investing in real estate and was able to generate enough recurring income that I had the freedom to look at other job opportunities, other careers that I hadn't considered before because of that salary barrier that had existed prior. I did get a lot of freedom by getting recurring income that I wasn't trading my time for money.

John: And it's not that this passive income, which I'm assuming does require some upfront work. It doesn't just happen spontaneously. Maybe you can tell us about that, but I take it that you just need to earn enough doing that passive to give you that flexibility, that the other job may not pay as much. It's enough combined to maintain your standard of living.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah. I would agree with that. When you're a doctor, there's a lot of upfront work. You're going to medical school, college, residency, but then you continue to work. With investing in real estate, there's upfront work. You have to learn what are the investing options and classes of apartments or whatever classes of real estate and what you want to do. But then you do it and then you can just sit back. So, you do the work and it doesn't continue. There is work. There's always work to learn something. Nothing's 100% passive, but it doesn't require a lot of time after you've done the initial investment.

John: All right. Stage one, if I put it in perspective, is you're clinically working and you're noticing that things aren't going well, you're not that happy. You might become burned out. You've maybe tried some shifts moving around doing different things. And it's still not getting better and then it's like, "Okay. One of the things I've got to do is put some of this cash aside because I'm going to need it to generate some passive income and the future might be with real estate."

Now tell us about the real estate side. There are at least 10 different ways of investing in real estate from just buying it on stocks that hold investments to flipping a house to everything in between. How did you choose what you're doing? Tell us a little bit about the options that you looked at and why you decide to do what you're actually doing now.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Initially I was saying that I don't have the time to be flipping houses, to do house hacking. I didn't want a house hack. With house hacking, you have to rent out your rooms in your own house. I didn't want anybody living with me. I didn't want to live next to a tenant. There are a lot of ways that you can buy a duplex on one side and rent out the other side. And I didn't want to live next to my tenants. If they're not paying rent or they're being loud. I just didn't want that life. And I didn't want to be renovating. I didn't have the time. I'm a mom, I'm an ER doctor.

I was looking at really fewer hands-on options. And the most hands-off option is commercial real estate, and specifically syndications. There are a lot of other options you can do, like turnkey investments and things like that, but I wanted a large scale. I started investing in commercial real estate through syndications. I really didn't know much about which asset class. I invested in all of them. I did self-storage. I've done retail centers. I did a standalone building. I've done industrial, I've done RV parks, I've done assisted living.

And ultimately, I got involved with apartments because I felt like they were more stable than the rest of the asset classes. I really fell in love with the stability of it. I think after so much risk with the stock market or my portfolio swings so many ways, I was just desperate to get out of medicine and I didn't want to risk losing any money. I felt like apartments were the most stable of the assets that I tried. That's where I've focused most of my portfolio. We sold a lot of our stocks, a lot of my retirement and put it all in apartments. And with that recurring income, I was able to really step away from clinical practice.

John: Okay. Now that brings up a question that's applicable to me. That is that most of my retirement money, and I'm a lot closer to retirement than you are, is in an IRA or some kind of tax-deferred thing. Just as an aside, can you buy those syndicates or get involved or buy the apartments or get the syndicates within the tax-deferred account? Or do you have to pull the money out, pay the taxes on it and then invest it in the apartment?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah. That's a great question. Actually, there are special accounts where you can invest your retirement accounts and alternative assets. You can buy Bitcoin and silver and gold, and you can do real estate. You need a special account. And I have an EQRP, but it's like a self-directed 401(k) and there are special accounts that you need in order to do that. But it's definitely possible.

John: So if you're interested in this and you're not using, let's say, already tax money that you put aside, then you should just basically talk to wherever you have your IRAs or those tax-deferred accounts. And there should be an expert there, obviously, that can explain how that can be done and that sort of thing.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah, absolutely.

John: What is a syndication? A syndicate? It doesn't have anything to do with the mob, I take it.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: It's such a scary word, isn't it? Syndication. No one knows what that really is, but it's really about partnerships and teams. And it is basically investors that pool their money together to buy a large asset. And there's a lot of people that do that kind of partnership and they buy hospitals, they buy surgical centers, they buy freestanding emergency rooms. I'm involved in a syndication for a free-standing emergency room.

You basically buy shares of an entity, which is a pre-existing business. A syndication is when you're buying commercial real estate that's $30 million, $100 million, whatever it is. And you can't just buy that by yourself. You make a partnership with basically 50 to 100 people, and you all buy it together.

John: Okay. Were those ER facilities, freestanding, are those in Texas?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yes.

John: There are not many states that let people create these large networks of ER. In Illinois, it would never pass. You have a certificate of need. They don't exist at all. Interesting. Because I talked to a guest who was in Texas, who was actually a CEO for a company that opens those kinds of facilities. So, I thought it might be in Texas. All right, I'm digressing.

Now the thing is to me, somebody's got to manage the whole thing. And a lot of it's based on their experience, based on their integrity, do they know what they're doing? Can they be trusted? How do you sort through all that?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah, that's a great question. Really there's the active team, which are the sponsors, and then there are the limited partners that are not the active ones. And you really do need to vet your sponsors, the sponsorship team, and look at what's their track record. Talking to people that have invested with them, even Googling them, seeing what their portfolios have done, seeing what is their track record, what kind of returns are they getting for their investors.

I started really investing with so many different syndicators, in so many different groups that I learned what I liked and what I didn't. I like that some of them are automated. Some of them are sending checks. Some of them are wiring money. There are different things that I prefer. And that's just going to be more convenient for me. The rate of communication that they have with their investors, how responsive are they. I think all of that is important. Basically, I've done so much passive work that I decided I want to offer this to other people and I learned how to be an active syndicator. So, I'm a sponsor now. I've taken mentorship and conferences and seminars and basically, now I can do all the things that I wanted in my sponsorship. I can do that for my investors.

John: Okay. What does that look like? Being active, you have to recruit investors, you have to do some marketing, I take it. Is that complicated?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yes. I didn't learn any marketing in medical school. But it's really fun. You're meeting a lot of different people. You don't have to do it all yourself. And this is where I'm really leveraging teams. I'm partnering with different groups and we're splitting up the work. They might do acquisitions and banking. I might do the investor relations and the capital raise. I might go do the due diligence. I might help with the renovations, whatever it is at the time you have the flexibility, as long as you're working with a great team, then you can choose what you want to do and it's okay to learn. It's okay to be uncomfortable. I learned to ease that discomfort.

John: Now, we didn't talk about this beforehand, but you have a website. Of course, we talked about that, but that has something that people can download if they're interested in learning more about this whole process, is that right?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yes.

John: Okay. Because it says several reasons why multifamily investing makes sense. So, let's mention the website. shalwinproperties.com is the website. Although I think you're going to be sending people to something with a similar name. So, tell me about that.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah. It's going to be invest.shalwinproperties.com.

John: Okay. And what will the listeners find when they go there?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: They're going to get really a video of pretty much consecutive webinars, mini webinars that teach you about real estate and why real estate and why apartments and why syndications? And what kind of returns are you expecting? And what is the terminology? And why really apartment investing is a great hedge against inflation. I have a lot of good content there. It's short, really digestible, educational materials.

John: Excellent. Listeners, it should be live. This is probably going to be posted three or four weeks from when we're recording it. I'm giving Ronnie enough time to get this done here since she's made that commitment. But it's invest.shalwinproperties.com. I'll put that in the show notes.

I guess I do have a question. I'm actually buying a house right as we speak, which is weird, and also selling a house and buying another house, not for investment purposes, but downsizing, and then getting a place in Scottsdale, which is a lot warmer than the Chicago area, which is miserable in the winter. And so, I'm really concerned about interest rates and loans. And luckily the loan rates are still quite low. So that helped me in buying the house in Scottsdale, but inflation and all that.

To me, we still have a shortage of homes I think, in this country, which drives a lot more people into renting. And I don't see that changing even if inflation comes and causes some kind of issue. Explain in your way, again, this is not investment advice per se. We're not doing that, but I'm just trying to understand your perspective on, like you said, why would apartment investing and doing a syndicate in that be pretty safe and good in an environment where maybe we're going to have some inflation growing for a while?

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah, absolutely. I love apartments for many reasons, but one of them is that there is a high demand for apartments. Single-family home prices are going so high that people can't afford to buy their own homes, which is forcing them to be runners. Then there's the population that chooses to be renters. There are millennials that don't want the headaches of owning a home. They don't want toilet leaks and plumbing issues and roof leaks, and they don't want the headaches. They just want a nice place to live and just to pay rent. They're the ones that are choosing to rent. There are also the seniors. Seniors also might need the money. They might not want the headaches. They might want to change of scenery or whatever it is, they're choosing to rent.

So, there's a lot of demand. And right now, the building material and the building costs are so high, especially because of inflation, that things are not getting built. It's what the inventory is right now, which is creating a higher demand. You're building that and you're building that. And so, I'm in an asset where my occupancy rates are going to go up. And when there's so much demand, my rents are going to go up. We're seeing rents jump up right now in Dallas like 9%. In other markets, like 12%.

I have a deal in Las Vegas and the rents there are jumping 12% over the last year. Because there are so many people moving to different areas and there are just not enough places for them to live, the rents are shooting up, which is great because that actually translates into an increase in value.

There are a lot of sales going on right now. With interest rates being so low, and rents going up, it's causing a lot of trading of these properties. People are selling and buying larger properties or selling and buying nicer properties or younger properties or whatever it is that they're doing. So, there's a lot of movement within the apartment world right now. As the rents go up, the value goes up and it basically helps you just like the dollar is losing value through inflation. If the rents keep going up, you're not losing money because you're investing in a property that's going up in value.

John: Yeah. And I take it from what I've read in the past that when you go into a deal with certain parameters and if something changes such that the rents can be raised, that's just gravy there, right? You can usually go into it saying, okay, it's going to be 3% or 4% per year, maybe for the next three to five years, but lo and behold, no, the market for houses has gone crazy. Therefore, secondarily, the apartments are being snapped up quickly and the rents are going up. That's just a positive for everybody. At least from the investment standpoint, not from the renter.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Absolutely. Not from the renter's perspective, but from the investor's perspective, the rents go up. But part of the business plan in a lot of these deals is doing something called forced appreciation, where you're renovating the properties and making them nicer and raising the rents. If you can raise the rents and not do that, that's even better for the bottom line. But you basically mitigate, it'll go up with the renovations and then with market trends, with the organic rent growth. And if you're in a market that's hot like Dallas or Vegas or Arizona, Phoenix, those markets are just exploding. They're in high demand for sure.

John: Well, I know from just the housing market in Phoenix, Scottsdale, they've had two years in a row of double-digit increases in home prices. It's just unreal. It's crazy. People are like, I can't buy a home there. They've gone up $200,000 in a few years. Wow. So that then also translates into the entire real estate, I'm assuming.

The other reason I'm concerned, and this is a little hint for those who want to start a podcast, if you have a question and you're looking to do some research, just start a podcast and get a guest like Ronnie on, and then you can pick a brain for free.

Pretty much my retirements are in stocks and some bonds. And I would like to be a little more diversified and I'm afraid we've had basically double-digit stock market increases in the last two years and that never goes on forever. It always comes down. I think that's why many of us are thinking we should try and diversify if we're not already.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Oh yeah, for sure. My portfolio is heavily in biotech. And it is way down. Currently, whatever I have left is trapped until there's a turnaround, which is exactly the opposite of what I want.

John: Right. You don't want that. All right. Well, this has been very interesting. Listeners, again, invest.shalwinproperties.com. Sounds like we can learn a lot just by going through the videos. Now, I'm sure it's going to be a sales pitch involved with that, but again, why not work with a physician that have some level of integrity that we can at least be assured of? And so, that's good.

I just want to go back to the original beginning of this whole thing about being burnt out and stressed out and crushing your soul and that sort of thing in working in medical situations. Tell me if you have any advice for people that are just finding themselves, physicians that are in that position now. Maybe some words of advice and encouragement.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Yeah. I think the biggest thing is that you have a lot of options. You're not just a doctor, which was my limiting belief that I was saying, like "What do I know? I don't know marketing, I don't know business, I don't know real estate. What do I know?"

We're physicians that have a ton of resilience and we learn how to study and we're highly motivated, disciplined, and smart, and are good under pressure. So, you can really learn a lot of different things. Really talk to as many people as you can. I think that is the biggest thing. When I was on my journey, I was on the phone with so many people, including you, John.

John: That's true.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Trying to figure out where do I go? What should I do? And I think that those conversations are very important because you have options.

John: Excellent. That fits right in with what we do here on the podcast. And that is one of those beliefs of physicians, "I don't know anything but medicine". They forget that they're really the cream of the crop. And I'm not trying to be supercilious or condescending to people that aren't physicians. It's just a reality. To get into medical school, you have to jump through so many hoops and maintain such an intense and rigorous learning process that you can learn almost anything you put your mind to. Let's put it that way. I want to thank you again for being here today and sharing all this information.

Dr. Ronnie Shalev: Thank you so much, John, for having me. I am so honored.

John: You're welcome. It's been my pleasure. And with that, I'll say goodbye.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post How to Use Real Estate Investing to Go from Burnout to Financial Freedom – 229 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

In today's interview, Dr. Kirsten Limmer describes how she built an indispensable smartphone app.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Physician, Entrepreneur, and Real Estate Investor

Dr. Kirsten Limmer completed her medical degree and Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at UCSD. Then she pursued her pediatric residency at Harvard Medical School / Massachusetts General Hospital. She joined a pediatric practice and worked full-time until the COVID pandemic hit in early 2020. During the pandemic, she reduced her work duties to manage and assist in schooling her children at home.

However, Kirsten is also a real estate investor and entrepreneur. She has been buying investment real estate in her spare time. And she plans to claim Real Estate Professional Status (REPS) for tax purposes this year (2021). Documentation of time logs is super-important for claiming tax deductions and preparing for an IRS audit. Kirsten looked but could not find any online tool to help keep track of the hours she devoted to her real estate investing and management. 

Solving Her Own Problem and Developing a Smartphone App

She was already aware of the costs of hiring a programmer to build an app because she had tried doing so once before. She spent a lot of money before realizing it was not worth the expense for what she was trying to develop at the time. So, she decided there must be a better way to develop an app that did not involve spending lots of money, or learning how to code.

She discovered that there are now companies that provide tools and coaching that enable clients to create an app without coding or paying high programming fees. So Kirsten enrolled in an intense software development coding course and built an app herself from the ground up. If you want to develop your own custom app without coding or outsourcing, you might use the service she used: Coaching No Code Apps.

Physicians do hard things… If you have an idea that you think is going to be successful, the worst thing you can do is just sit on it and let somebody else do it.

During our conversation, Kirsten gets very detailed about how she built her app. She describes each of the major steps and the time and expenses that might be involved. If you've been thinking about developing a similar tool, today's interview may inspire you to make it happen.

Summary

Kirsten believes that any physician can learn to create an app like hers. With tools like the one she used, anyone can learn to put one together and get support and coaching, if needed.

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode that you can download or read.

Links for Today's Episode:

• RESPtracker
• Coaching No Code Apps
• How to Get Started on Your Nonclinical Online Business
• Dr. Kirsten Limmer's LinkedIn Page
• How to Select the Best Online Business Niche – 110
• How to Validate Your Business Idea

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription - PNC Episode 199

How Did This Clever Physician Build an Indispensable SmartPhone App? - Interview with Dr. Kirsten Limmer

John: I enjoy bringing guests on the show who are doing something different from the usual nonclinical side hustles. And today's guest is a physician who found a way to launch a useful smartphone app. And guys, people have talked about apps for forever, and I've yet to find someone who really has got an app out there that's being used and serves a purpose. So, with that, I want to welcome Dr. Kirsten Limmer to the podcast. Hello.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Hi, John. Thanks. It's great to be here.

John: Yes. This is going to be fun because, I think people are going to think, "Oh, finally, someone found a way to make an app and make it really simple". Probably is not going to be as simple as one might think, but it's definitely doable. Right? That's what we're going to find out.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Absolutely. Absolutely. Especially for your audience. I think you've got a lot of overachievers in your audience building an app is doable.

John: Okay. Now the thing is, most of my guests do multiple things and you do, for example, you're a real estate investor because your app has to do with real estate, but we're not going to talk a whole lot about the real estate side. You also are a semi-professional dancer. We're not going to talk about that today too much. And we're going to try and focus on the app. But why don't you give us a little bit about your clinical background and then how you kind of got interested in all the different things you're doing and then we'll go from there.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah, absolutely. So, I have an MD and a PhD in molecular biology. I'm a board certified pediatrician, now working as a newborn pediatrician in California in San Diego. And I graduated from University of California, San Diego, and did my residency at Mass General.

John: Nice. So, now you're practicing, but then you have all these side things going on. So, tell us, we're going to get this dancing thing out of the way first, to figure out about that. How did that get squeezed into everything?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Oh, that's a really good question. So, I've been a dancer my whole life, and I have been lucky enough to join a dance crew, a professional dance crew, where we are still going strong, putting on performances, granted we've had some time off during the pandemic, but do a lot of performances on stage. The same stage is like the Rolling Stones have been on before. So it's really fun. I love it. It's one of my most enjoyable side hustles for sure.

John: It's nice to have a vocation or an avocation, whatever you want to call it, that actually keeps you in shape too. So, that's got to be a plus.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Absolutely. Absolutely.

John: All right. Now the thing that we're leading up to is, at some point you got involved in real estate because that's why you eventually developed an app. So, tell us about the real estate adventures that you've been involved in.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. So, I've been a real estate investor now for several years. But with the pandemic, I should also say I have three young kids, and like many parents across the world my kids have to be pulled out of school, the schools shut down and they were virtually homeschooled for many, many months. And because of that, I had to really scale down my clinical time. And it's continued to be scaled down because my kids are not fully back in school yet.

So, I was already doing real estate investing on the side, but when I scaled down my clinical time, I really started to scale up my real estate investing because I found that that was something that I could do from home. And essentially, what really became almost by accident was that I had the formula in place in order to call myself a real estate professional in the eyes of the IRS.

And what that is, I'll give you a very high-level overview of this because this is not what the podcast is about. But essentially, it's a tax designation in which you were telling the IRS that you spend more time doing real estate activities on your own, real estate endeavors, than you do in any other career. So, for me right now, that would be medicine.

What that does is, to back up, normally, as a real estate investor, any sort of losses that you have from your real estate investing activities, or any deductions or depreciation can only be deducted against other real estate activities or other passive investments. And so, for example, you cannot rehab an entire house and then declare those losses against your W2 income in a normal sense. But by calling yourself a real estate professional in the eyes of the IRS, that essentially takes your real estate activities from the passive bucket and makes them into the active or the non-passive bucket.

But in order to do this, there are several things that you need to satisfy in the eyes of the IRS. And of course, it's such a powerful tax deduction strategy that there really becomes a lot of responsibility in declaring this on your tax return. So, there are a number of things that you have to satisfy and the main thing is the hour requirements. So, the IRS requires that.

Real estate professionals spend at least 750 hours. It's not just a roundabout thing. It's a very, very precise thing. 750 hours of participation on real estate activities that have to do with their own real estate. And if you are audited later on by the IRS and you've declared yourself a real estate professional, you need to show them exactly where you spent those hours. And in the eyes of the IRS, as some people know who have unfortunately been audited or had any sort of dealings with them, you are guilty until proven innocent.

John: So, it's on you to prove it. I want to stop there for a minute and kind of do some math in my head. So luckily, thank God, it's not a percentage of your work time because the average physician works like 3,000 hours. A full-time job is 2,000 hours, 2,080. I just happen to know that, that's how it was at the hospital I worked at. So, definitely it's less than half of that, 750, right? Now I'm sure there are physicians that work 3,000 to 4,000 hours. I mean, they do the equivalent. So anyway, if you can carve out the 750 and keep track of it, you get the benefit of the tax deductions and allowances and other things that otherwise you wouldn't get.

Okay. So, I have another question. I think we understand that because we all talk about all the great tax advantages of home ownership and of investing in real estate. But some of those are limited to certain people as you're describing. Now, I hear that there are different ways to invest in real estate. I mean, you can get involved in syndicates, you can go in with a fund. That's real passive as opposed to doing active real estate investing. So I think if I understand it correctly, you're talking about the active form of real estate investing, which really needs that to get all those tax advantages.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. That's absolutely correct. And I should say that there are tax advantages without declaring real estate professional status of course. But the real powerful tax advantages can come because of real estate professional status. And I should also clarify that if you are a full-time physician, so let's say you work 2,000 hours, you will need to work more than 2,000 hours as a real estate professional. So, you have to show not only those 750 hours, but you have to show that you're working more than your clinical hours on real estate.

John: So, it's the two. It's both of those. You have to be doing more than half of your professional activities in real estate.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: That's correct. Yeah. So that's why the part-time clinical status, at least in my story, has really been helpful in this because that portion of it has not been so hard to satisfy for me. But for full-time physicians, as you can imagine, it can be quite challenging to satisfy.

John: Okay, good. That's what I need to clarify for myself to really understand that piece of it. And of course, when in doubt check with an accountant or an attorney or a tax attorney, if you really want to get picky.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yes, yes, absolutely. Yes, please, if you're going down this road, you should have a great real estate CPA on your side and really be having somebody that you can have conversations with every day if you want. Sometimes I email my CPA every day. I'm sure she gets really annoyed. But yes, if you're so down this road that you're calling yourself a real estate professional, please have a good real estate CPA on your side.

John: Okay. So now we still haven't gotten to the point, how did this lead into you developing an app? So, what happened there?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah, good question. So, basically, like any good physician I knew that I needed to have a system in place before I embarked on this very big endeavor. And kind of like before you do a procedure, you lay out everything, you have a timeout. And so, before I embarked on this, I looked around and I said, "Okay, I'm going to start with a great system. And then just go forward from there".

And I looked around and I was like, oh my goodness, the people were using Google calendar, Excel spreadsheets. Some people were using just paper journals. And I asked so many people, so many CPAs, so many investors, there's got to be something better out there for this.

I mean, this is such a powerful tax deduction strategy but also you have to be really meticulous. And also, kind of, I don't want to say dangerous, but you have to be really careful about it. So, there's got to be something else out there and there's got to be an app at least.

So, I looked around forever, could not find anything. And I do have an entrepreneurial spirit. So, when I have that kind of situation that comes up and I see that the market has a hole in it, I think, "Well, maybe I'm the one to fill this hole. Maybe this is the ding-dong moment".

John: So, what you really needed or what you thought other people might need is a way to track the actual time you're devoting to real estate, at least for those people where it's on the border. I mean, if you're full time, it's not a big deal, right?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Right.

John: But if you're trying to add this as one of your part-time side hustles or whatever, whatever you're doing, you just want to be able to track it all. And it might come down to being important to just track those extra hour or two per month that is going to put you over that number. And that does not exist.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Right. That does not exist. And it's funny if you look up some of the old cases and the tax court about people being audited for this, just that tends to be the thing that really gets people, is showing those hours that they committed. And there's lots of kind of funny tax cases that we can talk about another day about this, but people are trying to go back and fudge things, but I did not want to be that person.

John: Okay. So, there you go. You've got your need and you thought, "Well, I'll just hire someone to do an app". What were the steps that you took and what did you find out as you went down that rabbit hole?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. Yeah. Really good question. So, I have actually had an app idea previously. So, my prior experience with developing an app was going down the very traditional route of trying to find a software developer, an app developer, and pitching my idea and having them kind of echo back the idea in a way that I was like, "Nope, that's not it at all". And also, with the price tag that was really astronomical.

And so, I knew that I'm going down the traditional app development route that had some drawbacks, and it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do for this app. I guess what I really did was I had a little bit of mindset work and I told myself "If these app developers can do it, why can't I do it? I'm a doctor, I've done hard things before. I should be able to develop an app myself".

So, I started watching YouTube videos and started to think about teaching myself code. And it was not as linear as I was kind of picturing it to be. So, eventually I had watched enough YouTube videos where I started coming across kind of the same names and the same schools. And I found basically a no code app development school that's on a platform called Bubble. And it was really kind of the wave of the future, I think. It's visual coding. So, it's coding logic, but not coding language. So, an app developer does not have to learn JavaScript or anything like that, but they do have to be able to use those building blocks in order to code the app or to build the app themselves. So, I saw that there was a school that you could essentially enroll in to help you build this app. And so, I actually enrolled in this school.

John: Okay. Now let's see when you say school, I mean, that could be anything from a year to four year university or some online carpetbagger that has 30 minute videos. So, you have to vet that, or how did it really look once you got into it?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, this school in particular, the one that I did was called The Coaching no-code apps built to scale programs, in case any of your listeners are wanting to find that. And essentially the school is for 12 weeks, it's as intensive as you want it to be. It has a curriculum in which I really started with a blank screen and like a blinking mouse. Like you start from nothing. From just a blank screen and building up from there, teaching you the skills as you build your app.

So, the thought, and the reason why this appealed to me too, was that not only was I going to build an app, but I was going to have the skills that I would need to troubleshoot it later on if something came up, if I wanted to iterate, if I wanted to scale or grow, then I could do it myself. Or I could at least have the expertise to oversee somebody and be more hands-on with it.

So, the school is not only building the app, but also teaching you the skills in the no code platform route. Depending on the complexity of people's apps, some people took a lot longer than 12 weeks. So, they kind of had to add onto the 12 weeks. I really put my nose to the grindstone and took about six weeks on this app. Going into it, I had a very clear vision of what I wanted it to look like. And I think that that was probably the most helpful thing. And I also had a timeline that I wanted to hit as well.

John: So, let me ask you a question. I'm assuming that depending on, like you said, the complexity, you might have to learn certain things that other people wouldn't have to learn if it was a fairly straightforward or simple type of tool.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yes, that's correct. The skills were essentially tailored towards what app idea you had. And the cool thing about this program was that it was very collaborative. So, I would have conference calls several times a week with other app developers who were doing things that were just totally different across the board. And so, seeing how they develop their skills. And not only kind of enhancing just general education and life, but also seeing how they approached problems and sometimes I was able to integrate that approach into my own app.

John: Now, as an entrepreneur sometimes we talk about, what do we call it? Proof of concept. But I think you have already kind of proved the concept yourself. I mean, you were going by, "Okay, I need this, so I'm going to build it and I'm sure other people will need it". Or did you have any kind of survey or anything you did from other people saying "I would use that"?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah, it was very informal. It didn't have a survey or anything, but I did ask other people and it did seem to resonate with other people. It definitely resonated with me. So, the whole time that I was going through this, I thought, "Well, if nothing else, at least I will have a great tool for myself to use".

John: If I was doing something like this, the thing that would slow me down, for sure, in addition to the technicality would be the design of it. I Like logos and pictures. Do I do some cartoon figures? Do I just do a text? How did you decide on the actual design in the way it looked?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah, really good question. And actually, you touch upon a pretty major point. And that is something called a minimum viable product. So, this is something that, as an app developer, or as a lot of kinds of tech developers, somebody should have gone in. And that is having a very bare bones version of the app that you will eventually want to create. Because like you touched on before, you will need a proof of concept. And this minimum viable product is your proof of concept.

So, what app developers that are successful will do is try to get out their minimum viable product as soon as possible, because the most powerful thing you can do with your app is get it into the hands of users. Because those users are going to be ultimately the people that give you your best feedback.

And I got my minimum viable product out within about six weeks, like I said, to a handful of beta users. And really their feedback helped shape what my app was going to look like before I launched it publicly. Some of their feedback was stuff that I didn't expect. I didn't think it would be important, or I thought a feature would be important and it turned out to be not very important. And so, you can save yourself a lot of time by trying to get out a bare bones' version first.

So, when you ask about logos and graphics and stuff like that, sure, you can do all that, but that should not be where your mind is focused. That can all come later. I mean, you look at a platform like Craigslist, it's like the ugliest website, and yet so many people use it, right? Like the functionality is what's important. And the graphics and the bells and whistles can come later once you've really iterated to your product to be what users really want to use.

John: Let's stop here for a minute because I'm going to stop and give the website or let you give it for how to download this thing only because I've gone on and I've seen it. It looks very professional. I see the design is there and there are images and things. It's not just a text-based thing. So first of all, tell us where we can access this right now and how that works.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. So, users can go onto www.repstracker.com. And they can download either if they have an Apple device or the Google Play Store, we have it in both.

John: Okay. So then, when doing that, that is where you actually get the app that enables you to interface with it. But then you need to have a subscription I understand to actually use it or to get certain features. How does that work?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: That's correct. So, you can register for a free trial. So, try it, if you love it, great, continue to use it. It is a paid subscription, and if you don't love it, that's fine as well. So, yes. And those users can also have access to the desktop version. And there's a couple other features that the desktop version incorporates as well. So, they have access to both the mobile and the desktop versions.

John: And for those that are really into real estate and into wanting a tool like this, how does this tool actually make it easier to keep track? Why is it better than just me scribbling some dates and times down, and maybe the address of a property than just this? What's so good about it?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. So, the fact that it's a mobile app, I think that is number one. I can't tell you the amount of times that I have gone to Home Depot or been kind of on the go and done something kind of related to my real estate activities that then I forgot to record later on or with receipts or whatever else like that. So, having a mobile app that you can use on the go to record your hours as you go is really helpful in that kind of recall of the actual detail of your hours.

But the real beauty or the power of my app is that it essentially guides the users to hit all of the points that the IRS needs, if you one day need to hand over your time logs. And along with that, comes the generally acceptable activities that real estate can declare in their time logs. And for those activities I've had the help of some really great real estate CPAs to vet this part of the app. And so, I'm really grateful for that part of it.

And as well, the app records the hours as the real estate professional adds them in. So, they know exactly where they stand throughout the year in terms of how many hours they've recorded and how many hours they have left. And that can be really helpful when talking to your CPA, when making decisions throughout the year as a real estate professional, "Do I need to buy another house?" maybe. Because this is such a powerful tax strategy, that actually could come into play.

What really results from the app is a really large searchable database that an investor can go back and look through, print out, export, import into if they want, and really keep them organized in a way that will be acceptable if they get audited by the IRS. And of course, my disclaimer for that is please talk to your CPA along the way. I am not a CPA, please talk to your CPA about all of this strategy.

John: So, I'm trying to imagine there are certain activities that would count and certain activities that might not count. So, it already kind of lays out what those types of activities are like, "Okay, put this in this box or in this box". So, for example, if I was sitting on my sofa helping to read an article about real estate in Washington, DC, and I live in Illinois, I spend an hour reading that article, do I get to count that hour as part of my real estate activities?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Well, okay. So, there is some discrepancy between CPAs actually. So, the activities that I included in my app were ones that are generally acceptable by most CPAs that I talked to. And I should say most real estate CPAs because there is a kind of a big difference, that's a specialty.

One of the more powerful benefits of this is as you record your hours, you can print this all out or export this all and send it to your favorite CPA that you're working with and have them very quickly look at it and say, "You know what? I don't feel comfortable with you declaring that as an activity. I don't think that you reading a New York Times article about real estate should be something that you should put on your log". And actually some CPAs might be okay with it. So, this is a really kind of diversified area of the tax code and I guess maybe not quite hammered down area. So, that's actually one of the more powerful benefits of this app.

John: Okay. That sounds really neat. So, that value as well is just the convenience. Anyone that has their phone with them, they're going to be able to keep track. It basically is what you're saying from the convenience standpoint. Okay, so now you've talked about the beta users and the feedback, and I think you pretty much have been working on this, but it was officially released earlier this year, right? And people are using it in real time. So, can you give us a little hint about how things are going so far?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: So far so good. I mean, every day I have a couple more customers that sign on. It's definitely growing in the positive direction. And thus far, I haven't had to do any paid marketing. I've just done grassroots type of marketing. And hopefully I can stick with that. If not, then I'll kind of change my route a little bit, but thus far it's going pretty good and it has not been released for very long. So, definitely growth in the positive direction.

John: Awesome. Now we're going to have to end pretty soon, but there's another question that I didn't quite get to the bottom of. We were talking about money before and the cost of paying someone. So, now you obviously had to pay for the course that you took and that was a six week or however long it took you to do that. So, how did that cost compare to just saying, "Okay, I'm just going to pay someone to write this thing and they may not even make it look at the way I want". So, give me the bottom line on that kind of feeling on using this approach.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Absolutely, absolutely. So, a traditional app developer, when I had my previous app idea, they were quoting me $20,000 to $40,000 for the MVP.

John: That's the minimum viable product.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yes, the minimum viable product. So that was something that I would have to sink more money in as I iterated it later on. People would talk about like hundreds of thousands of dollars for that, the traditional app development route. So, I knew that price tag was out there.

And then the way that I went is the built to scale school, at the time that I enrolled, I'm not sure if they've changed their pricing at all, but it was about $4,000, a little bit more than $4,000. So really quite reasonable in comparison to the quotes that I was getting for the app developers. And then of course, you have to pay that to host your app. There are lots of little costs here and there, but really nothing compared to that traditional app development route.

John: Okay. Okay. And then you had the hours that you had to put into it. Do you have a sense on any given day or week, how much time you were spending on this during that process?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah, probably anywhere from like three to six hours a day. Usually in the wee hours of the morning before my kids woke up, I would put in some real dedicated time onto that. And for about seven days a week for six weeks. So it was a decent amount of time.

John: Yeah. Well, we all have to consider that and if we don't have the time, obviously it's not going to work out. We don't want to invest all that time at the front end and then sort of trail off and never finish it. So, it's good to know though.

Because before we had gotten on this call, I thought, "Okay, I'm going to have a hard time figuring out exactly the cost benefit on this". But no, you really explained it well, it made sense. It was definitely an alternative to forking out $50,000 or whatever. And you got it done. It's great to hear from someone who is a physician because I've had other physicians talk about developing an app. And I think you're the first person. Well, I have one guest that had done it in the past but I think they were trained as a programmer.

All right. Well, you want any last bit of advice for someone who might be thinking of doing this? Any things you've learned along the way that you haven't already shared with us and some pitfalls to avoid or things like that?

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Yeah. Yeah. So if you have an app idea, the best thing that you can do is try to get as granular as possible with your app idea before going either direction. Whether you want to go the traditional app development route, or do you want to make it yourself, think about exactly how you want your app to look. How does a user's journey go through your app when they log in? Where do they go, what happens?

And even just taking out a sketchpad and sketching it out can really help develop your idea and also can help you think, "Well, is this actually doable? Is this something that somebody will want to do?" It'll make it less abstract. And then in that way, when you're communicating it to anybody, you could communicate it a lot better.

Number two and probably most importantly, especially for your listener base is, "You guys can do it". You do hard things. Physicians do hard things. If you have an idea that you think is going to be successful, the worst thing that you can do is just sit on it and let somebody else do it. Just do it. See where it goes and get that minimum viable product out there and just push it out and have confidence in yourself.

John: I think that's great advice. And it's true. Even a lot of my audience, whether they're going into a nonclinical career, there's this fear, this feeling like "we can't do it". And yet, while you've been through, whatever, 11, 12, 15 years of education and training, and you've learned a lot and you're applying a lot, so you should be able to do something outside the field of medicine, if that's what you want to do. So, don't be too shy about it.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Absolutely. Absolutely.

John: All right. Well, Kirsten, I think this has been really fun and fantastic. I might have to have you come back and tell us about the results of your real estate investing at some point in the future. But I think everyone that's listening will get something out of this and I really appreciate you for being with us today.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Thank you so much, John. It was great.

John: All right. With that then I will say goodbye and hope to talk to you again soon.

Dr. Kirsten Limmer: Thank you.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so does not affect the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, no express or implied guarantee using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post How Did This Clever Physician Build an Indispensable SmartPhone App? – 199 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

I’ve brought a great guest back to the podcast. Dr. Peter Kim will teach us a bit about how to build a thriving real estate passion project on today’s show.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country. It has over 700 graduates. And, the program only takes one year to complete. 

By joining the UT Physician Executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills you need to find a career that you love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office at (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Producing Passive Income with Real Estate

As I assist physicians considering a nonclinical career, I find that there are many who achieve the same freedom and security from a side hustle like Peter’s that does not involve being an employee.

Peter designed the Passive Real Estate Academy to be an effective learning experience. It offers all of the lessons in conveniently digestible segments. It leverages a Facebook group to provide networking and ongoing support. And it builds accountability so that progress is optimized.

Developing a Thriving Real Estate Business

And once you join, you’re a member for life, able to access a growing network of other professionals investing in real estate. His goal is to be certain that you're able to build a thriving real estate business that generates income and reduces your income taxes.

If you’re listening to this episode when it comes out, you can learn more about the Passive Real Estate Academy using this link: nonclinicalphysicians.com/prea. If you click it right now, you can sign up for the free masterclass. Otherwise, use it to go to the information page before May 2nd at midnight, when the course closes.

That is an affiliate link, so I’ll receive a marketing fee for sending you to the course, which helps support this podcast. But it has no effect on the price you pay for the course.

Summary

If you're looking for a way to develop more passive income, Peter is an excellent teacher. There is plenty of information about real estate and other passive income options on his website.

But, if you want a masterclass that will get you up and running in a few weeks, his course Passive Real Estate Academy is a proven way to do that. And once you're in, you will have a growing source of new ideas and support forever. 

NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode that you can download or read.

Links for Today's Episode:

• Passive Real Estate Academy Sign Up Page
• Link to April 29, 2021, LIVE Free Masterclass with Dr. Peter Kim
• Episode 154 with Peter Kim

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton

Today's PNC Podcast Transcript

Email Download New Tab

Transcription - PNC Episode 193

How to Build a Thriving Real Estate Passion Project Without Being a Landlord

John: I'm so excited today because I have a friend and colleague back here. He was on the podcast before, it was episode 154, and he talked to us about passive investments and real estate investing. And so, I want to welcome Peter Kim to the podcast. Hi Peter.

Dr. Peter Kim: Hey John, how are you doing? Thanks for having me again now.

John: I'm glad to have you on. I heard you got some things going on, so I thought I'd love to have you give us an update. And so, we're going to get right into it. I know the physicians look for ways to diversify their incomes, do something on the side, not full-time, but it seems like real estate is one of the most popular passive investments. So, do you see this as continuing to grow? Is the interest growing in this or is it kind of flattening?

Dr. Peter Kim: I think it's growing. Just the idea of creating other streams of income is growing just because of the state of medicine as it is in today. You know this very well, physicians are in a place where they realize that they're kind of trapped in the system, but one of the major ways to kind of create that freedom for themselves, choose to ultimately live life how they want is to create income outside of medicine so they can live the life in medicine that they want. And it just so happens that real estate fits really well with a lot of these physician's goals, which is they make good incomes, so they have the capital. So, they want to put the capital to work and they want to do it in a way that's tax efficient. And then it's also hopefully passive for them so that they can create cash flow for themselves, which can ultimately replace their doctor income. And so passive real estate investing is like, I mean, I wouldn't say perfect, but it is a great vehicle to do so.

John: And so, there are ways to do this that require some learning obviously, and you have to know what you're doing, but once you get things set up, you're not going to have to spend three, four hours a day kind of keeping track of things or taking care of a house or an apartment building or something like that.

Dr. Peter Kim: Yeah. I think what you're referring to more is like what I consider active real estate investing, where you have direct ownership of properties. Now I do that as well. I think it is a great way to create wealth, create that cash flow. But for a lot of physicians, they just don't want to be a landlord. They already have a job. They have their business. They like being a doctor. They create income from it, but they want that time freedom. Right? And so, they don't want to create another job. Their time is probably the scarcest resource that they have. So, they'd rather take that capital and have it create more income for them.

And so, passive real estate investing in other people's deals is what I'm talking about. Sometimes you might hear these things called syndications or funds, but basically these operators put together a deal and you can invest as a limited partner and really honestly get like close to 75% to 80% of the benefits of investing in real estate. But once you've done your due diligence, which is probably the most time intensive part, make sure you're partnering with good people, making sure the deal is good. Once you make that investment, it is totally hands-off. You wait for quarterly updates, quarterly distributions, you've got to send a K-1 at the end of the year to your CPA and that's about it. And you got to decide ultimately when that cash comes back, what'd you have to deal with.

John: Now, I laughed because we owned a small condo for my wife's business and we sold it. We didn't do any kind of a 1035 exchange or something. We bought a building that needed to be rehabbed, and rehabbed it. We had to do a construction loan, then got the mortgage on it. And I think that my accountant thought it was a nightmare. And I'm laughing because that's probably the biggest accountant bill I had in a long time, but it's going to go back to normal this year.

Now let me ask you this. When I think about this, that's my experience with real estate in a sense, and I think it's going to all pan out very well because the building is worth the money, the business is paying the mortgage. And at the end of the day, we'll have that asset that will continue to benefit us, even if she's not even renting it anymore as her business. So, you mentioned the landlord thing. That was my one big thing. So, I don't want to be a landlord. I've always thought about doing it. And then I said, no, I don't want to be a landlord, but you've already talked about that. The syndications, is that the only way to avoid being a landlord?

Dr. Peter Kim: No, there are other ways to invest in real estate as well, I mean, passively. You can actually lend money out. You can be what's called either a hard money lender, or invest in notes. So, you can lend money out for people. Let's say people who are doing fix and flips. They need access to capital. So, they come to you, you offer them at a pretty high interest rate, but a short-term loan. So, they can go out renovate the property, flip it, and then they come back and pay you off. And so, that's one way to get involved in it. Another way is to ultimately buy mortgages that are non-performing out there. You can take over, try to fix those up and they start paying you. Like, you're the lender. That's another way to do it.

There are so many different ways in real estate. It's funny, like when people say, "Oh, real estate investing is not for me", I'm like, there's so many different ways to get involved from more active to more passive. Even there's things like REITs, right? Real Estate Investment Trusts. A lot of times it can be found on the public markets. You can go online, like you're going to buy a stock or a mutual fund. You can buy a REIT online and at least some shares and that sort of thing. So that is a way to also get involved in real estate in a passive way.

John: All right. So, I want to dig into a little about it, see if I can pick your brain. Let's say I don't mind taking some risks. But I'm afraid of being sold something that's not appropriate for me and my family and my level of risk. So, what kind of things does one consider when looking at those? Especially in the syndication world.

Dr. Peter Kim: I mean, you got to figure out what your goals are first. You can find a deal. I'd say you find a deal according to what you're looking for. If you're trying to hit a home run, there are deals that you can try to hit a home run on, but there's going to come with a certain level of risk. Then there are deals that are a little bit more stabilized, let's say you're going with a 30-year operator who has a track record of never losing investor capital. They kind of find these properties that need a little bit of work and use very low debt and leverage and diversify it by putting in a fund with other properties in different areas, in different areas of the country. You start mitigating risk all over the place and then it'll affect the returns in some way, but maybe that's what you're looking for versus the home run.

Now I try to mix and match my portfolio depending on what I'm looking for, because it's nice to have that stable cash flow. Because again, that's what enables me to work less. I give up nights, give up weekends, this kind of thing. I feel like I'm young enough that I can take a few swings at this. And so, a small portion of my portfolio is allocated to I would say little bit higher potential deals. It may carry a little bit of risk with it. Now I try to mitigate that risk as much as possible by understanding where that risk lies, like what are potential pitfalls whenever I see a deal? That is one thing I always look at. No matter what, where are the big pitfalls here? Is that property in a market where they have one big industry that could undergo huge disruption and change? Or is this an area of the country that has huge environmental issues or are they taking on way too much debt than they can handle? Or the operator, they're totally new to this?

So, I'm always looking at that risk to mitigate that. But there are opportunities for people who don't want to take a lot of risks, but still have some upside. And so, I actually like sometimes these funds, which is kind of like a basket of investments together, almost like a mutual fund where you get a couple of stocks and you put it together. So, for some of these funds, they put together a bunch of these real estate opportunities and you can have it like across multiple sponsors. So multiple deals all within one investment in multiple different areas of the country, with sometimes different kinds of risk profiles within the deal. It's nice to sometimes invest in those kinds of things, because it allows you to spread that risk and you get instant diversification when you invest.

John: So now do you feel that there is a sufficient amount of transparency where you have a comfort level, either you know the person that's putting in syndication together or in one of these funds of multiple investments, there's enough data to look at, analyze and assess your risk mitigated if you can and then move forward.

Dr. Peter Kim: I'll say that the first couple investments that I made, I did very little due diligence. I kind of just picked it here and there. Maybe a friend did it or this kind of thing. I'll be honest. But then now that I've kind of learned ultimately how to really dig into the deal and kind of built a roadmap for how to actually do the due diligence for these investments, really understanding the sponsor, the deal itself and all the numbers, and then the market and understanding risk. Like now that I do that, I do spend a lot of time upfront, really, making sure this is the right deal for me. And if I don't get the questions answered, I realize also that there's another one down the line. So, you should never feel rushed into these things. You just come upon a deal like, "Oh man, it's the last day before the closing' and you just feel this rush and you don't feel comfortable with it. You should not be investing in it. Because guess what? There'll be another one down the road. I promise you that.

So, I make sure that I understand these things that I get the transparency that I want, because like you mentioned, I have gotten a deal before when I've asked the sponsor for the track record and they told me it's confidential because of these kinds of things. And honestly, that's not the normal standard way these things run business. They should be able to give you full transparency of the record. And if they don't, that's a big red flag and I go running.

John: Yeah. I can relate to that feeling. Like sometimes you're looking at a new car or a used car or whatever, and they're saying, "Well, it's going to be gone tomorrow" and you get this urge like, "Oh, I got to make a decision. It sounds like a great deal". But it's like, you know what? There's going to always be another car to buy.

Dr. Peter Kim: FOMO. It's called FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out.

John: All right. Well, the other thing I was going to ask you, you kind of touched on some of it, but there are people like us that are out here not having studied it. We just kind of don't know where to start. Basically, how would you start if you were someone like me and I had some cash on the side and I'm trying to decide whether to put it in the stock market or put it in some kind of real estate investment?

Dr. Peter Kim: Well, if you decide to invest in the real estate investment because of, again, there's good tax benefits there, a lot of tax protected cash flow. You think it provides a diversification in your portfolio that you need and it fits your profile there. Then I think the first thing you do obviously is educate yourself. There are books, there are podcasts. There are some courses out there. Do your best to educate yourself. I mean, you are probably a busy professional that's listening to this.

So yes, you can go scouring all over the net and looking for stuff. I promise you can find anything online. The question is, what is good knowledge? Is it curated for you and is it packaged nicely? And I tell people, save your time and find something that works for you in a short period of time. Now that's number one.

Number two, I tell people to find a community of people that are doing this because I think there's definitely strength in numbers. I actually have discovered that this is like a team sport. Like we're not against each other with other investors. By getting together, you share collective knowledge, you see things that maybe somebody else doesn't see, somebody else has experienced with them possibly, that would be even better. And so, you gain a lot of knowledge from that. So, find a community of people that are doing this and learn from them. Find mentors, find people to model and things like that. And that's what I would've done earlier in my investing career, especially that second part with community and modeling. And I found that to be huge. And I try to help people with that today.

John: That's good advice. There's always a place to start. You can find people out there, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, books, what have you, courses and so forth. And we're going to talk about your course. I just want to plug the issue or the concept of coaching. I did this online marketing thing. It goes with the podcast and I've been in a coaching program for a year. It cost me $8,000. And it's like, you know what? It's well worth it. You just get this stuff shoved down at you. Like, try this, try this, someone has done it before, they know how it works. I don't have to spend 5, 10 years trying to figure this stuff out. So, I'm definitely a believer in getting help.

And so, your course has just recently opened, it's going to be open for a week or two. I think some of my listeners know about it because you were doing this last year, but why don't you update us and tell us about the course and the things we've talked about? What does it focus on?

Dr. Peter Kim: Sure. The course is called Passive Real Estate Academy. And the goal is to help physicians and high net worth professionals, like dentists as well, to ultimately feel confident investing in these real estate investments. And our goal is to do that in four weeks. You're a busy professional. You'll see these deals come along. How do you know how to choose a good deal? How do you know what are the red flags to avoid? And ultimately, how do you know how to do the proper due diligence on the front end so you can create that cash flow on the back end?

And so, that's what the course does. So, we do it in four weeks. Not only that, do we provide a community of people and other investors, not only during the course, but also afterwards. We have all our alumni. That's probably one of the strongest points of the course actually. It's that you get to join our alumni group who is now educated, who is now vetting deals together, is seeing opportunities, even honestly going in on deals together to leverage our collective capital, to get better deals out there. And all this happens, like I said, in a four-week period.

And so, we launched it twice a year because it's not just like we give you a course and off you go and good luck. This is a very guided course. Because again, we try to do this as a very high yield thing. We have weekly live Q&As. We have experts come in and we make sure you're supported along the way. And I always tell people, I just want there to be no risk for anybody when they do this thing. You hear about these courses. You're like, I don't know if it's going to be worth it. I don't know if it's right for me.

So, I tell people, honestly, we do a whole 30-day money back guarantee because I want you to see basically the entire course. And if you tell me that you don't feel like you're going to get at least 10 times the lifetime value of this course, let me know, we'll get you hundred percent, I'll give it back to you. And so, people who have taken our course have invested and have been able to take that leap. And those people have created cash flow in a year that has been multiples of even the investment in the course. And so, I think that's an opportunity for a lot of people. There are a lot of other great resources out there, by no means do I think this is the only one. But I think for physicians and busy professionals who want to get into this, see opportunities, have that community, I think it's a great resource.

John: I know a little bit about it and I think it's a fantastic resource, but I was reflecting, I was thinking about there's statistics out there that say like 80%, 90% of online courses that are bought, the people never get past like the first day. But I can tell from what you said, it's like, you have a group, you have interactions daily. It's sort of you're walking them through it. So, if they get in and they start it, they're going to finish it because of the engagement that you've created.

Dr. Peter Kim: Right. We also do accountability partners. That's one thing too, like just to solve those kinds of issues is what I found is that we don't want to put it on a course and you don't get the results because that doesn't help anybody. And so, we want you to take the course, really become confident, tell everybody else about it, get results, change lives, these kinds of things. And the only way to do that is get through the course. So yeah, we've tried to build in mechanisms for that.

John: Is there sufficient flexibility? Is it something that I have to log in every day or a certain time of the day? Or are there a combination of videos and live at the evening? How does that work?

Dr. Peter Kim: Yeah. It's a combination of videos and live. And so, all the live sessions are also recorded just in case if you need it. But you can take it at your own pace. We drop like a module every single week. And again, busy professionals, high yield. Like these are things you could watch or listen to. A lot of people say, listen to it on their commute, right? Or in between cases or in between patients, you can fit in wherever you need. And then we have the live support if you need. In our real estate, we do coaching. We have other people come in to help coach during this whole period. We have an expert live Q&A's, but that all goes into a library for you to have access for life.

We do these live components and some people say, you know what? This happened to be a bad season in my life. Like something happened. And we tell people, sure, you have access to it for life and all the updates that we do. And then they just join in sometimes with the next cohort and go live. And we don't make anybody pay any extra for that. This whole alumni club that we have, we call it the Platinum Investor Club. We don't charge anything extra for that. There are no membership fees, you're part of it. Once you're part of the group and part of the alumni, you're part of it forever. And so again, we are continually making updates to it. In fact, we are going to add a little bit more meat on the whole tax section right now, because that is one of the most important parts of this whole thing. So, we beef that up this time, but again, everyone who has bought the course in the past for whatever price it is at that time, they get access for life.

John: The thing I like too, as you said, there's the alumni. So, if I go through the four weeks and I'm in the middle of trying to set something up or pursue something that I just go and bounce that off to a bunch of other people and say, "Does this sound legit? And do you know the person here or this group that's promoting this?" And you can get some pretty good feedback, it sounds like.

Dr. Peter Kim: Yeah, yeah. With each iteration of the course, the group actually gets stronger. And so, stronger, smarter, and again, more leveraged to go out there and get better deals for people.

John: So where are we in your scenario here on the 27th? It's kind of hard for me to visualize.

Dr. Peter Kim: We have probably about a week left of the launch. So, we will close doors on May 2nd. And again, the reason we do this in batches, we only do it twice a year is because it's so intensive with the live. You know what I mean, we put a lot of time and energy into making sure the class gets through it, that we only offer it twice a year. The first module starts on the 5th. So, May 5th is when we drop the first module, but again, people can take it whenever they want, within a week, within two weeks, whatever it might be.

John: But we've got to get them in if they're going to do it by the 2nd. It shuts down at midnight on the 2nd something like that?

Dr. Peter Kim: Yes.

John: All right. Well, I think I have the links that I can put in the show notes. Is there anything else we need to know at this point?

Dr. Peter Kim: Regardless whether they take the course or not, again, I'm just a big fan of creating other streams of income. Whether it's nonclinical or whether it's through some of these other investments. I think ultimately, it's so important for physicians to feel that sense of control and the way to do that is by having that income that isn't tied to your normal clinical day job trading time for money. And so regardless if that's the message I could spread out there and that helps people, again, I'm all for it.

John: Well, yeah, in my mind, I'm thinking, "Take this job and shove it". Sometimes you just reached the end of your rope and if you have some other sources of income and you can kind of lay back a little bit for a while and rethink what's going on, definitely it's better than if you're desperate and deeply in debt and have no cash coming in.

Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to come back and give us the update on this. Because I know some of my listeners will definitely take advantage of it and they wouldn't want to miss it. And unless they're already following you, they might not even know this is going on. So, thanks for taking the time and talking to us about it.

Dr. Peter Kim: Great. Thanks John. Just one last thing to mention is that we will also have one free masterclass that I'm going to basically teach for an hour about a lot of things that I've learned about passive real estate investing, why doctors need multiple streams of income, what are their options with passive real estate. We talked about some of them and then ultimately the whole roadmap for them. There is a free master class that I give. So, it's going to be on the 29th. And then, I think you'll be able to leave a link for them somewhere in your show notes, but they can just join in and come in through free class. And if they get value out of that, then fantastic.

John: So, they can get an extended version of today's conversation with you. It'll be about an hour?

Dr. Peter Kim: Yeah. Yeah. That'd be a live session, live Q&As, we'll do some giveaways. We'll have fun with it. And go from there.

John: Okay. I'll definitely let them know. I'll get that out in an email and we'll be talking about it on the podcast a couple of days before that happens. All right, Peter, I will let you get back to your life and I'll get back to whatever I was doing before. We just had some crazy days here. I think both of us. So, I really appreciate you coming on and I'll talk to you again in the future.

Dr. Peter Kim: Okay. Thanks John. Take care, everyone.

John: Bye-bye.

Scroll back to top

Sign up to receive email reminders, news, and free stuff every week!

Enter your name and email address below and I'll send you reminders each podcast episode, notices about nonclinical jobs, information about free and paid courses, and other curated information just for you.

powered by

Disclaimers:

Many of the links that I refer you to are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you.

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life, or business.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. I do not provide medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counselor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

The post How to Build a Thriving Real Estate Passion Project Without Being a Landlord – 193 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

On this week’s episode of the PNC podcast, a dynamic physician couple explains how they used their passion for real estate investing to create a popular course that teaches what they've learned. 

 

After hearing about their experiences with real estate, and the success of their online courses, I was really pleased when they agreed to come on the podcast. So, today we'll be learning about real estate AND how to create a popular course like theirs.

Our Sponsor

We're proud to have the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program, offered by the Haslam College of Business, as the sponsor of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest-running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country, with over 650 graduates. And, unlike other programs, which typically run 1 – 1/2 to 2 years, this program only takes a year to complete. Recently, Economist Magazine ranked the business school #1 in the world for the Most Relevant Executive MBA.

While in the program, you'll participate in a company project, thereby contributing to your organization. As a result, the University of Tennessee PEMBA students bring exceptional value to their organizations.

Graduates have taken leadership positions at major healthcare organizations. And they've become entrepreneurs and business owners.

By joining the University of Tennessee physician executive MBA, you will develop the business and management skills needed to find a career that you really love. To find out more, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office by calling (865) 974-6526 or go to nonclinicalphysicians.com/physicianmba.

Dr. Leti Alto is a board-certified family medicine physician. After finishing medical school at the University of Vermont, Leti completed her residency at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, followed by a hospitalist fellowship. She has been a hospitalist since 2011. She also started a company, ModusOne Health, with her husband and served as Chief Medical Officer from 2015-2016, before pursuing her current real estate and online training businesses. 

Dr. Kenji Asakura completed medical school at Johns Hopkins University. After medical school, he started a nutraceutical company, completed an internship at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company, then returned to UW to repeat his internship and internal medicine residency. He started ModusOne Health with his wife, before pursuing his current passions.

Risk-free Real Estate Investments

Leti and Kenji knew they wanted to achieve financial freedom through multiple income streams after reading Robert Kiyosaki's book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad (this is an affiliate link) together. They saw two paths to achieve that: start an incredibly successful business and exit with a big payoff, or invest in real estate. Pretty quickly, they chose to pursue the latter.

And they quickly discovered two primary benefits to investing in real estate:

Cashflow

Most investors begin with single-family homes or small multi-family properties. Then, you can use the cash flow, and equity in smaller projects to invest in larger residential or commercial properties. And you create a new income stream every time you lease your property.

Tax Savings

Using depreciation and other deductions inherent in real estate, investors can offset income from other sources, drastically reducing them in some cases. The advantages multiply when you become a real estate professional. But you must meet certain income and FTE requirements that the IRS demands to achieve that.

Next Step: Create a Popular Course About Real Estate

When Leti and Kenji first started investing in real estate, they offered advice to people who wanted to replicate what they had achieved. Later, they decided to start a blog, SemiRetiredMD.com, to expand their reach and make the information available to a larger audience of colleagues.

Monetizing their blog later offered another income column to support their financial freedom. And it also allowed them to build a following.

As long as the passion is there to help people… you're going to still help them regardless of whether the material is perfect or not.

– Dr. Kenji Asakura

From the blog, they decided to use what they were teaching to create a popular course based on their real estate expertise, Zero to Freedom through Cash-Flowing Rentals [This is an affiliate link – if you purchase using the link, I receive a commission.] In this 10-week course, Leti and Kenji:

• teach students how to invest in real estate,
• explain how to become a real estate professional,
• provide important tax information, and,
• introduce students to professional connections to make investing easier.

On the episode, Leti and Kenji also discuss how they created their course, and the software platform they use to support it.

Download This Episode:

Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

The post How to Create a Popular Course From Your Passion – 143 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.

This week I'm learning about investing in short-term rental properties from Dr. David Draghinas. David is a full-time anesthesiologist located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

He also produces the DoctorsUnbound podcast, which features stories of doctors doing different and interesting things outside of clinical medicine.

Dave received his medical degree and anesthesia training at the University of Southern California. Following his residency, he spent about 3-1/2 years in the Navy, mostly at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego. He then moved to Dallas.

In addition to his full-time anesthesiology practice, he's the producer and host of the popular podcast DoctorsUnbound and an avid real estate investor. 

He believes there are many talented doctors doing amazing things that he wants to share with his audience. Hence, he uses his podcast to help physicians reach the next rung of success by learning from peers that have gone before them.

The podcast has added tremendous value to David’s life and career. “I've always had a lot of other interests, so this really kind of helps to fulfill those needs,” said David.

Dave has become an expert in short-term rental properties, such as those listed by Airbnb. Since real estate investing can be a lucrative side hustle that many physicians find fun and profitable, I thought it would be a great topic for today's interview.

Our Sponsor

This podcast is made possible by the University of Tennessee Physician Executive MBA Program offered by the Haslam College of Business. You’ll remember that I interviewed Dr. Kate Atchley, the Executive Director of the program, in Episode #25 of this podcast.

The UT PEMBA is the longest running, and most highly respected physician-only MBA in the country, with over 650 graduates. Unlike most other ranked programs, which typically have a duration of 18 to 24 months, this program only takes a year to complete. And, it’s offered by the business school that was recently ranked #1 in the world for the Most Relevant Executive MBA program, by Economist magazine.

University of Tennessee PEMBA students bring exceptional value to their organizations by contributing at the highest level while earning their degree. The curriculum includes a number of major assignments and a company project, both of which are structured to immediately apply to each student’s organization.

Graduates have taken leadership positions at major healthcare organizations and have become entrepreneurs and business owners. If you want to acquire the business and management skills needed to advance your nonclinical career, contact Dr. Kate Atchley’s office by calling (865) 974-6526 or going to vitalpe.net/physicianmba.

Real Estate Investing for Physicians

Physicians seem to have an interest and passion in real estate. David is no exception. 

“I think probably what drew me to it is the idea that I can have greater control over the success of the outcome. If I can select a property appropriately, do my due diligence, then I can have potentially greater returns,” David said.

Here are a few ways to begin your research before jumping into short-term rental properties:

1. Pick a location, and research it extensively for rentals, and real estate in general;
2. Look at listings in the area on Airbnb or VRBO to get an idea of the local competition;
3. Visit AirDNA's web site to view top performing properties in the area;
4. Review a property’s amenities, pricing, and other factors to estimate the potential return.

Short-Term Rentals Can Be Passive

You can use systems to scale the business. Once the business reaches a certain size, you can hire an assistant to run the day-to-day responsibilities. Then, you can slowly remove yourself from the business, making it truly passive.

“Even with two properties, our cashflow this year is going to be significant,” said David. 

Click here to download the TRANSCRIPT

Another recent twist on short-term rental projects is known as “rental arbitrage.” In this situation, the investor leases rental property at long term rates, then sublets it at the higher short-term rental rates.

The investor thereby avoids tying up capital needed to purchase a property. And they avoid some of the other hassles of owning property. Of course, the rental must be selected very carefully.

Physician Advocate

David is a dedicated physician advocate for avoiding and overcoming burnout. He believes that hosting the podcast and investing in real estate have diminished his own risk for burnout.

He also thinks that burnout is exacerbated when doctors receive little or no recognition for their hard work, and by being treated more like an employee than a professional. “When they feel impeded in doing what they think is best for their patient, or not having the system setup to properly take care of their patients… I think all of those things really impact our well-being and contributes to the burnout.”

To learn more about the his podcast, and how Dave puts all of these real estate tactics together, you should listen to the entire interview. You can listen on the player at the top of this post, or by going to iTunes. You can also listen on any smartphone podcast app.

Links for today's episode:

• DoctorsUnbound Podcast
• Dr. David Draghinas on LinkedIn
• Dr. David Draghinas on Facebook
• Financial Freedom, Balance, and Avoiding Burnout with Real Estate
• Physician Nonclinical Career Hunters Facebook Group
• 1031 Exchange
• Airbnb
• AirDNA
• VRBO
• The Star Principle

Thanks to our sponsor…

Thanks to the UT Physician Executive MBA program for sponsoring the show. It’s an outstanding, highly rated, MBA program designed for working physicians. It might be just what you need to prepare for that joyful, well-paying career. You can find out more at vitalpe.net/physicianmba.

I hope to see you next time on the PNC Podcast.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it on Twitter and Facebook, and leave a review on iTunes.

Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton.

Disclaimers:

The opinions expressed here are mine and my guest’s. While the information provided on the podcast is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, there is no express or implied guarantee that using the methods discussed here will lead to success in your career, life or business. 

Many of the links that I refer you to, and that you’ll find in the show notes, are affiliate links. That means that I receive a payment from the seller if you purchase the affiliate item using my link. Doing so has no effect on the price you are charged. And I only promote products and services that I believe are of high quality and will be useful to you, that I have personally used or am very familiar with.

The information presented on this blog and related podcast is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. It should not be construed as medical, legal, tax, or emotional advice. If you take action on the information provided on the blog or podcast, it is at your own risk. Always consult an attorney, accountant, career counsellor, or other professional before making any major decisions about your career. 

Right click here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.

Here are the easiest ways to listen:

vitalpe.net/itunes  or vitalpe.net/stitcher  

The post How to Exploit the Short-Term Rental Game with Dr. David Draghinas – 079 appeared first on NonClinical Physicians.