Teaching Doctors How To Be Debt Free

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.bellandgeek.com and I'm really excited for today's guests. We have a physician on that actually teaches doctors how to be debt free. I used to work with dentists and I can tell you this is an issue. But before we talk to our guests, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host, the brain, the professor. You know him, you love him. Scott Todd from Scott Todd.net landmodo.com if you're not automating your Craigslist, your Facebook postings, postingomination.com thelandgeek learn anything about anything. Investor ninjas.com Scott Todd how are you?

Mark I'm great.

How are you?

I'm great, I'm great. Very excited for this interview. But before we get to our guest, I just want to let everybody know today's podcast is sponsored by other than flight school, figure out how 16 weeks going up that land investing mountain, creating passive income without renters, without rehabs, without renovations, without rodents can be accomplished with Scott Todd as your Sherpa. Learn more. Just go to the landgeek.com training schedule, a free strategy call and find out if flight school is the right path for you. Today's guest is Jeff Anzalone from debtfreeder.com and Jeff, just real quickly, can you give us your background?

Yeah, I am a periodontist, so we do mouth surgery and I got out of, when I got out of training, was supposed to join a group back here in my hometown in Louisiana. About two weeks before finishing training, the group I was supposed to go in with let me know that over the three year period that we've been talking about me joining the group, those plans have basically gone away. So I'm sitting there literally 10 days out from graduation, married, two month old, had about $300,000 of student loan debt. And about two months before this was before the 08 crisis. So about two months before I'd call my friend that I grew up with high school, his dad was a banker. And I said, hey, we really like this house in my old neighborhood. Think your dad could help us out? He's like, oh yeah, sure. So he just sent us a couple paper papers to sign. We were had a, had bought a house, interest only. So you know, it was well over if you combined everything well over half a million dollars in debt, no job, no clue how to start a practice, how to run a practice. So it was A little bit tough at that time, so to speak. So yeah, it sounds like it. So luckily I connected with some people, they helped me out a lot to help me network with other doctors in the area, let me rent space so I don't have to go into further debt. But I took a lot of those things that I was learning along the way and that was kind of the catalyst to start my website. Debtfreedr.com I wanted to get debtfreedoctor.com but that domain was already taken so I had to go with the debt 3dr. Calm. But that's how I started. And the more I started learning about investments and eventually got into passive real estate, I really just fell in love with it. And I realized that there's so many of us out there, doctors and other high income professionals that the only thing that we have is our active income. That's the only thing we focus on. And unfortunately there's things that happen. You can get sick as you know, you could get injured. There's financial crisises that go on that, that could also knock out a lot of that. If you don't have other sources of income, it could be bad. So that's what I would really like to do is like to just educate people on that. I love it.

Scott Todd, your thoughts?

You know, I think that that's the thing Mark, is, you know, there's so many people out there that want to talk about like the Susie Orman's of the world about that or Dave Ramsey's of the world just talks about debt. But the reality is that it really does come down to kind of personal, your own personal situation.

Right.

And the world can throw some crazy things at you.

Right.

Like who would have ever known what was coming down the pike in 2020. Right. Like the world is a crazy place. However, that said, I think that you've got to be able to always be planning to try to squash the debt then for us. Like for me, I believe in taking that and putting into good debt. Well, what's good debt? The good debt is the debt that's going to go make me more money. Right. So I mean that's really, I think we all have to have that attention, right? There's the good debt, the bad debt and you know, we should really try to work hard to get that bad debt down so that who knows, just out of the blue somewhere something just doesn't throw us off and next thing you know we're all hurting.

Yeah, yeah. And I love that Jeff is preaching what we preach, which is get out of solo economic dependency, which means if you're not working, you're not making any money because you are at so much risk, because so many things can happen. So, Jeff, in real estate investing, where do you like to invest?

Well, I started off with some different crowdfunding. There was a couple websites because that was the popular thing back in around 2017, 2018. Ish. And did a couple of debt deals. And then I decided to go big and did my first equity deal with the website by the name of Realty Shares. Remember that?

I remember Realty Shares, sure.

So really, the way that I was approaching it was probably like most people do, they're putting all their faith in a website because the website was telling us, hey, we go through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of deals that were pitched to us every month and we're only going to put the best deals out there to you. And so, only thing that I did was I'd scroll through and look at the pretty pictures of the property, go, ooh, that one is paying the most. Ooh, that one's paying the most. I'm gonna pick that one. So I picked that one, which was an apartment complex in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So after six, eight, ten months of not hearing from them or getting any money, reached out to them and that's when they said, well, things aren't looking too well in the area. We'll get back with you. Literally two months later, Realty Shares went under, as you know, completely. Another company has since taken it over and they sent out a letter to all of us saying, hey, we're going to do what we can. But unfortunately, the sponsor put too much money in the deal. It was apartment complex too fast. It was a crime infested area. So more people were moving out than moving in. Long story short, every investor lost every bit of their money there. So that's how I started my real estate experience.

That sounds thrilling. How do you recover from that experience and continue?

That's a good question. I'm a big Rocky and Rambo guy, so I'm just, I'm all about, hey, you know what, you just keep getting hit. You keep getting hit. But if you're not moving forward, if you're not learning from your stakes, then you're going to just be sitting in a chair your whole life pouting. So I made it a point then that, you know what, not only did I need to educate myself on how to do this, but I needed to help educate others because I know this is going to be happening to other people. And it had been because as a doctor, you know, we have a pretty big target on our chest, like, sucker. Hey, we get pitched all kinds of stuff, you know, all the time. And, oh, yeah, you know, we were not so much me, but most people, most doctors, physicians, dentists or whatever, were so used to making good grades, I guess, and kind of being that upper education, a lot of times it gets to our heads. So just because we may be, quote, school smart, we think we're smart in everything, including investments, including real estate. So, you know, we think, oh, yeah, we're so smart, we're just going to do this deal and we know what's going to happen. And then, you know, as I quickly found out, I didn't have a clue. And I'm an idiot for doing it because 100% my fault. Nobody else. I take the blame. So that was really the push to get me to start learning, listening to podcasts, podcasts like yours, reading books, going to events, networking with people, meeting people, knowing who you're going to do business with potentially. And then that's how I started getting back off my feet to begin getting into typically multifamily syndications. And that's what. That's kind of what I'm doing now.

Okay, great Scott. Todd, what are your thoughts?

You know, Mark, there's a lot there, I think, that. I mean, I've known a lot of doctors, and I think, you know, a lot of doctors. And the thing is, is that a lot of times the doctors that are out there, like Jeff said, they're smart guys, smart men and women, they're smart people. And the reality is, is that they're. They're smart about what they know. And then sometimes you think that the smartness continues for everything, the intelligence continues for everything. And I'm not saying that it can't.

Right?

But essentially, when you start to get into some of the analytical stuff that goes into some of the real estate investing or some of the pieces, that's where I think sometimes people struggle. And it's not just doctors per se. I think it's anybody. Like, you can do, like, land investing without being an analytical person, but you start to get into some of these multifamily things. And the one thing I don't like is I don't like giving my money to a syndicate or anybody else. I want to know the operators. I want to, like, know that I can grab them and be, like, shaking them, what's going on, you know, I want to be able to touch them, okay? Not just like, oh, this company, this Website went out of business, whatever. And so I think that that's really one of the things that I think is nice about land is that ultimately in what we do, it's not that analytical depth that, you know, that you might get with the multifamily. And at the same time, these are assets that you own. Right. This is a real asset that you're buying. And Jeff, by the way, just a side note too.

Yeah.

Crowdsourcing, like peer to peer lending, I loved that.

Right.

Like, I loved that whole concept of peer to peer lending back in the day. And I think it's still viable, but the yields aren't that great. I don't think.

So. Jeff, how do you help then other doctors and, you know, people that were in a similar situation with you, maybe they're getting out of school, they're loaded on with debt. How do you help them create a plan?

Well, actually, when I got out of training, I was a big Dave Ramsey follower. And I'm glad, I'm glad I was because he really helped me really focus on getting rid of that student loan debt, getting rid of that consumer debt. And about two years ago, I went through his financial coaching certification. Not to coach, but just to know how to relate to people, what type of questions to ask them. Because, for instance, I spoke with a young dentist last year that wanted to get into real estate. And after asking him a lot of questions and what I'd been trained, come to find out he was about a million dollars in debt. You know, everything. Total practice debt, mortgage and everything. And I said, well, you can do what you want, but I really don't recommend that you get into real estate right now until you clean up some of this stuff. So that, that really helped me a lot too, because I want to be. I want to give somebody, educate them, but I also want to sort of tell them whether they should do it or not do it. Based on my experience and what I've learned.

I see. Great, great. I remember I used to work with dentists as a dental broker. And I don't know if you ever heard of a company called aftco, but that was, yeah, that was like my first job out of college and doing all that. And it was really interesting when we would dive into the financial aspects of the dentist that a lot of them, it seemed like they wanted to keep up with the Dr. Jones'. So even if they weren't making the same amount of income as some of their peers, they spent the money as. So it would look like they did so when they would go to the conference, they would have the luxury car and they'd have the big watch and those types of things. And is this something you see now? I mean this is for me like you know, 20 something years ago.

What's really amazing to me as I did a little bit of coaching a couple of years ago, it was more practice management. But it was so eye opening to me. How many dentists, physicians, specialists that were over 60, over 65 that were broke and these are people with million dollar plus practices. And you probably saw it if you work with aafco.

Oh, I saw it all the time. I remember it was very poignant. My first sort of consultation when I went through the numbers and I said to this older couple, they were in their 60s, I said, well you know, how long do you plan on living? Because you can't afford to sell your practice right now based on what you have in retirement, you know, at this current spending level. And they were crying and like, look, it's okay, we'll come up a plan. But yeah, it was, you know, for a kid my age to be saying that somebody in their 60s was very, very hard to do.

Yeah, it was, it was, it was very eye opening. It's very mind boggling. And it was always excuses. Well, I had to pay my practice off and then I had to save up for my kids college and then we had a wedding, then this and that, and now we're 65 and we've got $22,000 in the bank. When can I retire? Never. You know, I mean, just be honest, you're gonna have to do some sort of work. Unless you want to just cut it back to beans and rice, rice and beans, you know, but other than that it's, it's. But you know, as somebody that, you know, an attorney, a doctor, dentist, you know, we, we start so far behind the eight ball. When we get out, we're older, we're usually in our 30s, we usually have a lot more debt. But think about it, when we get out, all of our friends have been working for 10 or 12 years. So we want everything that they've accomplished now. We want the house, we want the country club, we want the cars. Even though we have, there's so much far ahead of us, even though they typically make less money than we do. And I think that's a mindset A lot of people, to be honest with you, that was my mindset because I wasn't really worried about student loans because hey, I'm going to, I was going to get out, have A good job, have a good income, and then, boom, it all went away. And I. And I completely changed my thinking. And it really took me a long time to get out of that scarcity mentality, not having that abundance mentality, because it. Because I saw how quick it could be taken away from you, and I was always just super, super cautious. And I'm still kind of like that some, but not as bad. But that really took me a while to get over.

Yeah, I get. Scott, Ty, what are your thoughts?

You know.

Mark, I think to each their own, right? Like, you got. You got to build. You got to. You got to go at your own pace. I think that what Jeff said. The one thing I got out of what he just said was that, you know, oftentimes when doctors get out of school, they're behind the curve, right? Like, people have been working for years. They're further ahead. And then what happens is human nature starts to judge success or judge things based on someone else's, you know, different chapter in someone else's life. You always say, like, the. The thief of happiness is what?

Yeah, comparison is the thief of happiness. Yeah.

Yeah.

So ultimately, that's what happens. And, you know, like, Mark, the one thing that I'll see with people sometimes is people will ask about, like, my passive income or your passive income or whatever, and it's like, you can't. It's a nice goal to have. Like, okay, I want to have that one day. But oftentimes what people do is they take that. That number, and it's just a number.

Is all it is.

But they take the number and they're like, you know what, man? I want that. And, oh, how long did it take for you to quit your job, too? Oh, well, I'm going to beat that. So then they put these artificial time horizons on success, and next thing you know, they're miserable, right? Like, oh, I didn't get it. It's not gonna work for me because I had already in one month, I thought I would do 10 deals. I didn't do any first month. Well, I didn't do 10 deals my first month either. Right? Like, I did one. Okay. Like, that's the way that it is. It starts off slow, and you keep building. You just keep chiseling away. And that's why some of the other coaches stories just, I think, are beautiful. Like Mimi, it's just three years. She just kept chiseling away. Or Scott bossman, multiple years. And, you know, I think that, like, what Jeff is saying, too, is you cannot get locked in Based on where other people are. You gotta just. You just gotta get. Do your own pace and you'll get there. Don't try to rush it.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, Jeff, we're now at that point in the podcast where we're going to ask you for your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

That's a good question. One of the things that I, and this is nothing new advice for sure, but it really has helped me along the way. And when I talk to people about real estate or syndications and they kind of have that kind of glossy look over there, I like, what are you talking about? I'm not really sure. And I'm like, look, unless you can explain it to a fifth grader, don't do it. You know, don't, don't. Not just real estate, anything. Stocks, bonds, mutual funds, land, whatever, whatever it is, if you're not comfortable with it or you don't think it's right for you, if you don't know, it just kind of like, I didn't know it with the realty shares deal, I didn't know about all that. I had no business to do that. So if you can't, if you don't know what you're getting into, you can't explain it to a fifth grader. My advice is don't do it. And I try to put articles, put education on my site, debtfreedr.com to help with a lot of that. A lot of the information that I get is from readers, subscribers that email me. Hey, Jeff, what do you mean by this? Or can you talk about this? And that way I can kind of provide them what they're looking for.

All right, great, great. I think that's really sage advice, Scott. Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Mark? You know, people like to go to Facebook, they like to go to Twitter, they like to, like, look at your profile and they get to your profile and then there's that big banner thing up there at the top of it. And, you know, sometimes they look good, sometimes they're like, what am I even looking at? Well, if you really want to, I don't know, have your profile look good, check out mindyourbanners.com mindyourbanners.com and like, they got a whole bunch of pretty cool images up there that you can get for your banner. I don't know, something.

Wow.

To kill some spare time, are these free yeah, they are.

Huh. Look at this. Very cool. I could change up my banner. Yeah, it's been a while.

Different mark.

Yeah, I like this. I mind your banners. Dot com. Well, as great as this tip is, Scott Todd, it's not going to get you out of debt. Where my tip of the week. Absolutely. Could so check out. And I just lost it. Here it is. Debtfree Doctor. Doctor dot com. Debt free. Doctor dot com. And here's just. The blog is. You know, you're really prolific with the blog, Jeff. Like, you're blogging a lot. The Coronavirus Financial Survival Kit for Healthcare Professionals. The one thing. How much money is enough? Multiple streams of income. 4 Ways to make money in real estate. 7 Way to invest in Real Estate Without Buying Property. What's the preferred return of real estate investing? I mean, there is a lot in here and it's like, like every two days, you're. You're blogging. I love it.

Thank you. It's, it's. And I've always.

And you.

You've probably heard people say whenever you find something that you love to do, it doesn't feel like work. And I've always been like, oh, yeah, whatever. But it's. It's really true. Once you find something you're passionate about, it's. It doesn't feel like you're going to work at all. It's awesome. And I'm sure you guys feel the same way, too, with what you're doing.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I want to thank the listeners. Just remind you that the only way, the only way we're getting the quality of guests like Dr. Jeff Anslone from debt freedr.com is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, you got to rate, you've got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to supportlandgeek.com we're going to send you the $97 passive income launch Kit course for free, as well as the latest wholetailing course, how to Double youe Money. 30 Days Or Less. Dr. Jeff, Are we good?

Sounds great. I really appreciate. Honored to be on your podcast. Keep up the good work. What you're doing, you're making a difference.

Thank you. Thank you, Scott. Todd, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

All right, let's do this. One, two, three. Let freedom ring. All right. Not bad. Thanks, everybody.