#241 Creating a Sustainable Financial Future for Doctors

Hey, everyone. I'm excited to talk today with Austin Dean. He's the founder and CEO of Waystone Advisors. We're going to find out all about him, his company, his business, and we're going to talk about how he approaches finances and real estate and kind of the market. All of these things probably different from some of your traditional advisors out there. Just want to tell you a little bit about Waystone Advisors. I'm going to go ahead and read this. They help clients design wealth strategies that provide flexibility and control as they pursue their most important goals. We know that's really, really important. And by going bey traditional investing, this firm, Waystone Advisors, they customize their wealth building strategies using a blend of academically tested research and unique financial situations. We're going to talk about all of these things today which ultimately empowers their clients to achieve financial success. I'm excited to talk to Austin today. Austin, how you doing?

Doing great. It's good to be here. I've been looking forward to this for a while. Peter. Yeah.

You and I last saw each other at pimdcon. It was great to have you there and to meet you in person. And if you remember, you were handed out a lot of those, a lot of those cards so that people could go eat at happy hour there. And so I know people loved you while you were there. How was your experience there at pimdcon?

Oh, it was a blast. It's nice having worked with doctors for a while, being able to meet some, you know, some clients in person that we haven't had a chance to meet as well as just be a part of the community of doctors. Look, you know, getting together, trying to think about how do we think about wealth building and entrepreneurship differently than we did before and then, you know, being able to do it over some food and drinks and just get to know people more on a relational basis is, I mean, really something that we as a company enjoy doing. Being able to build relationships and not just, you know, have transactional conversations. So.

Oh, I love that. And you know, I love seeing your energy there and just connecting with you in person. Tell us a little bit more about you as a person right now. I mean, again, tell us a little bit more about your family and kind of where you live and where you're situated.

Yeah, I live in, live in Washington state. It's a little east of Seattle in Redmond. Been married, it'll be 13 years on December 10th. So we're coming up pretty quickly. We have four kids, ages 10, 8, 6 and 5 and boy, girl, Boy, girl. So it's a busy household. Still debating do we get into sports or not? Because four kids is a lot.

Yeah, I mean 10, eight, six and five, you're right in the thick of it. I think a lot of people probably listening to this can already relate to what you're going through. I mean, I have an 11 and 8 year old myself, so I totally get where you're at right now. Well, I have a question for you. Just because I always wondered this about financial advisors. Is this something that you wanted to do while you were growing up? How did you end up getting into.

The space and field growing up? I had no idea this was a job. Like my parents. I believe they had a financial advisor for parts of their marriage, but they, they never talked to me about it. I mean my dad did always joke with me about, he's like, I think you have your first dollar you ever made. I had no idea what financial advising was until college. I mean growing up I was entrepreneurial. You know, it's that kid who did the mowing the lawn. Started my own companies, worked several jobs to pay through college. But I didn't realize that I even liked business until econ class. I was actually, you know, in high school. Love sports, really enjoyed anatomy, physiology, becoming a doctor of physical therapy, but had took a micro econ class, fell in love with it, and then happened to stumble into an internship my junior year of college. So spent two years working with an independent financial planner, doing everything other than onboarding clients, so learning all of it and really fell in love with the ability to create my own business that had meaningful impact and had long term relationships with people. That was it. I was 21 and it was like, let's go, let's figure this thing out. And 13 years later, with clients, nearly 40 states, it's been, it's been an adventure.

I mean that's wild. I mean how did you even know how to even start and build something like that? Or is that something you just had to learn on the fly?

I would argue that a lot of it was learning it on the fly. I mean up to like there's a reason I have four designations. I'm a certified financial planner. I was trying to get as much information as I possibly could. I think it helps that naturally, like I have an understanding of, with long term relationships, you have to build relationships that are going to grow together. So for those who are, you know, part of like the semi retired group and those kinds of places is, you know, I've for over a decade now had relationships with Dan Peck and Movement Mortgage and Tyler Curley and PATH Insurance. And, and we've been building and helping people create financial independence in different ways for a long time.

You mentioned four designations. Like I'm not even familiar with all the designations in that space. Like what, what are they? Because people can't see right now. They may not when they're hearing this, but when I'm looking at you on video, you got a bunch of these like diplomas on your wall or just certifications back there. So, so what are these? And so we can just understand what they are.

I'm a cfp, which is, you know, Certified Financial Planner. I'm a chfc, which is Chartered Financial Consultant. I'm a clu, which is Charter Underwriter and also an RICP, which is Retirement Income Certified Professional. So those cover messy. The CHFC is actually the most comprehensive for the most part of everything from the basics of planning to insurance and entrepreneurship and how does market based investments and some retirement planning as you naturally the clu, the Chartered Life Underwriter. That's going to give you a better idea of how does insurance actually play into a financial plan. Retirement income planning. It's an interesting one seeing as we'll talk about this more later I imagine but not a, not a huge advocate of traditional retirement planning. But I loved the philosophies that came around. Like it talks a lot about what's the appropriate way to understand diversification and blended uncorrelated assets and think about insurance differently. And then I think of the one that if people have looked into the certified financial planners a good job of marketing themselves so people are looking for a cfp. I have a lot of knowledge and that knowledge of traditional planning is, I mean really gave me the lens to be able to decide is this, is this how I want to do planning?

Right. I mean I think that's a, that that's really interesting how you mentioned some of those things because a lot of people in our community there's always a question of whether a financial planner makes sense or not. There's always, you know, there's other blogs out there and that kind of talk about doing your own planning yourself, be your own financial advisor. Do you need one? Do you not there are fees involved, do you absolutely get benefit from that? And so there's always been this question in our community whether a financial advisor makes a lot of sense. And even for myself personally just hearing all of the different ways to approach finances, hear approach money and medicine and all of these things, sometimes a traditional approach isn't appealing to a lot of people because it feels like, hey, you're going to put your money into some of these accounts and hopefully someday when you're 60, 65, you'll be able to pull money out and be ready to go and. But I know that for a lot of in our community, the reason they try to pursue a lot of these other income streams is because they want to start living their life now. I mean, they want to start making, you know, getting benefit from a lot of these other income streams and investments now. So in thinking through that stuff, you mentioned a lot of stuff that isn't necessarily traditional that you do, and you focus on financial independence and freedom and even passive income. Those aren't necessarily terms that are foreign to you. Can you explain kind of how you think about all of that put together?

Yeah. Oh, man. All the things you're saying really resonate with me. And I think that's a lot of why we got connected and we're working with a lot of the same communities, because as I was referencing earlier when I got into the business and I got those designations and was, you know, having mentors who talked about more traditional planning. I mean, I was my early 20s, so I was very quickly realizing that all the things that I was taught, the more common wisdom to tell people, you max fund your retirement accounts and defer those taxes, hope taxes go down in the future, hope you enough in the market when you're 60, 65. I was like, man, even if that was the best thing, I don't want to wait 40, 45 years to feel like I can actually enjoy the good habits that I have of saving money. So that's where I mean, same same thing I started looking into how do the most wealthy think about money differently? How do we create financial independence and passive income streams? And what I found is that the wealthiest individuals, they don't, you know, they don't put most of their money in retirement accounts. They build businesses, they buy real estate, they invest in assets outside of retirement accounts that are more flexible, that are leverageable. They learn how to have a healthy relationship with debt as a tool instead of something that's morally good or bad. And that really, for me was permission to say, okay, how do we dive into and understand these things better and start having a more flexible understanding of how financial independence works and how building money works. I mean, something that I think you alluded to earlier that I love is the common wisdom is, let's build towards retirement. And that idea isn't bad, but I Tend to prefer financial independence as this idea of are we building wealth in ways that create more flexibility, that give me the ability to achieve and enjoy the life I want now and not having to wait till later to escape from a life that I didn't.

Now how are you able to learn about those things? Because again, again, most financial advisors that I come across are, they kind of have this like similar path and they kind of like sometimes they're interchangeable. I talked to one versus another. It's pretty much the same strategy. Like how did you actually start learning about some of these concepts around investing, real estate, building businesses when a lot of other people weren't able to learn.

That I do intentionally find myself into, you know, join into the right groups. One of our core values as a company is that we are relentlessly unsatisfied, like we're never going to assume, hey, we found it and this is the thing. So as you can imagine, we're a small enough company that'll of our core values are just a reflection of who I, who I've been for a long time. And we've surrounded myself with team that aligns with those as well. So that's where I started going to real estate meetup groups. I started getting clients who were doing single family real estate properties and saying, hey, I want an advisor who can help me do more of this real estate thing and less of that retirement thing. And that was all I needed to say, okay, let's start looking into it. So I started diving into, you know, how does real estate actually work? And you know, everything from what did Warren Buffett do to the Rockefellers to you know, Walt Disney? And I mean, you know, and I mean reading, reading books voraciously. We end up sponsoring a handful of real estate conventions as well. Got to meet, meet and be a part of investors who are doing real estate and wanted to do more of that. And I mean as you know, the, the more you focus on something, the more the information and the people that are doing those things come, you know, they come to you. And that, that gave me the people that knew the paths that I was trying to try to go down. And I've been able to, in my unique place, consolidate a lot of the information of people that have done it ahead of me. And I like to think we've become a hub of, you know, a hub of non traditional financial planning advice.

Finding financial advisor who truly understands real estate and financial independence. It can be a challenge. Many advisors that I talk to, they lack the knowledge or resources to integrate non traditional investments into your financial plan. Now Waystone Advisors, they stand out because they help combine real estate, alternative investments and intentional wealth Design. Founder Austin Dean and the Waystone team, they developed a flexible, cash flow focused approach to financial planning that allows you to enjoy life now while building wealth. And you know, I love that. Now with clients all across the country, they help investors bridge traditional and non traditional investments, grow wealth creatively, leave an intentional legacy, and access a network focused on financial independence. So if you're ready to rethink wealth building, schedule a complimentary consultation@waystoneadvisors.com, w a y s t o n e advisors.com now financial independence. Trust me, it might be closer than you think. Quick disclosure. Waystone Advisors, llc, LLC is a registered investment advisor. Advisory services are offered only to clients or prospective clients where Waystone and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Now back to the show. Again, not to generalize too much, but when I start talking traditionally to financial advisors, when we start going down the path of talking about real estate, I kind of know where it's going to go, which is usually maybe a caution against it or hey, maybe you could allocate a small, little, tiny piece of sliver of your portfolio. But for me personally, obviously people know that I kind of flip the script where the majority of my portfolio is in real estate or in investments. Majority of my net worth is in real estate or in businesses. And so it's kind of flipped from that. But when you and I talked to start talking, it was kind of like you were speaking my same language. And I think that's why we got along so well when it came to that. Like when you talk to clients about how to integrate if their desire say it's hey, I want to get a little real estate under my portfolio. I want to get some passive income from there. Like how do you start advising them in terms of helping them get down that path?

Yeah. So process wise, I'm a big fan of telling clients, hey, we need to have a fully, fully formed understanding of what are your goals and where you're trying to go. For us to be able to know what's the right next step. Because I mean, real estate in particular, it's a big, you know, it's a big asset. There's a lot of different ways to get into real estate. Whether it's, you know, buying your own single families, whether it's syndications, private lending. You hear a lot about short term rentals, you know, oil and gas. There's so many different ways to do it. And if we don't have a well formed understanding of what are we trying to do here, we might not step into it the right way. So having that financial planning background, but also being a real estate investor myself, having my team be real estate investors, as much as they're able to taking those concepts, saying, hey, we want to have different assets, we want to have liquidity, we want leverageability, we want to have the right team around us. And if we have the right team, and then we also say, hey, our goals are X, we're then going to be able to say, well, we should look into this type of real estate or this type of alternative. I mean, as you know better, you know, as much as anybody else, it's somebody who wants to have cash flow for financial flexibility, is going to, you know, need to invest dramatically different than somebody who doesn't need income and is looking for tax benefits or long term appreciation. So we want to, we want to come alongside somebody, say, let's define your goals and let's walk you through what, what the best options are given, where you want to want your money to take you.

So if I hear you right, I think this is just great for everybody who is listening to this is really start with the end in mind is kind of what you're saying is like for a lot of us probably listening to this, we've kind of always followed this one path. We kind of knew what our path in medicine would look like. We knew the next step. We just go here, we just follow the path and then we would eventually hit the promised land, which was being a physician, attending a doctor, finishing our training. And after that there's no real path, clear path for. And so many of us kind of just go along every day trying to create our income. We do our thing, but we actually don't oftentimes think about what we actually want our lives to look like. We don't really design it, we aren't super intentional about it. And then we can reverse engineer from there. And that's. We talk a lot about that in our community. By the way, Austin, about reverse engineering your life, which is like, hey, what do I really want it to look like at the end of the day? Like in five years, how many shifts do I want to be working? Do I want to be working full time? Do I want to be working part time? Do I want to just do a couple less moonlighting shifts? Whatever it is, where do I want to be? Like, start with the end in mind and then you can reverse engineer it from there. And it sounds like you do that with a lot of the people that are part of your community, that are part, that you work with. I mean, would you say that any two plans for two people are exactly the same? Or are they kind of, or they kind of fit into different buckets? Like, what, what have you discovered, like, in just talking to so many people?

Yeah, I find that they're all going to be different. I mean, people that fall into that financial independence, passive income, wanting to have financial flexibility, there's naturally going to end up being very similar tools in terms of people are going to need to understand how to use, how to use leverage. I'm going to understand how real estate works and having a more flexible mindset around wealth building. But even in terms of how those are implemented and at what scale and time is going to be very different. The doctor that comes to us, we have a couple that are no kids, they're in the early 30s, they're crushing it, starting a business and doing medical stuff. And how we designed that, where their money is going and then being able to leverage it from there is different because they don't necessarily need the income right now. It's very different than the doctors that come to us in their mid, you know, mid-50s or, or later and saying, hey, I'm burnt out, I can't do this anymore. I need cash flow as quick as possible. So being able to say, okay, let's design and tweak what you're doing to exactly what you need the most is, is different, even if the tools often look similar.

And since I have you here, like, I just want to ask your advice. Like, the market's a little crazy in real estate right now. Stock market are, are obviously doing extremely well. You know, there's, there's some uncertainty coming into the market right now with stuff happening globally. But for, so for somebody coming to you right now and they say, hey, what should I be investing in? Is this the right time to invest? Should I be on the sideline? Should I go for it? Like, I'm sure people ask you that all the time. Like, what's your advice for them?

Yeah, my advice is I tend to believe that anytime is a good time to invest. But the bigger question, kind of what we were alluding to earlier is how and in what way? So going back to that idea of if we've defined our most important goals, we can use those as a filter to navigate what our investment decisions are, regardless of what the environment looks like. I mean, you can Find any economic prognosticator that's going to say the market's going to go up, it's going to go down, interest rates are going to go up, inflation is going to go down. You can find what you want to hear. But if you know where you're wanting to go and you surround yourself with the right team, there's always going to be investment opportunities in any season.

I mean, how do people find a lot of these investment opportunities in your world?

Oh man. I mean we, we certainly have the ability to be a hub of a lot of those just because we're a part of so many different real estate groups and real estate investors. We get, we get deals that come to us and we can dial those in. I say naturally, you know, we have people that are in groups like yours and semi retired MD and we work with a lot of, you know, pilots as well and tech employees that are trying to, you know, be a part of groups or they're bringing investments. So I'd say being a part of those other groups and then also for us, because we have clients in all those spaces, they bring the best ones to us. So having a team and a community that are trying to go the same direction as you are is going to get you in front of the kinds of deals that are going to get you where you want to go.

I think that's such great advice. Again, I think it is all about connection and network and community to figure out, you know, what are different opportunities out there and then maybe what some of the best opportunities are. And you know, if you're not connected to a community, definitely find other people who are like minded or at least thinking some of the similar things with some similar goals and see what they're doing and then, and then go from there. I mean if somebody's brand new then to some of this stuff, especially when it comes to real estate investing, I get a lot of people in our community. Like what do you tell people in terms of, like what are some of the advantages, first steps for them as they get started on this journey? Like what would really help them out?

I would say learn. I mean selfishly I'd say, you know, come alongside us, build a financial plan to find your goals first and know what your options are and how that is and like what you're able to do there. Working with, with doctors for long enough and perhaps you can validate this. But I've, I've found that a lot of doctors wait until they're feeling burnt out and then they stick their money into an investment that they're hoping will be a. I hope this works out, but not necessarily with having the right team or people being able to vet it. And those things don't always work out and they find themselves oftentimes in a place that's worse than it was before. So that's where I really encourage somebody. Have the right team around you, be willing to be patient and make sure that you have an understanding of what your goals are and what are the potential options for funding that. Not too. Even further. But I mean, one of the things that we help clients with all the time is they come, they want to get into a real estate deal, they're planning on liquidating all their stocks or other assets when there are oftentimes options for leveraging it and keeping your money working in a couple places at once instead of having it do one thing. Know your options, know your goals, have. Have a team around you that can. That can help you make the right decisions.

Awesome. I think that's great advice for everyone listening to this. So if people want to connect with you in some way, like, what's a great place or a great way for people to do that.

Yeah, I see people want to reach out. Certainly you can go to our website, waystoneadvisors.com you can also email us directly at infoaystoneadvisors. My team manages that. And if somebody reaches out and says, hey, I'd love to have a complimentary consultation with, with your team, I mean, we're going to follow up within 48 hours and, and figure out what's the best step, next step, and how do we help start, you know, the process of discovering if we'd be a good partner for your financial journey.

Awesome. Well, yeah, if people are interested, just go ahead and reach out to Austin. He's been a friend and been part of our community for a while, and I just love picking his brain when it comes to different types of investments, especially alternative investments. And I think a lot of times with advisors, you're not able to do that. So I love talking about those different alternative investments. What they call alternative, like real estate, not only stocks, but, you know, oil and gas, all of these different things that are out there. So I love doing that. So I recommend people interested just come, just, just go reach out to Austin. And so I'm just, just curious about you, like, what are you excited for for the next. I mean, we're, we're recording this near the end of the year, so till the end of the year, like, what excites you what gets you excited in your life and, and what are you looking forward to?

Oh, man, so many things. So some fun stuff, even. In the last few weeks since we saw each other at Pendycon, I've hired two new advisors, two new staff. We've integrated into a handful of other groups that are very similar to what you're doing that are looking for a team that can help them make the right financial decisions, that are more financial independence focused. So continue to expand our team, continuing to have the ability to impact more people. I mean, we're at almost 40 states and I'm really hoping the next couple years to get all 50 for clients that we work with. And then as a business owner, I mean, I love being able to empower clients, but also empower our power, our team. I am on a personal level, you mentioned alternatives, like I'm trying out a few different oil and gas investments. I'm exploring a micro lending company and I'm hoping to be able to bring some of those in house to be able to offer to our clients, you know, in the next year, in the next calendar year as we've been, you know, if we're able to vet them and feel comfortable with, with the fit for clients and our ability to bring it to them with the right research and data. So there's a, you know, a lot, a lot of good things to be excited about.

Awesome. Well, it's always great talking to you. You're super optimistic always. And we always bring the energy. And again, it was great connecting with you in person at pmdcon. I'm sure we're gonna get to see each other again soon here. So thanks for the time. Thanks for the advice. I hope people got a lot out of this. I know they did. I'm excited even for the next time when we talk, we can dive maybe even to some of these, dive deeper into some of these strategies. So looking forward to it. Thanks, Austin. Thanks for your time.

Thanks, Peter. Thanks for having me.

Take care. Talk 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, passiveincomemd.com thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.