MtoM #33 - Millionaire Podiatrist

This is the White Coat Investor Podcast. Milestones to celebrating stories of success along the journey to financial freedom. Here is your host, Dr. Jim Dali. This is Milestones to Millionaire podcast number 33, the Millionaire Podiatrist. If you want to come on the Milestones podcast, you can apply@whitecoatinvestor.com Milestones. Whatever your financial accomplishment has been, maybe it's paying off debt, maybe it's getting public service loan for you, forgiveness, maybe it's hitting a net worth figure of getting back to broke, or 100,000 or a million, or becoming financially independent. Whatever you've accomplished, we want to celebrate it with you. So please come on the podcast. We'll share your story with others and use your experience to inspire them to do the same. If you're finding our podcasts informative and helpful, we would encourage you to sign up for our monthly newsletter. It is totally free and includes useful, actionable information not available on the regular blog posts or this podcast. It's almost like being in a secret club. The kind of club that can boost your knowledge and enhance your wealth at the same time, with no strings attached. Sign up today@whitecoatinvestor.com Newsletter. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. All right, we've got a special guest today, a podiatrist who has not only paid off some serious debt, but has also accumulated a significant net worth. Let's get him on the phone. All right, our guest today is Tyson. Tyson is a podiatrist. Welcome to the Milestones to Millionaire podcast.

Thank you so much. What an honor to be here.

Now, we're kind of. You've done a whole bunch of different stuff, so we're going to try to celebrate it all together. First of all, you paid off some pretty serious debt here. You paid off your student loans. Tell us about that, how much you had, how long it took, how you did it.

So it was about 290,000, which is pretty average for when I was coming out. That took about seven years, and it took so long for me because we also had an additional 600,000 of a business debt. And I think one thing that's cool about podiatry is that it's a perfect mixture of medical and kind of like a dental, where I was still able to buy into a practice at probably a bit. Probably more than what I bargained for. I mean, I definitely learned a lot. But paying that all off, I ended up doing that all in about eight years. So it ended up being like 8 to 900,000 in eight years. So adding up was a lot.

That's pretty impressive. Now, a lot of podiatrists don't make that much money. What was your average household income over that eight or nine years?

So I was looking at the averages and I actually signed my first year contract for 85,000. And the idea was I was. I never wanted to do, you know, hospital. I wanted to be private from the beginning. And the guy was getting older and he was retiring, so I said, you know what, just whatever you pay me, that's fine. And I knew I was going to buy it at the end of the year, so I bought it. So 85 was the first year, and then it went to 200, 300. So after it's been about 10 years I've been out, and the average after everything is about 541. So it's definitely higher than most podiatrists, for sure.

Yeah. Certainly a big part in your success story. I mean, maybe we should spend a little bit of time dwelling on that. That's pretty unusual for a podiatrist. It sounds like you ran a practice very well. Any tips for people wanting to run their podiatry practice as well as you have?

I mean, I like to say my wife also helped in the way that she's very frugal. And I think you find a lot of people who do well, they're frugal, but then their wives are even more frugal. And that's definitely with my wife. And she helped me in the beginning of the practice. And every little bit went into it, and whatever was left over that tiny bit we ended up taking home and just barely squeaked by. But as far as the practice, I love to say that I'm awesome and I'm an amazing business guy, but really, I got a lot of lucky. It's geographic arbitrage, which you talk about all the time. I did my residency down in Southern California and I came up to Salem Morgan, which isn't the metropolis that people love to talk about, but for me it's been a great area to practice a lot of great pathology. Didn't have quite the competition as other places, and I was really able to establish myself well here. Bought a practice that was pretty probably one of the better practices, at least in the state. And from there I just kind of expanded from that. I have to say, too, I also joined surgery center, part owner with a great orthopedic group that's also really well established here too. So a lot of things started happening. It's weird you go in and you leave residency, and you're like, kind of like, I'll take what I take. And you don't quite know what you're getting into. And especially for me, I took it. I had no idea what I was doing with the business. And then after a couple years, you start getting better and, you know what works and what doesn't, and you get your flow. But it was rough. I mean, one of the questions I've been asked is like, was it what you thought it was? And, yeah, it was rough. Like, it was. It was rough in the very beginning. There was. There was a lot of tears. It was. It was tough. You look back now and you're like, wait. You kind of have this, like, selective amnesia on what happened. But, yeah, it was rough. I mean, there was. There was a time I had a lease for my. My building, and I said, he was wanting way too much. I'm going to just make my own building. So I put down the money to make the building. And of course, they always want more and more. And I'm here sitting on my rounds, trying to get to go see these diabetic patients I'm seeing at the hospital. And my wife is saying, is that you got it? How much are they taking from you? Like, we don't have as much. And we were down to, like, our last thousand dollars of our personal and, like, $10,000 business, which has gone so fast, and. And so you haven't. She's like crying, what are you doing? What are you doing? And you just gotta say, hey, I know my numbers. Every day I wake up and I know what these numbers are, and I know that the business can make it, and we did. And I think we've established a pretty good business out here.

Yeah, I think a lot of people that haven't owned businesses don't maybe understand how much hard work and how much risk goes into it. A lot of the time, you know, and they just see the payoff down the road, and they don't realize that there was some sacrifice made on the way there. I think there's something to learn about your geography as well. Right? Salem is not the boondocks by any means. You know, a lot of people, they hear geographic arbitrage and they assume they got to live in some farm town in the middle of Iowa, you know, and that's just not the case. You just basically got to get out of Portland, you got to get out of San Francisco, and all of a sudden, there's not that many docks around. The cost of Living goes way down. Maybe the taxes go down a bit and there's lots of opportunity there. So I think that was probably a really good selection for you and has obviously helped as well. So what's your net worth at this point?

So the net worth and thank you for allowing me to calculate it. It was actually really fun doing it. So I have a little over a million and it's $1,000,058. That's mixed between a 401. You're not going to like it. But a taxable account, cash in different ways.

I don't have a problem with a taxable account. That's my biggest account. So I got no problem.

I would say I started during the COVID and I kind of put stuff as just kind of placing it there. And then all of a sudden you can imagine as you throw money into a taxable account for Covid, you can't stop it. So I have the cash investments. I also have another target day fund as well that I have. And so all that kind of cash goes up to about a little over a million. And then when I calculated, I also have some real estate and I was surprised with how quickly the real estate started increasing. Your net worth as well. I have 973 in real estate, so my net wor. So long answer. My net worth is 1.9.

Did you include the practice too?

Yeah, no, no, I don't. I didn't include that.

That's probably significant as well. I don't know. Another half million or a million at least. Right?

Yeah, it's doing well. But yeah. And that the real estate's interesting. I have a building, but the building we just got and there's not as much. I actually the real estate out here has been really good to us. I bought pretty low in 2011 and it's just really increased and blessings. It's been nice that way. Yeah.

Yeah. So where are you at right now with debt? I mean, you had a practice loan, you had pretty significant student loans, presumably a mortgage. You still carrying any of that or you got it all paid off or where you at?

I am. I paid off everything except the real estate, which is something big. I'm kind of leveraging the real estate. My goal is in 15 years, everything's paid off. And with that, the next thing, I just slowly starting to hit the real estate right now and going to pay off the house. I have about 200 in the house and it's worth about 650. So there's, you know, I have that and then I Have other real estates like the, the building and a couple other things, but that total is about now. It's gonna sound like a lot. It's a million, but it's, it's paying. It's a different kind of debt. Like that student loan debt when I paid it off, it's not just like an albatross around your neck. It's like this albatross with a 50 pound wed on it. It's just, it's so heavy. I know how you feel about leveraging, but you can't leverage student loans like you can real estate. And it's interesting. I'm just actually right now I'm going through this 1031 exchange of a property I had and it increased $170,000 in one year. I mean, that's crazy. I enjoy the real estate, but yeah, when you have stuff like that, that really adds up to your net worth quickly.

Yeah, it's interesting to think you made as much on one property in one year. That's twice as much as you made your first year out practicing, isn't it?

It's crazy. It's crazy. Pretty wild how much you've come. Yeah.

Yeah. So what advice do you have for someone that is just like you were, you know, a decade ago coming out. They're. They're not sure what to do with their career. They've got this big fat student loan. They want to be like you a decade from now. They want to be worth 3 million bucks and have all their student loans paid off and all that. What advice do you have for that person?

You know, it was really hard. I think comparison is so hard. You have Instagram and you see all these things in all my friends. I had an ER doc, I had a family practice doc. I had, you know, I have a bunch of guys and these guys come out and they get a brand new Lexus and you're like, ugh. And you just have to suppress that. And you know that my goals are a different goal. And a lot of people talk about mindset, but it really is like once you have that debt out of it and you can see. So I would say don't compare. That's a big thing. And enjoy the money that you have. I mean, we make a lot, obviously I make more, but I make good amount. But enjoy the money that you have. Little day trips and little camping trips. I mean, those are super fun. And especially when the kids. I made 85,000, but then the kids were young and we had a blast. And we would still go skiing and surfing and do what I love to do. And we found time. And that's what I think was a big part, is don't compare and find time to enjoy what you have.

Awesome. Well, great advice.

I just recently read this book, Die with Zero, and it inspired me to kind of enjoy what you have. Why it's here.

Yeah, there's not going to be any trailer hitch on your hearse, that's for sure.

Yeah.

All right. Well, Dr. Scott, congratulations on your success. I think people will find your story very inspiring. And thank you so much for coming on the Milestones podcast and thank you.

So much for all you've done. You've inspired me and I'm sure you've inspired millions others. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

I love that story. There's so many good lessons there. The sacrifices and risk of being a business owner, the fact that owning can really get your income a lot higher than when you're just an employee. You know, the focus on debt that he had, getting rid of those student loans, and yet a moderate attitude toward it, and the benefits of leverage when, you know, investing down the road. So I think there's a lot of great lessons learned there. But what I loved was actually after we stopped recording, we were talking about how the fact that he's walking into a patient's room in a couple of minutes and just loves his practice and he loves life and everything's going great and, you know, it's just wonderful when you get a handle on your money. All the rest of your life seems to go just a little bit better. So it's awesome to get him on the. On the podcast and hear that sort of success story. If you're finding our podcasts informative and helpful, we would encourage you to sign up for our monthly newsletter. It is totally free and includes useful, actionable information not available on the regular blog posts or this podcast. It's almost like being in a secret club. The kind of club that can boost your knowledge and enhance your wealth at the same time, with no strings attached. Sign up today@whitecoatinvestor.com Newsletter. You can do this and the White Coat Investor can help. If you would like to come on the White Coat Investor Milestones to Millionaire podcast, you can apply whitecoatinvestor.commilestones and we'll celebrate whatever your accomplishment is and use it to inspire others. In the meantime, keep your head up, your shoulders back. You can do this and we can help. We'll see you next time on the Milestones Podcast. My dad, your host Dr. Daly is a practicing emergency physician, blogger, author and podcaster. He is not a licensed accountant, attorney or financial advisor. So this podcast is for your entertainment and information only and should not be considered official personalized financial advice.