Financial Independence For Physicians Through Passive Income With Tom Burns

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to raise your income, investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larsen. Get a free copy of our book@nextlevelincome.com just click on the book link, put your address in, I'll even send you a copy. Also, if you're an accredited investor, check out our Invest link to learn how to gain access to our current multifamily acquisitions as well as our new self storage fund. On today's show we have Dr. Tom Burns, also known as the Rich Doctor. Dr. Burns bought the very first copy of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. On today's show he's going to tell you all about that story. How he grew his passive income to the point where it exceeded the income he was making as a surgeon and so much more. Stay tuned. On today's show we have Dr. Tom Burns. Dr. Burns is principal of Presario Ventures, a private equity real estate company in Austin, Texas. He's listed in the acknowledgment section of Robert Kiyosaki's book Rich Dad, Poor dad and is the author of why Doctors Don't Get Rich, a personal finance guide for people who want to live life to the fullest. He's a sought after speaker and coach and is frequently featured in nationally circulated print articles and popular real estate oriented podcasts. Tom has been financially independent for a decade. His mission today is to help people create financial independence so they can enjoy life and all the joy that comes with it. Today's show is sponsored by Money Insights and their investment Optimizer Strategy. In my book, I share how I use the same strategy starting over a decade ago to invest my money in two places at one time. This strategy has been used by the wealthiest for generations for estate planning, minimizing taxes, preserving wealth and increasing stability for their investments. Now you can do the same thing. In addition, you can build a plan to build an emergency fund, pay for college, fund a business plan for retirement and and ultimately optimize your total financial picture. To find out more information, check us out at the banking link@nextlevelincome.com Dr. Burns, welcome to the show.

Chris. Glad to be here man. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, absolutely. So I am really excited to introduce you to our audience because I spent nearly two decades getting to work with professionals like yourselves, orthopedic surgeons and it's such a wonderful industry. I was in medical devices and to get to see physicians like yourself practice their craft, help patients and see what happens, it's just amazing. And to be able to blend my two loves of real estate investing and working with medical professionals on this show with you is a real treat.

That's great. Well, the hard part is you had to sell orthopedic surgeons stuff, so I'm not sure.

You must have been really good with the. Funny. I had doctors, they tell me, they're like, chris, I don't know how you do what I do. I would. Or you do. You, you. I would never want to work with my, you know, my partners and do that. I'm like, well, you kind of like, you do work with your partners. So, like. Yeah, but not like in the. Or like you do. I was like, okay. It's funny, right? You just. Everybody has their different, their different skill sets. I don't, I'm. I am not meant to hold a knife and stand there over, over a patient. So I thought it was, it was really cool to be part of a team and like I said, get to work with people like yourself. But anyway, I'd love for you to share a little bit more about your story, Tom, before we kind of dive in and talk about the real estate side of your career, but catch the audience up and kind of tell us how you got to where you are today.

Yeah. So really kind of unspecial story, I think. You know, I was just, I was just a kid in a good home with two parents that treated me great. And my dad was a secret service agent, so he was a cop. Mom was a nurse. I grew up playing sports. That's what I did. Kind of discovered girls. And I always tell everybody I was playing sports and chasing girls, but at least I was successful in sports. And I did that on through high school and then came to a point where I realized that nobody was going to pay me to be an athlete. I was pretty good, but there's good and there's other levels. Right. So I was reasonably good in school and, and loved sports. And so I decided to go to medical school, get into orthopedic surgery and be a sports medicine guy so I could hang out with athletes because I was used to that. So I did that. Went to, finished college at the University of Texas, went and did the medical school thing and learned to be an orthopedic surgeon. Finished up in Vail, Colorado. Met a lot of, a lot of sports stars, a lot of Hollywood folks. It was really was an education. And part of that, part of my financial education came from there too. Is. I'll be mentioning the future, but I. Prior to getting to vale in my residency. So to. To catch your audience up. You know, you go to. You go to high school, you go to college, then you go to four years of medical school, and then you go learn how to do your doctor. So it was five years of orthopedic training and then a sixth year for me to do the sports medicine fellowship. So in the middle of that training, I had done nothing but kind of do my thing, follow that path right up the, you know, about 60% of the way through my orthopedic training. I started watching the doctors that were teaching me. And, you know, these were the guys that I'm supposed to emulate for the next 40 years. They're the one that's my life. That's a. That's a snapshot of what it's going to be like for me. And these guys while they drove nice cars and. And seemed to have big houses. They were. They weren't smiling very much. Several of them were on their second or third marriage. They were in the hospital late at night working when, you know, they had us indentured servants there to do the work for them. So I looked at their. I looked at their lives and decided I didn't necessarily want their money if I had to have their lives. So I loved what I did. I enjoyed the orthopedics. But I thought maybe it might be. Might be prudent to find something maybe outside of medicine. It wasn't correlated with seeing patients or doing surgeries to just maybe bring in some income. Didn't know that passive income term yet. So I did what I could. There wasn't an Internet to play with at the time, or at least I wasn't friends enough without gore, so I couldn't get into the early version. So, you know, everything was books and whatever. I went to free seminars and things like that. I learned what I could and. And then finished my training, came back to Austin, Texas, where I grew up, paid off some bills with the nice salary that I got as a doctor, wasn't a partner yet. And then once I had sort of paid, I paid off my student loans, I paid off some other stuff. And all the while I was learning. And after that, once I. Once I kind of had a good day, settled, I just sort of jumped in. I started buying things and so started buying assets. First thing was a student condominium at the University of Texas, which I still own.

So that's awesome. That is.

The real education began.

Yeah, well, I love that's. Again, you say it's kind of A kind of a simple story, but I think there's some highlights in there. And you're very humble, which is one of the other reasons I love having you on the show here. And I said, hey, buy assets because that's, that's something that rich dad, poor dad talks about. Right. That Robert Kiyosaki talks about in his book. And I know, I know you have a relationship with Robert, but how did you like what really. We can get back to that in a second. But what really inspired you, Tom, to buy that first commercial property?

Do you remember? Yeah, it was, it was. Well, it's kind of interesting. I had a relative who had to come down to the university. It was actually, it was one of my wife's nephews or something.

Yeah.

I was just about ready to do something. He had to come down and live at the University of Texas and wasn't living with us at the time. So I thought I gotta, I got a built in tenant, so I went and found something and bought it for him to move into.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah.

And plus it was time I had really, you know, you know, I had a good job and my bills were pretty low. My student debt was nothing compared to what's going on today for physicians. So it was very manageable. Yeah, I just didn't want my family to suffer because of my attention deficit, my, you know, my willingness to take risk. I didn't, you know, I had a good job and I didn't want to jeopardize that. So I kind of took care of a few things and. But knew it was time for me to start bringing in some sort of income outside of, outside of medicine.

Yeah.

And I had read a little book by then. I had actually read a book.

Yeah. All right, so, um. All right, so you did your first little deal, which, that's actually, it's, it's funny, I didn't know that. I didn't know it was a student condominium. My first property was a three bedroom townhouse in Blacksburg, Virginia where I went to school at Virginia Tech. And I had a built in tenant too myself and I rented out the other two rooms and it's. Yeah. So do you own any other student housing today? Did you continue in that market?

You know that. And once I, once I latch onto something. So I learned a lot during that process. Learned how to get, you know, get the inspections and find the debt and all that stuff.

Yeah.

And learned all my lessons and quickly started buying more. So I bought double digits worth, you know, I had dozens Dozen or so of them and still own most of those today. Started buying them in bulk. Buying. I bought a 40 unit at one point, so just kind of ratcheted up.

Yeah, no, that's fantastic. So started in student housing. What. What other assets in the real estate space? What other asset classes are you. Are you invested in across the real estate space today?

So early on in the personal portfolio, I have small mobile home park. And started looking at those, thinking, hey, maybe I'll buy more mobile home parks. Which I wish I had because I thought they were a bit overpriced at the time at an 8 cap. So not the smartest guy in the world. But anyway, some mobile homes I own some notes and I bought. I bought one. I'm not a single family home guy, but I bought one single family home. It was actually two homes on one lot, but in the back of that lot was an AT&T tower. And, you know, the direct deposit from AT&T covered all the expenses of that property and whatever rent I got was Grady. So I went ahead and got that property, but I don't still have that. You know, beyond that, it's started moving into medical office space and multifamily is sort of primary investment stuff now.

Yeah, so you blended the two. And that's, you know, the surgeon investors that I work with, you know, a decent portion of them have an ownership interest in the medical office buildings. And you know, I love about you, Tom, is you're a business. You're businessman in addition to being a surgeon. I think that sets you a partner. I'd love to talk a little bit about kind of like the future of medicine here in a little bit, but maybe you could talk about. And I think let's shift this a little bit to the general audience. If you're a business owner, because we own our property in downtown Asheville that my wife and I, our businesses rent. Can you talk a little bit about the advantages of having a business and actually owning the property or being an owner or partner in that property that your business or your practice is a part of?

Absolutely. You know, so you use the business to generate cash and then you've got your. And then you've got this hard asset as well. So, you know, typically you'd want to split that ownership up. One entity owns the real estate. The business is its own operating entity. That entity pays rent to the business. Excuse me, pays rent to the. To the owner of the real estate. So you use your business to buy your real estate just like you use. This sounds strange. Like you use your tenants to pay for your, to pay down your loan. It sounds bad, but tenants, tenants pay your loan gladly.

Right?

Yeah. So, you know, the benefit, you separate, separate out a couple of assets depending on where your business is. If you have any liabilities in that business, if there's an issue, they can certainly come after whatever you've done in your business. However, you have that shielded. But they can't get to the real estate because all you are is a tenant. And likewise, if something happens on your property, it's at least it stick, it stays with your real estate, doesn't affect your business. So it's separation of the assets. I love it.

Yeah, I think it's fantastic. And you know, I think if you're, if you're listening and you haven't considered this, like the other thing is, you know, the tenant, you know, you know what their cash flow situation is, you know, who they're, you know, you know, if they can pay you, you know, what rent they can afford and you can adjust that rent to optimize. And that, that's, I think that's one of the cool things is, you know, you can, you can move rents up and down from both sides of the equation to make sure you optimize both sides of that while still maintaining a lot of those benefits. Right.

Yeah. And, you know, keep it reasonably arm's length so that it's not, you know, so if it's a bad month, you don't drop rent that month. You try, you want to keep it pretty consistent so that, so there's no blending of the two in case, in case somebody wants to try to pierce that tail.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And yeah, I guess my point being, you know, you can certainly, you know, have a rent that's, that's market based, but also make sure that it maintains your cash flow and all that in a pretty certain manner, especially if you have other tenants that are kind of in and out of that space.

So that's a great way to do it. It's a great way to.

Yeah. So if you have a business and you're listening and you, you rent today, certainly consider what Tom's talking about, which is, which is looking at, hey, can I, can I own this on this real estate and, and use that rent that you're already paying to go out and do that. And it's interesting because it reminded me like that sounds a lot like rich dad, poor dad, like Robert talks about. So how did you meet Robert Kiyosaki and tell us a little bit about that story and kind of some of the partnerships that you've had since then.

Sure. So this was back in the day when I was reading everything I could get my hands on. And as the story goes, family was out of town and I was out running errands. My truck was dirty, so I took it to the car wash and dumped off my car, walked inside, went to the counter to pay my bill. And off to the, off to the left and in the back was this handwritten sign that said books for sale and sort of a pile of these purple books. And as I said, I was reading kind of everything at the time. A lot of personal development, a lot of real estate, anything that had to do with money and in the mind and things like that. And it said rich something. So let me, so let me see that. It said, rich dad, poor daddy. What the, what the rich teach their kids about money that the poor middle class don't? And I thought, well, that was a. That was a bit of a cocky statement. So, you know, anybody that can put that on his book that had something to say to me. So I said, put it on my bill. And I went home and did a bunch of other things. And I tossed that book on my desk in my office. And I finally was going to bed at about 11:30 that night, and I walked past my office, saw this book that I hadn't even opened and kind of flipped the first page and read a little bit. I've enjoyed what I was reading. I read a few more. I kind of leaned against the desk and read some more, sat down just to read maybe a chapter to see what I was going to read one day. And about four hours later I was finished with the book. So. Wow. Really, you know, obviously, obviously caught my attention, caught my everything like it has for 44 million people over the past 24 years.

It's incredible.

And you know, it's 3:30 in the morning. I couldn't tell anybody anything. And I waited till early in the morning. Told a friend of mine, I just read the best business book I've ever read in my life. He sort of scoffed a little and said, sure you did. I got in the book. He called me back. He said, you were right. Called the. Wanted to know who this guy was because never heard of this fella, you know, it wasn't Mark Victor Hansen or Jim Collins. It was some unknown person, you know. And so we wanted to call the publisher just to find out. And when we called the number on the other end of the line was Robert Kiyosaki.

How about that?

It turns out that this was a self published book. Everybody turned him down. It was designed primarily as a brochure to sell his game, Cash Flow. Yeah.

Which I also. Great game and Cash flow for kids, which we have for our kids now.

Yeah, it's a. It's a wonderful game. So he only printed a thousand copies. So I called him up and said, you know, hey, you got any books left? He goes, well, he goes, I said, I sent two dozen to Austin. So I got 976 books left, he said, because nobody's buying them. So he said, but we'll take the rest. And so we went out and visited with Robert. He taught us how to play cash flow. My wife won with Robert's. With Robert standing over her, you know, telling her what to do. So he gave us that game. That was her prize, was one of his cash flow games. Still sits in the cabinet back here.

Yeah.

And, you know, he really handed me a bunch of books from his trunk and I said, I don't want to take all your books. He said, don't worry, nobody's gonna buy him anyway. Bit of an understatement. And you know, so we got to be pretty good friends. I ended up connecting a lot with him. I helped him edit part of Cash Flow Quadrant. I still have the galley proof upstairs.

That's awesome.

I brought him out to Austin to talk to some friends into a lot of his investment stuff. So we've stayed friends for the past 24 years. And you know, just recently, probably, probably about three years ago. Oh, by the way, that was the first rich dad, poor dad ever purchased. You know, the first, first book ever purchased.

Yours was.

Mine was. Yeah.

Now that's. Now. I didn't know that. That is. That is awesome. That is a story right there.

That's the kind of beauty of the story because there were 24 books sitting there at. At the car wash. I went back and bought the rest of them, handed them out to friends, and I kept that original book and I gave it back to Robert two, three years ago. And so that's cool. So he's got the first book ever. And then he's got. And he's got my book hung up right next to it.

I love that. Which. Yeah, you. And we'll share with the audience here how to get. Get your book. So I. Robert gave me the copy that I have on my. On my. On my desk. But that is a little bit. Yeah, it was with. Well, now the late Gene Guarino. I don't know if you knew Gene, terrible news. But we met at Gene's conference two years ago almost to the day, so. Yeah. Yeah. But that is a. That's. That's an amazing story, though.

Yeah. So. And that's always. You know, we stayed friends. Stayed friends ever since. I talked to him ever so often, so. But he's certainly been a lot for a lot of people. You can't turn a corner without somebody saying, that little purple book changed their lives.

Yeah.

I'm doing a very big project right now with a person in the tech world. And he said the other day that that book turned him around, got him going. So here are those stories all the time.

Oh, absolutely. I'll. I'll never forget, I was in Charlottesville, Virginia, and it was. I think it was the summer of 1999, and I was in Barnes and Noble and a gentleman. I was walking the finance aisle. I was in the process of reading hundreds of finance books at the time. And this guy holds up, rich dad, poor dad. And he goes, are you looking for a book to read? I said, I'm always looking for a book to read. He goes, you need to read this. So I was like, I don't know this guy, but he's, you know, he's like. He's standing there in the finance money section, too. I'm like, okay. So I looked at him like, all.

Right, this is good.

And I don't think any of his other books were out at the time. I think it was. I could be wrong. Maybe Cash Flow Quadrant was. But I read it, and then I bought every single book after that that he wrote. And I'll never forget reading through all those, and as they'd come out, and Tom Wheelwright came out with his. And all these come out. So, yeah, it's certainly helped shape so many of my decisions. And I'll never forget thinking, like, I need to be accredited. That's where I first came up with that concept. So, Tom, again, you know, you've. You had the fortune to read that book and do that. You know, medicine has changed a lot, you know, since. Since you've been in it. Since even, you know, I've kind of been. Been in there. But why do you think that doctors who are, most of them, are in the top 1%, especially if you're a specialist, if you're a surgeon, you're most likely in the top 1%. You're accredited, you have access to all this money, all these opportunities that are out there. Why don't you think more doctors are financially independent?

It's mindset and training. You know, for that reason. You know, those doctors that, that were teaching me way back when I was in training, they made a lot of money relative, you know, inflation. They were doing really well.

Yeah.

But still unhappy. And if they got hit by a bus or broke a leg, they weren't going to keep making that money. So it's mostly mindset. Great. You know, all doctor doctors are great, great group of folks. They're my folks, you know, they're, they're their husbands, mothers, daughters, sons. You know, they just want to, they want to enjoy life. They do have a, they do have a bit of a servant's heart. Rarely do you find a doctor that got into medicine for the money. And the money is there's certainly some surety of a nice lifestyle. And sometimes you can make quite a lot of money as a physician. But to answer your question, as you go through, you start, you know, all you know is I, once you start working is either, I gather, a paycheck which is over 50% of physicians now, which is not necessarily a good thing, I think for all of us that maybe aren't physicians that are going to get treated by doctors.

And what you mean are those physicians are now employees, right?

Employees, absolutely. They're in the E quadrant now. The rest of them are in the S quadrant. If you know, the cash flow quadrant. They're looking for themselves. But as you know, on that left side of that quadrant, both if you don't work, you don't get paid. And so they are certainly we're trained for do a service, do a surgery, you get paid. And myself, I realized that, you know, the more successful I got, the less time I was going to have. So that was no fun. And that's what happens.

Money. Yeah.

So I think it's, it's, it's certainly not intellect because they've certainly got it. And it's not that they can't. They just either maybe have not been exposed and don't realize what's behind the curtain, or maybe they don't want to. And that's, you know, life is a bell curve. Some people don't want to, some people really do and are searching down. The others maybe just haven't been exposed. So that, that's, that's sort of my take. I believe passive income through, through cash flowing assets is just a way to create freedom, which gives you the time to have the life that you really want. And they want it. They just maybe don't know how to get it yet.

Yes, I mean, you know, 30 years ago compared to today, the debt is substantially higher. When you come out of med school, the compensation, when adjusted for inflation is lower. You're probably more likely to be employed, which means you have somebody that has more control over your compensation. There's more and more government influence on the healthcare sector as the years go on. I look at the industry and you tell me the healthcare industry, it looks like costs are going up and compensation is going down and the doctors are right in the middle getting squeezed.

Yeah, there's got to be an inflection point at some point. The physicians are something like 2 to 4% of the cost of medicine. And I do have a graph somewhere, if you may have seen it in the book, where inflation goes up by 22% and doctor income goes up by two and a half percent. So 20% difference over 10 years, that's just a 20% loss of mind power. So, yeah, it's, it's, that's, that's kind of where things are going. Unfortunately, corporate medicine is not so great, I don't think, for all of us. And even if, even if you're not in corporate medicine, if you're running your own practice, you're still not in control because somebody else, for example, the insurance company determines how much you're going to get paid. It's not, it's not. The best get paid more and the worst don't get as much business. Everybody gets paid the same based on what the insurance company. So not a lot of control in medicine. But don't feel sorry for them. They still make very, very nice salaries. So don't ever want anybody to feel sorry for a physician.

Yeah, so, but I mean, it is, it is a challenging thing. And that's where I think, you know, where you come in, Tom, where I have actually one of our investors, he has made some really good choices over the past five or so years. He has some great income coming in. HCA comes into Asheville and buys the hospital and put a lot of pressure on his practice. And he said to me, he said, you know what, Chris? He goes, because I have this passive income coming in, I'm not really worried because I know I can stay here. I want to live here, I want my family to finish out school here. And even if the money isn't exactly what I want, I know I have a choice. And I know, Tom, your personal story, talking about when your passive income exceeded, and I think this is, this is a really impressive achievement. But your passive income exceeded your earnings as a physician. Walk Me through that. And did you give up medicine together? How are you still involved in practice? Are you? And what did that really do for you and your life?

It was liberating. It was liberating. And just that story that you just told, that physician may not have reached the point where his passive income eclipses his medical income, but you can, you know, you can have partial freeman, partial freedom, and that's what it gave him. You said the word. It gave him choices. So just having some pressure taken off gives you the ability to have choice where you keep his kids in the school that they like, or stay in Asheville where he likes to stay. And that's what it's all about. Passive income gives you choice. And as humans, we want to control our environment, meaning we want to have choice about what we do, where we do it and who we do it with. So, yeah, it's important. And in my world, you know, I, I just, I just would, I would buy an asset, it would create passive income, and I would keep that in its, you know, in its own little bucket, and it would grow. And over time, I'd buy multiples and they'd all kind of grow together. And sometimes my, my money would make babies and so there'd be enough money there so I could go buy something else. It just sort of compounded on itself. Yeah, compact and it's, you know, and that's really important. And I truly remember I used to, you know, every quarter or so I would look through, you know, I used a software program, just Quicken, something simple. I moved on to double entry, QuickBooks, you know, 15 years ago. But. And I knew what I was paying each year for utilities, mortgage, clothing, groceries, whatever. You have those categories. And I realized over time that I had finally clear. I had finally covered each one of those categories and didn't necessarily need my, my income. It was a great feeling. What did I do? I just, I just kept going. I just kept doubling down and kept investing and kept that money separate. It took a little more time off and I kept. I kept practicing for 12 years after I did not necessarily need the money.

Wow. So 12 years.

Well, one, I enjoyed orthopedics. Most doctors do enjoy what they do.

Absolutely.

The reason I enjoyed it is my, my passive income was growing as my practice was growing. So I just think I was kind of blessed to have that, that sort of situation because as things came up that were unpleasant, like taking call, doctors have to stay up all night and take emergencies and not sleep and things like that, I eliminated that in the 1900s, it was great.

That's a cool statement in the 1900s. That sounds like a pretty cool statement too. And if you're a physician, you're listening, you'll. You love.

Okay, 21, but you know, 21 years. So, you know, short. Just nine years into my practice, I wasn't taking call anymore, maybe even earlier. And so eliminated call. I, I finally took a Friday afternoon off and that was addicting because all of a sudden I had a two and a half day weekend and just kept going like that. So that lasted and you know, the last, probably the last four years of my, my tenure as an orthopedic surgeon, my physician assistant made more money than I did. My 2019 W2 was laughable. But that's just proof that I was really enjoying what I was doing. I didn't have anything pulled me away. I loved my patients, I loved my job. I had a great team. And finally some other things have finally grown to the point where I can, rather than serving patients one at a time, I can serve people on a, on a larger scale, one to many. And so I sort of hung up the scalpel on April 30th this year. Wow.

Well, congratulations. We met shortly thereafter. I want you to share with the audience kind of your next chapter here, but I just want to bookend that and I want to read this quote by Robert Kiyosaki. And I always tell investors, I truly believe, and I feel this because I've kind of gone through the process. When you're financially independent, I just think you become better. You become better at who you are. Like if you're a surgeon, if you're a salesperson, if you're a mother, if you're a teacher, whatever it might be, you become better at that. And Robert says if every doctor followed Tom's rich doctor principles, millions of physicians and their patients would benefit because financially free doctors equate to better healthcare for everyone. And I absolutely love that quote. So, Tom, you've, like, you said you've started to look for ways to give back to help more people. You have an awesome book, which I encourage you all to get. I have it myself. Share with the audience your next chapter and what you have in store for the future.

Yeah. So. Well, it all started as Robert suggested. I was asking Robert one day what his next book was going to be because they put one out about every year, it seems like.

Oh, yeah, he's. I can't keep up now. I used to keep up. I feel like I've fallen a few, a few Behind.

It's tough. Yeah, he's got to get on like auto serve or something. But so he told me, he goes, you should write a book. I said, ah. He goes, no, you got a story, you should write a book. So yeah, you know, Mr. Suggestible. I said okay. So I wrote a book. But I just, I just wrote the book. You know, a lot of people would like to write one and don't. So I just wrote it to write it. It was during, during the writing of that book when I did my research and found out, you know, I was pretty happy doctor because I had the passive income. I found out how many unhappy physicians there were, how many unhappy lawyers, accountants and engineers too, believe it or not. People that sort of feel like they're trapped in their jobs.

Yeah.

And absolutely that's where the mission was born. And so I started a little website and have improved that and it's just been an organic growth. But you know, now I try to help people kind of do the same thing and that's sort of where life's, life's taken me. The book got published and, and blessed to have a, have quite a few people read it and some people may ask for some help and that's what's, that's really what gave me some purpose outside of medicine. So that's what allowed me to maybe step away from something I love to something I love.

Yeah, no, it's, I think your, your, your passion, your purpose is, is awesome. Tom. If you haven't checked it out, richdoctor.com is where you can find out all about what Tom has. He's got a coaching program as well and if you're, if you're a physician, you're listening. I highly encourage you to reach out to Tom. He's got tremendous knowledge through all his experience and I'm going to ask you Tom, you can go back to your 25 year old self and give yourself some advice. What would it be?

You know, probably focus. I'm not sure if, I'm not sure if my lack of focus allowed me to experience a lot more of life or slowed me down. You know, so you know, sometimes people will say what would you do different? I probably wouldn't change anything because my past is what made me who I am and happy with that, but probably would, would stick with. I would probably focus a little bit more. I jumped around a lot so I'd focus and I would, I would probably as at 25 year old I would get a mentor, I would get a gray haired mentor right away. And that's one thing it took me some time to do. And that. That just shaved. Shaved years, if not a decade off of my. Off of my learning process and my success path.

I think that's awesome advice, and that's one of my top tips as well. And I take it from. I look at your profession, Tom. I look at surgeons that go through the process and go through med school, and then they come out and they do a fellowship and they work alongside experts to craft and hone their craft before they end up going with patients. And for some reason, you know, we used to have apprentices, and, you know, I think that's. That's amazing advice, no matter what you're looking to do.

Yeah, the apprenticeship model was, you know, that's how a lot of people learn. It's how they've learned through the last hundreds of years. And, well, you can. It's so much nicer to learn from somebody else's mistakes and from yours.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So, again, if you want to check out Dr. Tom Burns. Tom, what's the best way for people to get ahold of you again?

Just, you can go to richdoctor.com or you can send an email to hellorichdoctor.com and I'll get it.

Awesome. Dr. Burns, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure. Thanks.

Love being here.

Hey, Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to give to you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please, like, share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple podcasts.