#196 How to Balance Your Medical Practice and Entrepreneurial Ventures

Hey, everyone. Hope you're having a great week. This episode is for all of you who are trying to create a business, do some sort of entrepreneurial venture outside of medicine. Maybe it's within medicine. Creating a practice, whatever it is, and trying to balance your life within medicine. We all know that can be a huge challenge. So this episode is going to be packed with practical advice, real life insights, and tips to help you keep that balance and make sure you enjoy it all. So stay tuned. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast, where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe. Now, let's get on with the show. All right, thanks for joining us today. Wherever you're tuning in from. I just stepped out of a freezing cold shower. I don't know if you've ever done that before, but if you ever need a quick wake up, coffee is not the answer. It's a cold, quick shower. 30 seconds to a minute. You'll be cursing life for a moment, but when you step out, nothing feels more amazing. Now, that has nothing to do with today's podcast. Or maybe it has everything to do with today's podcast. But I wanted to bring a lot of energy to today's episode because it requires. As many of you know, I'm an anesthesiologist and ob anesthesiologist by training. I had no intention of veering off that road. That was my one and only big plan in life. And I was going to be absolutely set once I became an anesthesiologist, became an attending. But at some point, I began to have that itch to create and build something else. I mean, I had passions outside of medicine. Many of you who are listening to this, you have passions outside of medicine. Some of them are hobbies, and that's cool. Some of you want to take those hobbies and create a business out of it. And when does it create a business? When those hobbies actually make money. Now, I know tons of physicians who have done this. From anything from baking cookies to creating plush toys to creating dinnerware to creating apps. You name it, physicians have done it. They've created businesses small and large. And I had this age myself that I need to scratch. And it started with creating a business called Curbside, which is a real estate business which connects physicians to realtors and lenders all over the country. When you want to buy your dream home, I think we all understand that desire, and it just came out of a need. I had difficulty buying my own home. So I decided to create that business. I was excited to do it and try something different. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had that drive. Of course it was a build that on top of my passion. But of course I would love to have created income on top of it that would either supplement replace my clinical income. But let's face it, it's not like we have a ton of time when we're practicing, when we're building families. Where do we find the time and energy to to start these things? Hey everyone, I have a quick question for you. Are you looking for a secure and reliable long term investment strategy? Meet Eckerd Enterprises. It's a family owned and operated firm with over 35 years of experience specializing in US energy and alternative investments. Here at Passive Income MD, you often hear me talk about the need to diversify. One of the safest investment strategies available today are mineral rights. And with Eckerd Enterprises, you can diversify your portfolio. Their team is committed to helping private investors like you and me identify and develop successful diversified portfolios with an average return on investment of over 24% across their portfolios. The Eckerd team is dedicated to helping you build and protect your wealth through long term passive income. All of this while minimizing the risks associated with traditional investments. So check out Eckerd Enterprises if you want that great investment experience, go to eckerd enterprises.com again that's eckerdenterprises.com thanks. And back to the show. But at the end of the day, when you're finished, call a long clinic day. There's emotional exhaustion, physical exhaustion as well. So can you actually do both? Can you balance and also thrive when it comes to your career as a physician as well as an entrepreneur? Now here's the thing. I know a lot of doctors believe that they're not good business people. But I find that to be totally not the case. That some sort of story that somebody planted somewhere in there that really keeps us trapped in that mindset. Why couldn't we be great entrepreneurs? We're ambitious, we're intelligent, we're creative. We know how to learn, we know how to adapt. It's just a matter of focus. If anything, I find that physicians are the best position to start businesses. For the most part, you have stable incomes. We all know that things have changed today in today's environment of medicine, where job security isn't quite what it used to be. However, if you're flexible enough, you can find a job and you create that relatively stable income and that gives you a safety net, allowing you to take some risks out there, like starting businesses. Oftentimes when you hear of entrepreneurial stories, you hear people, you know, borrowing money like crazy, taking all the last change in their pocket to start their businesses, taking a huge risk. Physicians don't really need to do that. We've got the incomes to support these other things. We don't need to jeopardize our financial futures, worry about putting food on the table for our kids, and start something new. In fact, here's a statistic. According to Medscape, this was released in October 2023, about 39% of physicians, according to their survey, said they're working on a side gig. That's almost 40% of physicians. And here's a breakdown of that. In their 30s, which is people at the beginning of the medical training, 34% said they have some sort of side hustle side gig. It also said physicians in their 60s, so near the end of their career, 37% have a side hustle. To me, this blew my mind when I started talking about side hustles and side gigs maybe six or seven years ago. It seemed like it was kind of a foreign concept to a lot of people out there. Fast forward to today with this survey. To have at least one third of physicians say they're working on something else. That excites me. That at least makes me feel like what we're doing with the leverage and growth summit and getting the word out there is making and having some sort of impact out there in our community. By the way, if you love stories of physicians and their side hustles and their entrepreneurial ventures, make sure to be part of the leverage and growth Summit that's happening on February 26th through March 1st. Just had to put a quick plug for that. It's an absolutely free summit. Look out for it. However you communicate with us, whether it's on our newsletter, on our Facebook groups, or on social media, it's gonna be a ton of fun. So make sure you're there. All of this is to show that we have that potential. So the question becomes, how do we juggle all that? Obviously, we don't want our side hustles to impact our main day job, especially ones that are absolutely critical. Where you're dealing with critical situations. You want that to be your focus while you're there. You want to do the best job you can on that side of your life. However, if you do a quick inventory of your time, I believe that you can find that there are gaps there are holes where there's wasted time or underutilized time for you to think about these other ventures. Here's where I found that time on the way to work in the car, waking up an hour earlier to work on some of my ventures, staying up a little bit later after the kids are bed and working on it on a night of call. Sometimes when there's dead time and not much is happening when I'm stuck in traffic. This doesn't have to be your main gig, so you can give it however time you want and energy. You can also decide how much money you want to put into it. I found that it was possible to do both. In fact, it was fun to do both Hi everyone. I'm super excited to tell you about PIMDCON, the Physician Real Estate and Entrepreneurship Conference happening on September 26th through 28th this year. 2024. As always, we're bringing together some of the smartest minds in real estate, investing and entrepreneurship live to speak at the event. Now I've been to a ton of other conferences, but what really sets this conference apart from other conferences and this is totally intentional. It goes way beyond the speakers. It's being part of the community that's created at our live events. We have different tracks focused on real estate, investing or entrepreneurship so you can customize your experience and focus on what matters to you the most. We have a ton of expert speakers, we have panelists, we have workshops and masterminds that will help you gain the knowledge and confidence you need to take your next step towards achieving financial success and independence way beyond medicine. And it's not just about the information you're going to learn from the speakers. It's about the conversations you're going to have with other attendees that I know will spark new ideas and inspire you to take action. Every single year, people leave our conference pidcon and they launch their real estate investing careers while others grow their portfolio or expand their entrepreneurial ventures in really incredible ways, even in ways that none of us would have imagined. So this year will be no different as you leverage your big ideas to expand your vision for what's possible. You just have to show up. We're so excited to announce a new location for our annual event. We're doing it different this year. We're also offering in person specials and tickets, especially if you're getting your tickets early. So join us in person this year in Dallas, Texas, the middle of the country so everyone can make it on September 26th through 28th. Just so you know, there's a virtual Option for those who can't join live. So don't miss out on this opportunity to connect with a community of like minded individuals and gain practical skills and knowledge to help achieve your financial goals. I'm excited to see you there. Click the link below to learn more. I'll see you there. The other thing I learned is that you don't have to do it all by yourself. One of the best things I did was find a partner for that business. Someone who actually had more time, energy and effort to put towards it. I found somebody who was interested in the same thing that I was interested, had some part time hours to give towards this and brought them on as essentially a partner. I was able to delegate tasks, I was able to separate responsibilities, I was able to take whatever vision I had and have them essentially make it materialize, operate it. It's funny, the person I found actually was the wife of one of my co residents. So you never know who's in your network and she was able to help me build the business while I was also working my clinical career and also helping to grow that business as well. Now with technology involved, there's so many ways to leverage that. Whether it's from AI to even online using virtual assistants, there's ways to leverage your impact in a tremendous way. Today it's not about again working harder, it's about working smarter. You can reach capture time by being more efficient so that you can pursue these business ventures. And many of us have in mind that we need to now have two full time gigs. I would really caution against that. You're going to burn yourself out. Perhaps think about it a little bit like I did, which is I had my main clinical career, I had my business ventures that I started doing on the side as much time as I could give it. And also I found a partner to leverage my time and energy and effort. And as that started to grow and the income started to grow, I started to give up some of my clinical time and I was able to find this really sustainable place that not only fulfilled me, but also kept me at the income that I need to support my lifestyle. Which is I think the thing that most of us are concerned about at the end of the day. So just so you know, it's not static, it evolves over time and if this venture doesn't do well, it's okay. You have your clinical career to fall back on and the income there. So I believe that physicians are some of the best positioned to be able to do these things. We can mitigate risk in a significant way because of our income and what we're able to do on our physician side, especially when we're young and we have the Runway. And the upside is so huge. I always tell people who are thinking about it, why not give it a shot? What have you got to lose? The biggest thing that I try to avoid, and I ask people to avoid, is that concept of regret. At the end of our lives, regret usually comes from not the things that we've done and tried, it's from the things that we haven't done that we never got to try or never did try. That's where regret comes in. And I'm really trying to avoid that. And I'm thinking you are as well. So I'd love to hear from you. What are some tips that you have for managing your clinical career and your entrepreneurial ventures and how do you make that all work? By the way, if this brings value to you in any way, I would highly appreciate if you left a review for us or shared this with a friend. It means a lot to us and the show and what we're trying to build here. Until next week, have an amazing week. Take care and let's talk again soon. Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app you're listening to us in. And if you haven't already, make sure to hit subscribe. Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. Learn more at our website, passive incomemd.com. thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.