#248 From Reality TV Star to Chief Medical Officer
27 Jan 2025 · 35 min
Dr. Will Kirby went from Big Brother to dermatology residency to Chief Medical Officer at Laserway. He built aesthetic clinics, appeared on The Book of Boba Fett, and shares how physicians can create nonclinical income streams without abandoning medicine.
Questions this episode answers
January 27, 2025
81 clinics in 13 states
Chapters
Hey everyone, hope you've had another amazing week. I know you're gonna enjoy this episode. It's with my good friend Dr. Will Kirby. Just a dynamic, fun physician who's had an amazing journey from being a reality star to becoming the chief medical officer of an amazing company. I know you're gonna learn a lot from it and enjoy the story along the way. 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. He's a board certified dermatologist. He's known as an expert in the field of aesthetic dermatology. He provides a ton of education in that space. He's also the chief medical officer for the nation's leader in aesthetic dermatology. They're called Laserway. They he supervises 81 clinics in 13 states. He's also prolific writer. He's the health and beauty reporter for Life and Style magazine and he is part of the editorial advisory board for a bunch of different journals. Journal Dermatology, Times, A Dermatologist, and the Journal of Clinical and Aesthetic Dermatology. And but what he's really known for, in my opinion, he's an expert in building a brand as a physician. He's a sought after national speaker. He's been a media ambassador for large companies like Dove, Old Spice, Neutrogena, all those good companies. And he's also been featured on numerous TV shows including Big Brother, where a lot of people might know him from. And then even more recently, he's been on the book of Boba Fett, if you can find him there. My kids got a kick out of that. Will, how you doing?
Peter Kim, I've known you for 10 years now. Can you believe it? It's been a fast decade.
Holy gal, dude. I mean, things have changed. So. I mean, you constantly evolve. So many cool things are happening. And my hope is during this interview we get to just touch on some of those things and we find out how you came to be where you're at today. Will, it's just awesome to spend time with you. Can you hopefully I did okay on the bio, but do you mind just maybe sharing a little bit more about some of the things that you're involved in today.
Yeah, well, you know what? I think physicians really pride themselves on talking about their credentials. And for me, I think the least interesting thing about me is my accomplishments. I think what's much more exciting about me personally is my failures Because Peter Kim was not trying to interview me when I worked at Del Taco in Tallahassee, Florida on Appalachia Parkway in 1991. So I've had some of the worst jobs in the world. I've worked for my alcoholic step uncle's construction company. I worked at a fish store. You guys don't even know what a fish store is. I've worked at Baskin Robbins. I worked at Circus World that went bankrupt and turned into KB Toys, that went bankrupt and then we were bought by Toys R Us and then I was fired. So I have had terrible, terrible, terrible failures in my lifetime. And those have led me to kind of be just indestructible because now I don't really care what happens to me because nothing can be worse than all of the failures I've had. And as a result, I can go into any situation. I feel really confident that I'm going to do a good job. So super excited to be here. You said this is a 20 to 25 minute interview. I think that's a major mistake because I'll talk for six hours and if you turn the camera off, I'll just keep talking to myself. So, but, but very seriously, I'm the, the most transparent physician you'll ever meet. Happy to answer any questions you have.
Well, I mean, right now you got so many things going on. Let's go back in your past, let's go back there. Those days when you said you were involved in all these different. Was being in medicine always a career path for you? Was that something you always strive for early on?
You know, like a lot of people in my medical school class, they had parents who were physicians. You yourself, your dad's a physician. People really kind of wanted to get into medicine and I sort of fell into it backwards. Always loved science, always loved nature and, and found that that was sort of my organic fit from a academic standpoint. And so in college I didn't even decide I wanted to go to medical school until I was a senior. Then I had to scramble. My grades weren't great, but they were good enough to get into do school. And I got into a, I got into a couple schools and I didn't want to go there. So I put off a year. And then because I wanted to live in South Florida, I wanted to live where it was warm. So I went to Nova Southeast University. Had a phenomenal experience. It's an incredible institution, like most beautiful campus you've ever seen in your life. But I didn't know what I wanted to do still. And so I went into radiation oncology. I matched for radiation oncology. And, and I said, radiation oncology is really morbid. And at the last second, I didn't show up to residency. Literally, I didn't. Just didn't go. And all of my colleagues were like, this is insane. You shouldn't do this. And, and my friends and all my peers, you know, they're all interns, medical students, residents. And they're like, what are you going to do with your life? And I said, I'm going to go on reality tv. And that's what I did. I went on reality. I just didn't go to residency. I dropped out. Like, didn't even show up two weeks before. And instead I applied to go on Survivor and CBS brought me in for an interview and they put me on Big Brother instead.
I mean, that's crazy. Okay, so next thing you know, you find yourself on Big Brother instead of going to residency. Can you tell people, in case they don't know how that went, let us know how the whole brother experience went.
And I realize that's insane for you all listening to me, physicians out there. I know you're saying, I know you guys are thinking, which is like we, we all put so much effort into our undergrad scores and our MCAT and our medical school scores and our clerkships and our internships and, and then just to give all that up. And I think, what for me, no one had ever taught me about the types of wealth you can have in life. There's really six or eight types of wealth. You can have love wealth. You can have money wealth. You can have career slash success wealth. You can have fun wealth. There's all these different little pieces of this pie where you can have put your wealth. And I didn't understand that. No one had explained that simple concept to me. So my daughter, she's in third grade right now. She's nine years old. And they, she, and she is a recorder. You know what a recorder is, right? Like the plastic flute. So everyone's at school and what, what are we teaching kids to play? Hot Cross Buns. Right? So my nine year old plays Hot Cross Buns and I love her to death. I would kill or die for her. But I don't want to hear Hot Cross Buns again. But why are we teaching children Hot Cross buns instead of sitting down and explaining to them? You have to choose your own path in life and you have to decide what, where you're going to compartmentalize and what areas you want to Put your time, effort, energy and emotion into what type of wealth. So I was burned out at a very, very early age. I didn't want to go into radiation oncology because I had. Putting all. I'd been putting all of my effort into career wealth instead of mental health wealth or love wealth or, you know, just other, other buckets. Anyway, I went on Big Brother. For those of you who don't know, it's a terrible show. I would never. I don't watch the show. I wouldn't recommend you ever go on the show, but it was actually 21 years ago that I went on the show and, and I won $500,000. I was the winner of the show. And that's a lot of money today. But it was a massive amount of money. In, in 2001, $500,000 was just a massive amount of money. So I went from being an obscure, not even obscure, just an unknown Internet with no real support from my family, friends or colleagues. And all of a sudden I had a type of wealth called fame and I had a type of wealth called actual money. So I went from having no, you know, emotional wealth whatsoever into having these two types of wealth. And that in many ways kickstarted my career. But it also began an emotional quest because I still wasn't satisfied. I really was very, very uncomfortable with the fame aspect and, you know, the money. I paid off my medical school debts, but it disappeared really, really quickly because I. I owed a lot. I found myself in LA in 2001 with a little bit of fame now, a little bit of money and nothing else going on. So it was a really kind of terrifying time in a way. Yeah.
I mean, I want to know what happened at that point, because at some point I know that your career, like, knowing you now, it veered back into medicine. But how did that all come about then? I mean, spend like you spent some time in la, you had your fun. Um, what were you doing at that time? Were you. I know that you might have gone into some businesses. Can you tell people about that? And then ultimately how that all kind of veered back into medicine.
Yeah. So I, again, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but the one. I was born without the ability to be embarrassed. Like, nothing embarrasses me. So people always say humble yourself or do jobs that, that you don't, you know, that that are below you. And it's like that was never a concern of mine. I. I just don't care what people think about me, good or bad. So I started, I Started working in the restaurant industry and I started investing into some restaurants and. And they were really successful temporarily. Like with restaurants, often they burn really hot and bright and then they burn out pretty quickly. So this is going to date me. But 20 years ago, I invested in Dolce when it was a really hot restaurant in Geisha House, when it was a hot restaurant in LA do when it was a really hot club. And I would work at them too, you know, like just kind of whatever needed to be done. I would work from the business aspect or just operations. But again, that was pretty unsatisfying as you might imagine. It was a pretty chaotic life. I'm not very smart. Peter Kim. So I started working in reality tv. So I worked for Next Entertainment, which makes the Bachelor. And we created a show called Rich Guy or Poor Guy. And I don't want to bore you with the details, but it got.
Sounds like one of my favorite books, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So I like it already concept, except.
Lots of dating and lots of scandalous nudity. But anyway, it bombed. ABC pulled it off the air. So we created a show called the Will where. This sounds crazy, but it was an actual show that got made where somebody has a pretty large estate and they're going to die and they have to pass it on to their family. Again, ratings were terrible. It got a bombed. I could go on and on and on. I got a call from Fox network and they wanted me to audition for a show like Star Search to be the host of it, the co host of it. And I said, star. And my agent was like, I think you should do it. And I said, this sounds like a terrible idea. Like, why would I want to co host the Star Search show? So I turned that down. And that's called American Idol. So anyway, I've had a lot of, like, major, like, missteps and like, failures in my career. So I said, you know what? I really like esthetics. Not dermatology, but I really like esthetics. And the only way to get into aesthetics was to go into dermatology residency. So I just started the process over. I started. I went back in applying as a very, you know, a much older resident than the other residents. Not that much older, but five or six years older. And I applied to residencies all over the country and I got a residency spot in Southern California. So it was kind of a miracle. And I went. And it was an unfunded spot, so I went in and I was the only unfunded resident and powered through it. And after three years Finished that and became a board.
What does that mean? Unfunded resident. For those who don't know, residencies are.
Typically funded through the government. They pretend like they're funded through academic institutions, but they're. The money comes from Medicare and Medicaid, and it goes to large hospitals. And dermatology residencies are. They really have nothing to do with hospitals. So almost every single medical specialty in the entire universe is predicated on a relationship with a larger health care organization, typically a large teaching hospital. And dermatology residencies are often, but not always, so sometimes in the dermatological world, there will be a program will be funded for three spots or four spots, and they'll fill them, but they'll have a spot that goes unfilled because it's unfunded. And that means that it exists. And if the faculty wants to teach, they can, but there isn't money to pay the resident to do it. So I took one of those spots. So they're very, very rare and they're few and far between, but for me, it worked out perfectly. And luckily I had the restaurants at the time to support me financially. So I went in as an. As a resident, literally, you know, working as a resident for. For free, which, again, was a. Another decision where it was very unconventional, like, you haven't even ever heard of those spots. But they do exist, and luckily I got one and it worked out all right. So you. You said you, like, go to anesthesiology residency, but you don't get paid. You'd be like, what are you talking about? I'm not gonna.
There's no way I do that. Yeah, absolutely no way.
Every year there's a couple of them, and they exist, and the programs want to fill them because they get a free worker.
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I've only had two panic attacks in my entire life. Okay. One of them, two weeks before the end of my residency I woke up in a sheer terror, sweating and I thought I was going to die because I realized I knew no dermatopathology. And a big portion of the boards, 20 to 30% of passionate board exam is dermatopathology and I knew none and so I started to panic and I went finished my residency and then I spent like a month doing hardcore dermatopathology studying just to cram to pass the boards. I started to panic because I just wasn't prepared for the board. So and again I knew I wanted to do aesthetics. I really didn't have interest in other aspects of dermatology. And dermatology is such a strange specialty because you can be a Mohs surgeon or you can do pediatric dermatology or you can do, you know, genodermatosis or you could, you know, there's just so many avenues. And all I wanted to do was aesthetics. I just felt like that's what I was best at. So passed the boards miraculously. I don't even remember what your question was. And then I, and then just talk about this history.
Because the thing is, I know about you is that when I first met you, you had another business as well, like in the aesthetics, but it had to do with like tattoo removal, lasers. And so I'm just wondering, trying to get the timeline of when that actually came to be.
25 minutes isn't going to be enough time when I'll try to cram this in again. Like, again, the. This is going to be very unconventional for the other doctors listening to this. But while I was a resident, I started a business on the weekends and I was doing laser tattoo removal, mainly because no one in the world knew how to do it. So I had authored some major publications, co authored textbook chapters on tattoo removal even as a resident. And I opened up a weekend clinic, started as a weekend clinic doing laser tattoo removal in Los Angeles as a, as a second year resident. And I was hiring all the other residents to work for me. And then we opened up five days a week. And then eventually by the time I finished residency, I had four laser clinics. And within a year or two after, I had 10 laser clinics. But I made a very, very bad error. And that was I was trying to grow too quickly without really the business acumen to be able to do it. So I took on board members who invested money and they were, some of them were very famous doctors and all of them were really well known business people, but they didn't see my vision. And they, and it just wasn't really a good fit. And we were constantly butting heads. They constantly were trying to tell me what to do. And I was beholden to them because they had invested a lot of money in the business. So for a couple years it. I just was extremely unhappy. And again, the pattern has repeated itself. Got in over my head, you know, wasn't really sure what I was doing and then had to learn how to swim in the deep end. So I went to them and I said, listen, you know, I'm really unhappy in this role, even though I'm the founder of this company. You know, a lot of things have to change or I'm going to leave. And they said to me, and I've told this story to you before, but they said to me, well, you're replaceable. And I said, I'm Replaceable. I said, I'm the founder of this company. I'm the best in the world at aesthetics. I'm replaceable. Who replaced me? So I resigned. And, and I, and I joined our biggest competitor. So I, I joined laserway, which was the smartest thing I've ever done in my entire life. When I joined, we had 22 clinics. We're opening number clinic number 82 tomorrow. My old company, Dr. Kadoff, we had 10 clinics. And after I resigned, they, they stayed in business for about two or three years and they subsequently went out of business. They went bankrupt without me. I took my five best employees from there and I took my five favorite clinics from there and absorbed those into Laserway. So Laserway is Now, we have 1200 employees. We're 97% female. We pride ourselves on diversity and inclusivity. We have, we're 37 female executives and we. It's just the greatest business that I've ever been part of. It's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. Just a really fun, young, hungry group of people that are, that are opening, that are really. Our legacy is going to be bringing aesthetic dermatology treatments to the masses. So minor injectables, minor laser treatments, lots of laser hair removal. We're just spreading it nationwide and making it accessible and affordable for everybody in the nation.
Okay, so your role in laserway, though, is a chief medical officer. For those who don't know what that is like, how did you stumble into that role? And what does that actually mean for people who are kind of looking at a similar type role?
When I joined at laserway, I was not the chief medical officer. There was doctors who were more senior than me. But I wanted to, you know, tell a story. And I had a vision and I kept telling that story over and over and over until people realized the power of that story. So I put a lot of going back to the earlier concept of the wealth. Where do you want to, where do you want to put your wealth? I put my wealth really into my own self being right, like into my own character. Like, I wanted to become this big dermatologist for this large company and I slowly willed it into place and manifested it and build it over time through education. So in my capacity as the chief medical officer, I write the, I do the technical writing for the policies, the procedures, the protocols, but again, that's education. And I do a lot of the vetting of the new devices and equipment and ways to improve existing services and products. But again, that's really research and education, I teach, and we record all that so we can send it to our allied healthcare professionals. Again, education. And then I'm also the de facto sort of face of the company, so I do a lot on social media. And again, that all comes down to this single word that I think is supremely important, which is education. So ultimately, as doctors, we're educators. And if you're educating, you're constantly in this cycle of educating. And not just your peers and not just, you know, your subordinates, but also your superiors and your colleagues will. Then things will really fall into place because you become an authority in the area of your specialization.
I mean, you spend a lot of time and energy branding yourself. And you've talked about that in different ways. You found yourself as like, you know, reporters for certain magazines. You've been on editorial boards. Obviously you're big on social media. You now all over TV and things like that.
Like, how important do you think it.
Is for doctors to, you know, focus on that or at least start thinking about how to brand themselves and create that for them, you know, either that brand or, you know, some sort of legacy for themselves to. To actually make it well in this space.
Yeah, I love that question because it's a really complex question. It's an onion. We have to peel off a couple layers here. The reason I did that is because I had to do it. So as you alluded to on the lone health and beauty reporter for Lights and Style magazine, but that started. They didn't just call me up and say, hey, do you want to be a reporter again? I had to manifest that. I had to. I had to make it come into the universe. And I'm not a spiritual person by any means, but, I mean, you can take nothing and build it into things. And that's what I did. So everyone who's listening, here's a little free tip. There's a website called Haro. Help a reporter out. H A R O.
So help.
It's a phenomenal free service. And trust me when I tell you I have nothing to plug here. It doesn't matter to me. But it's a phenomenal service. Three times a day that reporters from all over the world go to this website. They have to pay. The doctors don't. Or the experts, I should say don't. And they say, hey, I'm doing an article on Blank. Would an expert like to comment? I'm doing a television segment on Blank. Would an expert like to comment? And much like surfing or poker, you know, 99 of the time, you're not going to catch the wave 99 of the time. You're not going to win the hand. You have to know when to fold early. But if every single day you apply to these and it just takes a simple email message, eventually you'll get people who contact you, reporters who contact you. So it took a while, but I forged relationships with some of these reporters. I co authored articles with them for free, worked really hard, just practicing becoming a better writer, increasing my vocabulary, just really becoming good at what, you know, the, the written word. And then slowly that manifested over time, which with it again, the editors were then reaching out to me. They were like, hey, listen, our reporters really like you. You're kind of a reporter. Will you serve in this capacity? And once you've proven yourself and you're good at it and you have work samples, well, then, then you just become it. And Peter, people weren't letting me write articles. Like, people weren't quoting me in Elle magazine and in, you know, New Beauty and all these magazines I wanted to be part of. So I became a reporter for the magazines. I just cut out the middleman and I said, I'm going to do this myself. I'm really big into do it yourself. And I just did it myself. So I became, with no journalism experience whatsoever, I became, you know, a pretty significant writer within the beauty and aesthetic dermatology space. And if I can do it, you can do it. So it just depends on your area of expertise, your specific area that you're passionate about. You just figure out what it is. Go to Haro, go to your local newspaper, go to the big newspaper chains, go to the medical board, go everywhere and say, hey, I'd like to volunteer and be a writer for you. And when you do it over and over and over, you get really good at it. There's a, there's a writer that I really like. He wrote, he passed away and his name was Anders Ericsson. And if you're familiar with Malcolm Gladwell, Malcolm Gladwell kind of has pioneered the 10,000 hour rule. Well, he stole that from Anders Ericsson. And Malcolm Gladwell said, if you do something for 10,000 hours, you become an expert. And that's absolutely, unequivocally not true. What Anderson Ericsson proved is that it takes purposeful practice and feedback from experts to become that expert over that 10,000 hour period. So Malcolm Gladwell, I'm not saying he's a bad guy. I think he's a fascinating podcaster and writer, but he definitely didn't invent this concept. And he acknowledges that Honors Erickson came up with it. But it comes down to that simple phrase of purposeful practice. You have to ask for feedback from your peers. And so if you. Let's go back to this recorder, right? If my daughter plays Hot Cross Buns every single day, after 10,000 hours of playing it, she will still be terrible at Hot Cross Buns and I would still hate hearing it. But if she does it every day and a, the tutor, a music teacher, tells her how to improve, she will unequivocally get better. And that's what I had to do. And that's what you have to do too, which is, and there's a million examples. But for me, I think a great example is writing. I would write an article and I would ask the reporter, ask the editor for feedback. I'd say, look, I take no pride in authorship. How can I improve? How can I do a better job for you? And I did it over and over and over and over, and now the editors don't even check me. But it became I now. I learned how to write in sound bites for the, in different magazines, want different cadences and different vocabulary. And you kind of learn that over time. But you cannot do it on your own. You have to do something extremely uncomfortable and say, hey, I'm here, I'm vulnerable, I'm buck naked. Look at me. Let's find the weird looking moles and let's improve them. And so you have to go outside of your comfort zone and make sure that you're open to that level of feedback. And if you're not, maybe the timing is not right. But again, when you, when you rattle off my credentials, it's almost not fair because they look great and they look really significant and I'm very proud of them. But it takes a lot of purposeful practice and feedback, day after day, week after week, month after month, to, to get better at, at your craft. But it really can be done. The point of Anders Erisson's book, and his, my favorite book of his is Peak, I'd recommend you read it, is that there is no such thing as a prodigy. It does not exist there in your entire lifetime. People who are the best in the world, LeBron James, Michael Jordan, no matter who it is, they are not prodigies. They had to practice, practice, practice, practice. And it was purposeful practice. They had coaches, they had mentors, they had people who walked them through this. So the prodigy is a complete and other myth that does not exist. Peter Kim, I've known you 10 years when I knew you, we. You and I bought a building together. That building's going great. But you put so much effort and you put all of your wealth, your emotional wealth into becoming an expert in the real estate space. And you did exactly that because you educated yourself with conferences, with peers, with mentors. When you and I would go look at our building, I would just look at it, and I was like, oh, I hope it does well. And you were grilling the inspector, you were grilling the insurance people, you were grilling the mortgage people, and you were educating yourself. So that's how you really become special at it. You're. You're a real estate expert now, but you're not a prodigy. You learned how to do it, and there is no such thing as a prodigy. And everyone can do it themselves with enough hard work.
I just love all of what you just said. I'm going to bottle that, put that away. I'm going to watch that again and again. And people should watch that again and again. If you have any questions about how to make it where you want to be, I mean, will you a great example of that. You know, what does your life look like today? I'm sure people are curious. Like, you know, you split time between being a cmo. Do you still do clinical practice? I know you do some speaking and things like that. Like, how does that all come together in your life?
My life is dope, Peter Cam. It's really like, I have an awesome life. So. And again, I crafted it. It wasn't lucky. It wasn't luck. I'm not a prodigy. So I, you know, we're opening clinics all over the country, so I get to go to those openings. And that's really fun to cut the ribbon at the clinic. It's not like I'm building the clinics, but I certainly take credit for it. And I speak at a lot of major conferences. I was the keynote speaker at AMSPA about two weeks ago in front of 1400 people, which is just exhilarating. And I, and I dabble in some entertainment stuff on the side. Wife, two kids, live in sunny Los Angeles, California, so things are really, really good. But again, when I was. When I was at my laser company and it was about to go bankrupt, and 2008, you know, came around, and I didn't think I was going to be able to afford my mortgage. Nobody was there to pick me up except for me. And, you know, even when Covet hit, you know, I walked over to my neighbor's house who's a. Who's a bankruptcy attorney. And I said, hey, listen, I'm really afraid, you know, we have a thousand employees and we're gonna go bankrupt. And. And I thought we were gonna go bankrupt. I thought things were gonna fall apart, and they didn't. So time and time again, I've really hit rock bottom. But then I lifted myself up and the. The story here and again, I love telling stories, is that you have to be your own hero. We all have these preconceived notions about life, and we've been. I don't know the right word, but like, we've been habituated to believe that other people's stories matter to us, and it's just not true. Your parents have their story. Your school has their story. Your community has their story. Your church has their story. You have to be your own hero in your story, and you write your own story. So you can't let your spouse or your kids or preconceived notions or society or anyone else tell you what to do. You have to look yourself in the mirror and say, I'm going to be the protagonist in my story. I'm going to be the hero in my story. I don't really care what anyone else thinks. Ultimately, I have to believe in myself and manifest these things and make them happen. So luckily for me, I figured. It took me a while. I'm almost 50 years old, but I figured it out. And I'm really pleased with where my personal life is and where my career is these days.
I mean, I know that you manifested your way onto the book of Boba Fett. Can you. I feel like we have to add that just because, you know, my kids went crazy seeing you on there. How did you end up on the Star wars, you know, Star wars show? Just. We're just add this to the end of interview. But I have to not let you go without knowing this story.
I'll talk about it all day. My wife makes fun of this because she thinks it's nerdy. And she's right. It's super nerdy. So in 1980, I was seven years old and the first movie I ever saw was Empire Strikes Back. And I was just enamored with Boba Fett, even though he didn't speak at all and didn't have any lines. And so I've always really responded well to the villains and particularly in Star Wars. So, in fact, just to take you on a little bit of a side note here, in the early 2000s, I was on a show called Dr. 90210 and the producers were like, they brought me in on season six. So the show was very well established. It was doing really, really well at the time. It would go against Monday Night Football and actually get really good ratings. And the producers brought me in, and they said, look, you're one of the newest doctors. We're not going to put you on many episodes unless you can really make a name for yourself. And I immediately realized I had to brand myself and go all in. So I started wearing black. And I said, you know, I've always responded well to the villain. I kind of want to be this caricature. I want to be cocky. I'm going to wear black. And that was really. If you look back historically, every medical specialty has their sort of color scrubs. Pediatrics often wears pink in the hospital, sometimes different ers will wear maroon. Surgery obviously wears the surgical scrubs, but everyone has a little bit of a different color. And that's really when aesthetics started. Wearing black. Like, it caught on very quickly. I would make my staff wear black. The Laserway staff now wears black. So, anyway, I was branding very, very early on, but I've always responded to the dark color and Darth Vader and just the evil Star wars villains. So the most difficult phrase in the entire English language is the word no. It's really difficult to say. If someone asks you for a favor, it's really hard to say no. If patient asks you for something, it's really hard to say no. And I use that to my advantage. So I can't get into too much detail because I'm not allowed to disclose how I got on the show. But an acquaintance said, hey, I'm involved in this show. And then I said, can I ask you an incredibly difficult question? And you can say the incredible difficult answer, which is, no, but I would be doing myself a major disservice if I didn't ask. And I said, is there any way I could come see the set on the book of Boba Fett? And so this person was like, yeah, let me see if you can see the set. So I went to the set and I showed up, and I'm extremely knowledgeable about Star wars lore, Star wars history. And so I just started talking to the people there, and they, you know, they. I was talking to the costume designers, and it was a great conversation. And I said, hey, can I ask you a very difficult question? And feel free to say the most difficult word in the entire English language, which is, no, but could I try on a costume? Why the hell not? So they put on the costume. And then randomly, the director came in. I said, hey, can I ask you a question? It's a very difficult question. Feel free to say no. Could I be an extra on this show? And so, long story short, I was in the Book of Boba Fett. I don't have any lines, but I don't care. Like, it's not about anyone else. It's about me and my relationship with Boba Fett. So when I was seven years old, it was one of my earliest memories was seeing Boba Fett on set. And now I'm in three of the episodes of exclusively streaming on Disney plus Star Wars, Disney's the Book of Boba Fett. And I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but most of you are going to watch it anyway. I died. So I'm super bummed because I died in it. But no one dies in Star wars. So I'm hoping that they'll bring me back or do a prequel or something. And I know, I get it, I'm an extra. But you have to manifest these things and you have to be patient. So no lines this first season, but in season two, maybe they're gonna do a little prequel or a flashback, and maybe I can manifest it into a little bit more. At least I'm keeping hope alive, at least for that.
Oh, well, we've. We've gone over a little bit like you said, but I had to make sure we hit all these stories. You know, your time is super valuable. I love talking to you about all these things. I know you've already gained so much wisdom along the way. Can we do a quite recap? Sure, let's do a recap. Let's do it. Because I was going to ask you for a tip. We can do a recap instead. That's fine.
Oh, you do a tip. Okay, let's do a recap. Let's do our tip slash recap. So I promise you, promise you, promise you, if I can do it, you can do it. So the single most important thing to start off is deciding where you want to put your wealth. Do you want to put it into the act of gaining money or fame or family or love? You have to divide up your own time, and no one else can figure that out for you. Number two, I am a big proponent of educating people. No matter who it is or where it is, I'm constantly educating people. And that's really the ultimate job of a physician. The word doctor is derived from the word doctorate, which means to teach. We are all teachers and when you teach, that's what we're supposed to do. And then there is no such thing as a prodigy. No one is born with the skill set that makes them successful. So you have to learn and practice and have purposeful practice with mentors and friends and trainers showing you how to improve. But I promise, if you do that and you're patient, you will be supremely successful. If I can do it, anyone can do it.
All right, well, this has been awesome. You know, this whole summit is about creating like an intentional or intentionally creating your ideal life, right? As a physician, I think you've been awesome example of it. You know, in the 10 years I've known you, you just knocked one thing down after another another. And I know that a ton of people gonna listen to this. They're gonna love to hear about this. Where's a great place where people can connect with you, maybe, you know, get into your world and hear more about you?
Yeah, I'm easy to find. You can find me on LinkedIn at Dr. Will Kirby. Twitter. Dr. Will Kirby, Instagram. Dr. Will Kirby One super easy to find.
Awesome. Hey, Will, thanks so much for your time. Keep up the amazing work. I can't wait to hear all the cool things that are going to come up next time we talk. And keep it up.
I value our friendship so much and I looked up to you so much because you are such a visionary in the real estate world. And I just hope that 10 years from now we're going to be having a similar conversation, but even on a bigger level. So thank you so much for including me in this.
All right, thanks. Well, take care. Talk soon. Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app. You're listening to us 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.
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