speaker-1: Hi there. Welcome back to Beyond the White Coat, where we explore how clinicians are building lives, careers, and freedom beyond traditional medicine. I'm your host, Dr. Zwade Marshall, Interventional Pain Doc, CEO of Dr. Doc Lending, and I'm really thrilled today to welcome today's guest, ⁓ Kristen Burton. She's a physician assistant with a critical care background ⁓ in pulmonary and ICU medicine. She's also the founder of Millionaires in Medicine. She's an extraordinary financial educator. Helping many clinicians build wealth intentionally. And she went from approximately $100,000, $160,000 in student loan debt to become a millionaire status by age of 31. Kristen, you became a millionaire p as a PA by 31. What did you understand that most clinicians don't?
speaker-0: Hmm, good question. Well, first, thank you for having me. ⁓ but second, I think honestly what it comes down to is the difference between the result and the idea is the speed of execution. And that's honestly one of I think probably my biggest strengths in life. But when I had the idea of like, hey, I'd like to build this wealth and I'd like to build an investment portfolio and create a seven figure ⁓ net worth, I didn't like set the goal and then kind of like, ⁓ yeah, some time off in the horizon. It was like, okay, let's compress the time zone. How quickly can we get it done? And let's stop thinking about it and learning about it and let's just do it. And ⁓ that was the main thing that honestly allowed me to do what most people take, you know, quite a lot longer of a time horizon to achieve and compress that down into ⁓ just a few years.
speaker-1: Fantastic. ⁓ clearly you've got ⁓ some sense of financial literacy in your background. Did you have formal schooling or training? Was this something that just came naturally to you as you ⁓ were in, you know, grade school, high school, college and beyond?
speaker-0: No and no. I learned nothing about money growing up. ⁓ I didn't start investing until I was post grad school and I didn't even handle my student loans well before that. I really honestly went down the rabbit hole of figuring this stuff out out of my own struggles and what ultimately kind of became my own concerns about if I had made the right decision even going into medicine at all, because I was so overwhelmed by My student loan debt and what I felt like was my lack of income trajectory and lack of ability to actually have the lifestyle that I thought I was gonna get when I signed up for the path to begin with.
speaker-1: Fair. I I know exactly what you mean. And I think ⁓ in my case, I've observed repeatedly that ⁓ intelligence and financial literacy are not the same thing. ⁓ and some of the smartest clinicians in America have never been taught how wealth is actually built. ⁓ why do you think it is that so many of us, ⁓ our peers that are highly educated, avoid conversations about money?
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. It's completely different skill set, right? And it's as foreign to us as when you're in training and someone tries to teach you like all of the generic names of antibiotics. It's a completely different lingo. It's a different thought process. And so I think a lot of us because we become successful in one arena, we really hate the idea of going back to feeling like a beginner in a different arena and asking questions that might make us look unintelligent or uneducated on a topic. And that fear of being like, I'm the I'm the beginner in this room. I know the least in in this particular arena, in this circle, I think it prevents a lot of us from just diving in and figuring it out. Of course, we have the intellectual aptitude, right? You just have to be willing to like start at the beginning and learn.
speaker-1: I think ⁓ I think you said it well. And I've seen doctors ⁓ in my peer group making north of eight hundred thousand dollars a year and they feel trapped. And I've met others making two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year who feel completely in control of their financial future. And I thi a part of what your profile and your commentary has always been about is the intentionality of building wealth. And ⁓ if I were to sum it up in three things, I'd say that I've I've learned personally, but I've also heard folks like you talk about this. It's ⁓ increasing your income intentionally, acquiring assets consistently. So it's not how much you do, but it's doing so with discipline and and consistent. And then maintaining optionality. I think for many of us in clinical medicine, we all start with that optionality feature because we're oftentimes feeling a little burnt out and wanting to figure out ways in which we can protect our income in the future without having to practice medicine. And my path. ⁓ wasn't just clinical medicine. It was it included surgery centers and private practice ownership and real estate and consulting and then doc to doc. And so there's this kind of diversity in how to put together a portfolio ⁓ that helps to get to the point of building wealth. Give us a little bit of the pearls of how did you start? When when when you hear a hundred and sixty K in debt to millionaire status by thirty one, clearly there are things that you did intentionally there. What was the beginning of that journey for you? Like
speaker-0: It was so simple. ⁓ honestly, I maintained a fifty to seventy percent investing rate with my husband. So everything we took home, we invested fifty to seventy percent of that into a very simple portfolio of mostly index funds and ETFs. And it really wasn't until we had gained traction just doing that that we said, okay, you know, let's look at private equity syndications, let's look at Short term rentals, let's look at some other asset classes. But the very beginning, it was just so, so, so simple. It was delay increasing overhead until we'd actually built some assets. And then once we did, we hit a kind of a critical mass in your portfolio where we felt like we can actually lay off the gas at this point. And our portfolio is earning more substantially than, you know, what we're adding to it or ⁓ you know, sometimes even what we're earning. in ⁓ clinically. And so that part just took a front load and a willingness to delay the lifestyle stuff to actually build assets first. And ⁓ it was simple, but it works. It's just a lot of folks don't have honestly the appetite to do that because of the long training periods that we have and the delay in lifestyle that we already experienced there. I think by the time most people finish training, they're like, the idea of delaying even even further, even just for a year, it feels like, yeah, no way, no how.
speaker-1: What does your husband do?
speaker-0: He's an area manager in residential construction.
speaker-1: ⁓ exceptional. And so when you say fifty to seventy percent of your take home pay going into like investing, that seems like a hefty chunk. ⁓ for most of our population, we're servicing student loan debt to your point. We are servicing credit card debt. ⁓ how are you able, like what was what was your if if you can get a little more granular, sure. Investing is fifty to seventy percent. Debt servicing and then kind of lifestyle bit was the entire remainder remaining piece? No.
speaker-0: If you want to actually get really granular, I'll tell you like the full scoop of how we did it. ⁓ we bought a house that was a foreclosure. It had sat empty for multiple years. We also live in the Midwest. And so our mortgage was actually extremely small. And we did the whole sweat equity thing on our house of like actually physically flipping it room by room while living in it. And so our overhead from that very, very small mortgage, fifteen hundred square foot house in the Midwest is almost nothing. We drove paid off cars. I drove a four thousand dollar Chevy Cobalt. It didn't even have power locks. Like I listened to my audiobooks from my phone because I didn't have the Bluetooth thing. ⁓ and like really genuinely low overhead. The only thing we would spend money on, really, like of substance, was travel because we just have always loved travel and we that was something that we wanted to fit in. But we were fine to live in the fifteen hundred square foot house to drive the older cars and then like the next car upgrade, you know, was a ten thousand dollar again paid off car. Sure. And so it was those big things that allowed us to have the budget freedom where we could still travel and invest fifty percent of our take home. Now that's like slowly drifted over time. We did actually maintain that even after the first child, which a lot of people are like. You know, I have kids, I'm out, I can't do that. ⁓ but then, you know, slowly when we got to the second child, childcare costs went up, that sort of thing. And that drifted down, but it was totally fine because we had we'd put in the work on the front end and we'd built ⁓ a portfolio to do some of the heavy lifting for us.
speaker-1: Brilliant. Tell me a little bit more about how does your how does money change your relationship with clinical medicine once you're no longer financially dependent on every shift? What happens there psychologically?
speaker-0: Yeah, everything shifts. Everything changes, right? D all pieces. Like right now I'm part-time clinically because I have little kids. I have been for years. And ⁓ I only take jobs that will allow me to work hours that work for my lifestyle. And on top of that, if the job isn't suiting me, I have no hesitation about leaving, even without something else lined up, because I know that like I don't really need that next paycheck, it's fine. If this isn't working, it isn't working. My life comes first. My family comes first. And the job is like honestly not even second and third or fourth, you know. And so I get to have control over that. And honestly, that's the only thing that has allowed me to work in critical care medicine, which is one of the higher rated specialties for burnout for a decade. And like not feel burnout. And that's despite, you know, working through all ⁓ all of the waves of the pandemic and still like have made it to this point feeling like I enjoy medicine, but it's only because I get to own the context in which it occurs.
speaker-1: Absolutely. it's that that's so true. It's freeing to have the financial independence, but the real kind of ⁓ impetus for burnout that many of us feel is coming from ⁓ financial insecurity and having to be in that treadmill consistently after decades of training, then you f you feel like you're still on the hamster wheel ⁓ just to kind of make ends meet. It's funny though that one of the biggest misconceptions I think exists in healthcare is that wealth is reserved for physicians. ⁓ and as doc to doc began to expand our horizons beyond the physician ⁓ borrower base and looked into the Allied Health Professionals, PAs, ⁓ NP, CRNAs, it was became clear that we have very similar kind of training trajectories, long arduous schooling and then a pop in income, of varying degrees of a pop. But your story and your profile and your your your network has proved that PAs can build substantial wealth. ⁓ pharmacists can, NPs can, and wealth is more about behavior itself than a degree as you describe the discipline that that that you plugged into your overall mental model. If you were graduating as a PA today, what would you do differently from day one? You've done a lot of things great, but are there regrets that you've had in how you viewed the field, the medicine, and just your overall ⁓ financial balance and and work-life balance?
speaker-0: Yeah, there's really two. The first is in the way I view student loan debt. I had the Dave Ramsley view of that and felt like if I can just be debt free, then I'll be free. And so I have focused a lot of my energy there at the expense of other financial goals. Fortunately, I was able to redirect that focus and recover, but had my student loan journey taken longer, then math wouldn't have looked as favorably upon me. That's the first thing. The second thing is having this expectation as a new grad that whatever job offer I'm presented is my compensation. And I'm new or I only have one year experience or two years of experience. And so the idea of negotiating or interviewing for multiple positions to try to get several offers so that I could bring something to the table ⁓ felt far-fetched for me at the time. And the more PAs and NPs and pharmacists I talk to, there are people out there creating these incredible. Incredibly lowball offers for new grads, and then trying to sign them into, you know, two, three year contracts, having the understanding of contract negotiation and what it looks like to come and sit down at the offer table prepared. If I had known that as a new grad, like my income trajectory would have shifted tremendously. I think that's the number one thing that any new medical professional needs to garner that skill set. So that when you go to sit down, you are empowered, you know how it works and you know what to say to make sure that you're fairly compensated.
speaker-1: The the co the negotiation bit is one that comes up so often. ⁓ do you recommend using ⁓ professional health attorneys and the like?
speaker-0: Not always. ⁓ I've actually found very few ⁓ PAs in particular will. There are recruiters that will work specifically for PAs and ⁓ negotiate on their behalf. They tend to be specialty specific. There's a couple big names, for example, in the dermatology space, and that can be very helpful. ⁓ but many of them don't work with new grads. They work with experienced clinicians. And so as a new grad, many times you are relatively on your own. ⁓ there are Folks out there that will help PAs, that's their entire business model, is help PAs negotiate. very few of them are actually contract attorneys. But sometimes I think it's not necessarily a lack of understanding of the tactics. It's the mindset that it's reasonable and you're worth it, and having the confidence to even come forward and act.
speaker-1: The psychology behind how we think about negotiating and and there's clear evidence around how men negotiate compared to women. ⁓ but also the gap within just ⁓ feeling comfortable making an ask ⁓ of an employer who may say, like, this is a standard contract and ⁓ there's no wiggle room for negotiation, which and that's n that's often never the case. ⁓ but it's certainly and then once you start off behind the curve in terms of your compensation, it's hard to catch up in that organization. So you're chasing your tail the entire time. How do you ⁓ think about your financial journey in the context of having a family with kids now? What do you do with them? ⁓ and how do you think about their financial future as well?
speaker-0: Actually, most people I think view having children as a deterrent to them being able to build wealth because kids are expensive. Like let's be real, ⁓ you know, it costs money to raise them. But I actually view it as the opposite lens. My view of it is I get to because of them. I have to because of them because I don't want a life where I'm mandated to work fifty hours a week in order to keep up the rat race and afford everything. And then spend, you know, an hour or two a day in the evening with them. And so anytime I'm like, okay, let's, you know, let's look for the next real estate acquisition or whatever that is, I'm always considering, how does that change my lifestyle? Does it add to my plate? Does it subtract from my plate? And then how does the cash flow change what I'm able to do with them? Like right now, ⁓ I have this wonderful setup where I do spend time on my business. I do spend time practicing clinically, but I also have like plenty of Tuesdays where we're at the zoo. And ⁓ I'm getting like full kid days during the week. And that for me, that mix of being able to touch all pieces of that and feel like I get to engage in their childhood in those little years, ⁓ that's invaluable. Like I personally have the lens of I have until hopefully I'm a hundred and twelve to go out and like create the things I want to create in business in the marketplace or whatever. But I have this very little window of time with children that are not yet in school. And so I'm in a season where I'm very, very focused on not missing that.
speaker-1: Today is Tuesday. So are we doing ⁓ the zoo afterwards?
speaker-0: ⁓ ironically, ⁓ no zoo today. But it is it is one of those things where like those daytime outings, like it is nice not to be, you know, relegated to just the Saturday fun with family.
speaker-1: Awesome sauce. That's that's fantastic. ⁓ and I wanna spend a little bit of time doing a rapid fire, just a short answer, ⁓ Q and A piece here. and reflect upon your own experience as you answer these questions. What are the f what's the first thing that a clinician should do after making six figures? The first thing.
speaker-0: Make a budget.
speaker-1: what is the biggest waste of money?
speaker-0: There is no such thing. It's person dependent.
speaker-1: Fair. I I I often think of it as like trying to look wealthy before you become wealthy. I I so I could so many I could see that ⁓ do that. One habit that every clinician should build.
speaker-0: See that? Hm, automated investments that happen without you.
speaker-1: All right, all right. ⁓ most underrated wealth strategy.
speaker-0: your circle. Paying for paying to be honestly having a seat at the table with people who are doing better than you.
speaker-1: ⁓ that's fantastic. What are what is one financial myth clinicians should stop believing?
speaker-0: The reason you're poor is your student loan debt.
speaker-1: And what's the best overlooked investment?
speaker-0: VTSAX. ⁓ Vanguard's total stock market index fund.
speaker-1: Save more. Absolutely cool. our our cheat answer for that is usually like invest in yourself. either you know, like triple our income by doing an expert witness work, consulting and the like. ⁓ but this is it by Yeah. ⁓ so I think one of the themes that I think kept surfacing today is that financial freedom is not about money. It's not only about money, it's about choice and optionality and high income certainly does not guarantee freedom and wealth doesn't happen accidentally.
speaker-0: There you go, yeah.
speaker-1: ⁓ and this financial independence that so many of us chase is not something reserved for a small group of lucky clinicians, but that each of us ⁓ can have the tools and spending time being intentional and thoughtful about how we put together the systems to help to ⁓ kind of leverage our our income and turn it into wealth is critically important. ⁓ we look forward to having continued conversations with you, Kristen. ⁓ we love your ecosystem ⁓ and the platform that you've built. Thank you so much for spending the last ⁓ few minutes with us ⁓ on your admin day. Much appreciate it.
speaker-0: Thank you very much for having me. It's been wonderful.
speaker-1: You're very welcome. Thank you.
speaker-0: Hmm, good question. Well, first, thank you for having me. ⁓ but second, I think honestly what it comes down to is the difference between the result and the idea is the speed of execution. And that's honestly one of I think probably my biggest strengths in life. But when I had the idea of like, hey, I'd like to build this wealth and I'd like to build an investment portfolio and create a seven figure ⁓ net worth, I didn't like set the goal and then kind of like, ⁓ yeah, some time off in the horizon. It was like, okay, let's compress the time zone. How quickly can we get it done? And let's stop thinking about it and learning about it and let's just do it. And ⁓ that was the main thing that honestly allowed me to do what most people take, you know, quite a lot longer of a time horizon to achieve and compress that down into ⁓ just a few years.
speaker-1: Fantastic. ⁓ clearly you've got ⁓ some sense of financial literacy in your background. Did you have formal schooling or training? Was this something that just came naturally to you as you ⁓ were in, you know, grade school, high school, college and beyond?
speaker-0: No and no. I learned nothing about money growing up. ⁓ I didn't start investing until I was post grad school and I didn't even handle my student loans well before that. I really honestly went down the rabbit hole of figuring this stuff out out of my own struggles and what ultimately kind of became my own concerns about if I had made the right decision even going into medicine at all, because I was so overwhelmed by My student loan debt and what I felt like was my lack of income trajectory and lack of ability to actually have the lifestyle that I thought I was gonna get when I signed up for the path to begin with.
speaker-1: Fair. I I know exactly what you mean. And I think ⁓ in my case, I've observed repeatedly that ⁓ intelligence and financial literacy are not the same thing. ⁓ and some of the smartest clinicians in America have never been taught how wealth is actually built. ⁓ why do you think it is that so many of us, ⁓ our peers that are highly educated, avoid conversations about money?
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. It's completely different skill set, right? And it's as foreign to us as when you're in training and someone tries to teach you like all of the generic names of antibiotics. It's a completely different lingo. It's a different thought process. And so I think a lot of us because we become successful in one arena, we really hate the idea of going back to feeling like a beginner in a different arena and asking questions that might make us look unintelligent or uneducated on a topic. And that fear of being like, I'm the I'm the beginner in this room. I know the least in in this particular arena, in this circle, I think it prevents a lot of us from just diving in and figuring it out. Of course, we have the intellectual aptitude, right? You just have to be willing to like start at the beginning and learn.
speaker-1: I think ⁓ I think you said it well. And I've seen doctors ⁓ in my peer group making north of eight hundred thousand dollars a year and they feel trapped. And I've met others making two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year who feel completely in control of their financial future. And I thi a part of what your profile and your commentary has always been about is the intentionality of building wealth. And ⁓ if I were to sum it up in three things, I'd say that I've I've learned personally, but I've also heard folks like you talk about this. It's ⁓ increasing your income intentionally, acquiring assets consistently. So it's not how much you do, but it's doing so with discipline and and consistent. And then maintaining optionality. I think for many of us in clinical medicine, we all start with that optionality feature because we're oftentimes feeling a little burnt out and wanting to figure out ways in which we can protect our income in the future without having to practice medicine. And my path. ⁓ wasn't just clinical medicine. It was it included surgery centers and private practice ownership and real estate and consulting and then doc to doc. And so there's this kind of diversity in how to put together a portfolio ⁓ that helps to get to the point of building wealth. Give us a little bit of the pearls of how did you start? When when when you hear a hundred and sixty K in debt to millionaire status by thirty one, clearly there are things that you did intentionally there. What was the beginning of that journey for you? Like
speaker-0: It was so simple. ⁓ honestly, I maintained a fifty to seventy percent investing rate with my husband. So everything we took home, we invested fifty to seventy percent of that into a very simple portfolio of mostly index funds and ETFs. And it really wasn't until we had gained traction just doing that that we said, okay, you know, let's look at private equity syndications, let's look at Short term rentals, let's look at some other asset classes. But the very beginning, it was just so, so, so simple. It was delay increasing overhead until we'd actually built some assets. And then once we did, we hit a kind of a critical mass in your portfolio where we felt like we can actually lay off the gas at this point. And our portfolio is earning more substantially than, you know, what we're adding to it or ⁓ you know, sometimes even what we're earning. in ⁓ clinically. And so that part just took a front load and a willingness to delay the lifestyle stuff to actually build assets first. And ⁓ it was simple, but it works. It's just a lot of folks don't have honestly the appetite to do that because of the long training periods that we have and the delay in lifestyle that we already experienced there. I think by the time most people finish training, they're like, the idea of delaying even even further, even just for a year, it feels like, yeah, no way, no how.
speaker-1: What does your husband do?
speaker-0: He's an area manager in residential construction.
speaker-1: ⁓ exceptional. And so when you say fifty to seventy percent of your take home pay going into like investing, that seems like a hefty chunk. ⁓ for most of our population, we're servicing student loan debt to your point. We are servicing credit card debt. ⁓ how are you able, like what was what was your if if you can get a little more granular, sure. Investing is fifty to seventy percent. Debt servicing and then kind of lifestyle bit was the entire remainder remaining piece? No.
speaker-0: If you want to actually get really granular, I'll tell you like the full scoop of how we did it. ⁓ we bought a house that was a foreclosure. It had sat empty for multiple years. We also live in the Midwest. And so our mortgage was actually extremely small. And we did the whole sweat equity thing on our house of like actually physically flipping it room by room while living in it. And so our overhead from that very, very small mortgage, fifteen hundred square foot house in the Midwest is almost nothing. We drove paid off cars. I drove a four thousand dollar Chevy Cobalt. It didn't even have power locks. Like I listened to my audiobooks from my phone because I didn't have the Bluetooth thing. ⁓ and like really genuinely low overhead. The only thing we would spend money on, really, like of substance, was travel because we just have always loved travel and we that was something that we wanted to fit in. But we were fine to live in the fifteen hundred square foot house to drive the older cars and then like the next car upgrade, you know, was a ten thousand dollar again paid off car. Sure. And so it was those big things that allowed us to have the budget freedom where we could still travel and invest fifty percent of our take home. Now that's like slowly drifted over time. We did actually maintain that even after the first child, which a lot of people are like. You know, I have kids, I'm out, I can't do that. ⁓ but then, you know, slowly when we got to the second child, childcare costs went up, that sort of thing. And that drifted down, but it was totally fine because we had we'd put in the work on the front end and we'd built ⁓ a portfolio to do some of the heavy lifting for us.
speaker-1: Brilliant. Tell me a little bit more about how does your how does money change your relationship with clinical medicine once you're no longer financially dependent on every shift? What happens there psychologically?
speaker-0: Yeah, everything shifts. Everything changes, right? D all pieces. Like right now I'm part-time clinically because I have little kids. I have been for years. And ⁓ I only take jobs that will allow me to work hours that work for my lifestyle. And on top of that, if the job isn't suiting me, I have no hesitation about leaving, even without something else lined up, because I know that like I don't really need that next paycheck, it's fine. If this isn't working, it isn't working. My life comes first. My family comes first. And the job is like honestly not even second and third or fourth, you know. And so I get to have control over that. And honestly, that's the only thing that has allowed me to work in critical care medicine, which is one of the higher rated specialties for burnout for a decade. And like not feel burnout. And that's despite, you know, working through all ⁓ all of the waves of the pandemic and still like have made it to this point feeling like I enjoy medicine, but it's only because I get to own the context in which it occurs.
speaker-1: Absolutely. it's that that's so true. It's freeing to have the financial independence, but the real kind of ⁓ impetus for burnout that many of us feel is coming from ⁓ financial insecurity and having to be in that treadmill consistently after decades of training, then you f you feel like you're still on the hamster wheel ⁓ just to kind of make ends meet. It's funny though that one of the biggest misconceptions I think exists in healthcare is that wealth is reserved for physicians. ⁓ and as doc to doc began to expand our horizons beyond the physician ⁓ borrower base and looked into the Allied Health Professionals, PAs, ⁓ NP, CRNAs, it was became clear that we have very similar kind of training trajectories, long arduous schooling and then a pop in income, of varying degrees of a pop. But your story and your profile and your your your network has proved that PAs can build substantial wealth. ⁓ pharmacists can, NPs can, and wealth is more about behavior itself than a degree as you describe the discipline that that that you plugged into your overall mental model. If you were graduating as a PA today, what would you do differently from day one? You've done a lot of things great, but are there regrets that you've had in how you viewed the field, the medicine, and just your overall ⁓ financial balance and and work-life balance?
speaker-0: Yeah, there's really two. The first is in the way I view student loan debt. I had the Dave Ramsley view of that and felt like if I can just be debt free, then I'll be free. And so I have focused a lot of my energy there at the expense of other financial goals. Fortunately, I was able to redirect that focus and recover, but had my student loan journey taken longer, then math wouldn't have looked as favorably upon me. That's the first thing. The second thing is having this expectation as a new grad that whatever job offer I'm presented is my compensation. And I'm new or I only have one year experience or two years of experience. And so the idea of negotiating or interviewing for multiple positions to try to get several offers so that I could bring something to the table ⁓ felt far-fetched for me at the time. And the more PAs and NPs and pharmacists I talk to, there are people out there creating these incredible. Incredibly lowball offers for new grads, and then trying to sign them into, you know, two, three year contracts, having the understanding of contract negotiation and what it looks like to come and sit down at the offer table prepared. If I had known that as a new grad, like my income trajectory would have shifted tremendously. I think that's the number one thing that any new medical professional needs to garner that skill set. So that when you go to sit down, you are empowered, you know how it works and you know what to say to make sure that you're fairly compensated.
speaker-1: The the co the negotiation bit is one that comes up so often. ⁓ do you recommend using ⁓ professional health attorneys and the like?
speaker-0: Not always. ⁓ I've actually found very few ⁓ PAs in particular will. There are recruiters that will work specifically for PAs and ⁓ negotiate on their behalf. They tend to be specialty specific. There's a couple big names, for example, in the dermatology space, and that can be very helpful. ⁓ but many of them don't work with new grads. They work with experienced clinicians. And so as a new grad, many times you are relatively on your own. ⁓ there are Folks out there that will help PAs, that's their entire business model, is help PAs negotiate. very few of them are actually contract attorneys. But sometimes I think it's not necessarily a lack of understanding of the tactics. It's the mindset that it's reasonable and you're worth it, and having the confidence to even come forward and act.
speaker-1: The psychology behind how we think about negotiating and and there's clear evidence around how men negotiate compared to women. ⁓ but also the gap within just ⁓ feeling comfortable making an ask ⁓ of an employer who may say, like, this is a standard contract and ⁓ there's no wiggle room for negotiation, which and that's n that's often never the case. ⁓ but it's certainly and then once you start off behind the curve in terms of your compensation, it's hard to catch up in that organization. So you're chasing your tail the entire time. How do you ⁓ think about your financial journey in the context of having a family with kids now? What do you do with them? ⁓ and how do you think about their financial future as well?
speaker-0: Actually, most people I think view having children as a deterrent to them being able to build wealth because kids are expensive. Like let's be real, ⁓ you know, it costs money to raise them. But I actually view it as the opposite lens. My view of it is I get to because of them. I have to because of them because I don't want a life where I'm mandated to work fifty hours a week in order to keep up the rat race and afford everything. And then spend, you know, an hour or two a day in the evening with them. And so anytime I'm like, okay, let's, you know, let's look for the next real estate acquisition or whatever that is, I'm always considering, how does that change my lifestyle? Does it add to my plate? Does it subtract from my plate? And then how does the cash flow change what I'm able to do with them? Like right now, ⁓ I have this wonderful setup where I do spend time on my business. I do spend time practicing clinically, but I also have like plenty of Tuesdays where we're at the zoo. And ⁓ I'm getting like full kid days during the week. And that for me, that mix of being able to touch all pieces of that and feel like I get to engage in their childhood in those little years, ⁓ that's invaluable. Like I personally have the lens of I have until hopefully I'm a hundred and twelve to go out and like create the things I want to create in business in the marketplace or whatever. But I have this very little window of time with children that are not yet in school. And so I'm in a season where I'm very, very focused on not missing that.
speaker-1: Today is Tuesday. So are we doing ⁓ the zoo afterwards?
speaker-0: ⁓ ironically, ⁓ no zoo today. But it is it is one of those things where like those daytime outings, like it is nice not to be, you know, relegated to just the Saturday fun with family.
speaker-1: Awesome sauce. That's that's fantastic. ⁓ and I wanna spend a little bit of time doing a rapid fire, just a short answer, ⁓ Q and A piece here. and reflect upon your own experience as you answer these questions. What are the f what's the first thing that a clinician should do after making six figures? The first thing.
speaker-0: Make a budget.
speaker-1: what is the biggest waste of money?
speaker-0: There is no such thing. It's person dependent.
speaker-1: Fair. I I I often think of it as like trying to look wealthy before you become wealthy. I I so I could so many I could see that ⁓ do that. One habit that every clinician should build.
speaker-0: See that? Hm, automated investments that happen without you.
speaker-1: All right, all right. ⁓ most underrated wealth strategy.
speaker-0: your circle. Paying for paying to be honestly having a seat at the table with people who are doing better than you.
speaker-1: ⁓ that's fantastic. What are what is one financial myth clinicians should stop believing?
speaker-0: The reason you're poor is your student loan debt.
speaker-1: And what's the best overlooked investment?
speaker-0: VTSAX. ⁓ Vanguard's total stock market index fund.
speaker-1: Save more. Absolutely cool. our our cheat answer for that is usually like invest in yourself. either you know, like triple our income by doing an expert witness work, consulting and the like. ⁓ but this is it by Yeah. ⁓ so I think one of the themes that I think kept surfacing today is that financial freedom is not about money. It's not only about money, it's about choice and optionality and high income certainly does not guarantee freedom and wealth doesn't happen accidentally.
speaker-0: There you go, yeah.
speaker-1: ⁓ and this financial independence that so many of us chase is not something reserved for a small group of lucky clinicians, but that each of us ⁓ can have the tools and spending time being intentional and thoughtful about how we put together the systems to help to ⁓ kind of leverage our our income and turn it into wealth is critically important. ⁓ we look forward to having continued conversations with you, Kristen. ⁓ we love your ecosystem ⁓ and the platform that you've built. Thank you so much for spending the last ⁓ few minutes with us ⁓ on your admin day. Much appreciate it.
speaker-0: Thank you very much for having me. It's been wonderful.
speaker-1: You're very welcome. Thank you.
