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Episode 32. Jason Mizell,MD Transcript

Tarang P  0:02

Hello and welcome to the doctor Money Matters podcast,

The show where we discuss important financial topics that we’ve never covered in med school. I’m your host Dr. Tarang Patel.

Welcome back to another episode of the Doctor Money Matters podcast.

I want to thank you all for continuing to listen to the podcast and continuing to make our numbers growth. And I also want to thank the many of you have recently joined the doctor Money Matters Facebook group, the group has grown by nearly 50% in the last month and the discussions have been spirited. Please continue to add your physician and medical professional colleagues so they can join in the conversation as well.

Some of our most recent popular topics have been determining your retirement number and also Dr. Meru, an orthodontist in Utah, who was recently profiled in the Wall Street Journal about having a million dollars in student loans.

In this episode, I interview Dr. Jason Mizell, a colorectal surgeon at the University of Arkansas Medical Center, he started to teach a class to residents and then fourth year medical students about finances. As I mentioned in the intro to this show, most of us were never taught these topics in medical training and it leaves us left us to figure it out for ourselves often a great expense in terms of fees and financial mistakes. Dr. Mizell, like many of us, felt lost and dealing with these topics. When he first came out of training. We’re going to talk about his experience during the show, but he realized that he he was not alone and decided to do something to help his colleagues and students.

This class has become very popular and hopefully it spreads to other schools. Perhaps we should have some of these topics addressed even before medical schools to avoid Dr. Meru type situation.

Okay, let’s get started with my interview with Dr. Jason Mizell. Okay, welcome back to another episode of the Doctor Money Matters podcast. My guest today is Dr. Jason Mizell, a surgeon and director and creator of the business of medicine course at the University of Arkansas medical school, Dr. Mizell, Welcome to the show.

Jason Mizell  2:17

Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Tarang P  2:19

So this This podcast is about finance. And there’s a lot of blogs and other physician

financial podcasts and media out there now, but you created this course back I think earlier than most people were thinking about it. I think maybe the white coat investor was the only other person at the time who was blogging about physicians and finance at the time. So tell me a little bit about the course that you’ve developed and the the origins of the business of medicine course.

Jason Mizell  2:53

Okay, so I started here as a new faculty in 2010, I did general surgery and then did a colorectal fellowship. And then came got recruited to come here as colorectal staff. And when I started my belief is my second day here. Our billing and coding department brought me my CPT books and my ICD nine books and drop them off and said, Okay, here’s your here’s your books for CPT and for ICD nine. And I kind of laughed and said, we’re, what are these books. And so they laughed and said, that’s, that’s funny. That’s a good joke. And I was like, Well, I’m not really joking. I really don’t know what these books are for.

And so that was the, the look of horror and, and disdain on their face, for my lack of knowledge was pretty eye opening. And so what I realized is that I I knew a lot about are often you know, for, like a new fair amount about colon rectal surgery, but I didn’t know anything about everything after my training stopped as far as the billing and revenue side of it. So I really felt this desire then at that point, because I was at a teaching hospital that I did not well, my residents graduating with the same knowledge deficit that I had coming out of my residency and fellowship. So I talked to my Chairman, and we were just so happening to in the stage of where we were changing up our grand rounds, and dropping one of our monthly lectures. And so I came to him with the idea and said, I’d really like to start teaching our residents about some business aspects of medicine and finance. And so he was Welcome to give me an hour, once a month in our grand rounds. And so we actually had to faculty members here that were very savvy and business ones, a was actually a surgical oncologist who has his own business, he’s a CFP, as well. And so he would give some of the lectures on some of the investing side of it. And then we had a guy who was very prominent in the American College of Surgeons who knows a lot about the healthcare on a national platform and national level. And so I brought them in, and some other faculty and people that I knew could teach about business. And so we just created this curriculum and would give lectures during Grand Rounds that were mostly focused on business. And then once a month, we would give a lecture on personal finance that was more elective that way of residents wanted to come, they could, they could bring their spouse if they wanted, but I felt like they’re required time, which Grand Rounds that I would make that something very business specific, there’ll be more of their practice. And then if they wanted to learn the personal aspect of it, then they would come in the evenings. So we did that for for a couple years. So that’s kind of how it got started.

Tarang Patel

Okay. And so how, how was the response.

Jason Mizell

So it was quite good. It was, it was very eye opening for them, because they had never had a faculty member that really had that interest in their education, you know, that nobody ever really shown any, any sort of drive to help make sure they knew how to deal with money. So as a little, they thought it was a little funny, I think, at first and then we had a lot of faculty that were very disinterested, you know, they would leave whenever the talks would start. But then as they realized what we were talking on slowly the crowd became a mixture of residents and then our faculty because is most of us know we don’t know anything about it either. So what what started out as resin education became Reza and faculty education, right. And I think that that’s a good point that you bring up because

Tarang P  6:27

it is a it’s not an uncommon situation that you faced, you know what, like you said, when you first got out, and you didn’t know any of this stuff, because as far as, as, I mean, my own personal training, and I would think most physicians, you know, no matter what specialty they’re in, there’s just they don’t get that there’s not enough time. I mean, some of some of them might pick it up a little bit if they’re doing some private practice type rotations or things like that. But it’s there’s very little formal training that I’m aware of, in most specialty. So I think, you know, it’s a it’s definitely a good thing that you brought up and it’s but it but it’s definitely a deficit. And like you said, a lot of your colleagues probably, you know, we’re feeling the same way when when they started, but, but it’s something that traditionally has been kind of, I don’t know, it’s, it’s not something we talked about, you know, in medicine. I mean, we’re supposed to be the the healers, and we’re well paid healers better, but we somehow don’t talk about money. So, you know, what was the response from your other colleagues? I mean, you mentioned a little bit, they initially stayed away, but how did you kind of get them to come around to it?

Jason Mizell  7:41

Yeah, so, so that’s a good question. I still get sort of this, this quizzical, confused look, whenever I mentioned to people that I’m about to go give a talk on business finance, or what have you. I mean, a still, it’s just so foreign, as you mentioned, I mean, nobody, nobody does it. And it’s this kind of taboo topic that nobody likes to talk about, even even the medicine side of it, you know, like the billing and coding and our lack of knowledge, they’re much less everybody’s personal finance, and how they’re doing with managing their own personal money. You know, so it’s, it’s just this funny topic where everybody knows it’s a huge need, but nobody wants to address it. And if you if you try, you get pushed back a little bit, I think people assume that every physician doesn’t know it. And so then when you try to begin to, to make your yourself a little bit more known for they, they doubt you, I think a little bit because they assume that there’s no way that any doctor can only think about money. So so I think I’m, I’m hopefully pass that a little bit around here. But But still, it’s it’s very common, and the other faculty members, like when I gave Grand rounds yesterday, we had a few that stayed and asked very good questions. But, but still, some feel like they’ve got it under control for whatever reason, and sort of move on, but but it’s, it’s fun, the faculty that really show an interest in it, you can get some really, really fun spirited conversations and throw some ideas. And so it gets to be very interesting. And I really like it for the residents. Because they see that it’s not just my thing, when faculty stick around for the talks. And they see that it really is something that’s important, I think, that add some weight to the, you know, the topic as a whole, and they really realized there really is something that really does matter, right.

Tarang Patel 9:32

And I mean, they and for the residents and the medical students, I mean, you know, we get so much thrown at them during training about the, you know, the academic side of surgery, or whatever field they’re in, it’s probably a nice thing in a way to actually turn on a little bit different portion of their brain too, because it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s also vitally important to learn these topics. But it is a little bit different than then obviously, the meaning stuff that they that they’re getting all day.

So right. So So you said, You started this course when you when you first arrived at Arkansas, so how, how is the chorus kind of evolved over over the years that you’ve been doing it.

Jaon Mizell 10:16

So we started off in the surgery department, and it really end up being a pilot, I did not have the intention of branching out and doing a more broad application of it. I what I noticed was that whenever I was teaching this, I can, I can very distinctly remember being in the line, one of the coffee shops here on campus and talking to one of our chief residents and asking her about the course. And she just opened up to me right there in the in the coffee line, and mentioned about how it’s been helpful for her because she was carrying about $40,000 in credit card debt. Just remember that striking the so strongly that, you know, these are these are residents that every day I’m taking an operating room and trying to teach them how to do laparoscopic surgery and cut out cancer and do all these complex things. And in the back of their mind, they’re thinking, am I gonna be able to, you know, pay my credit card bill this month?

Or am I going to be able to, you know, get my my loans paid this month, or, you know, should I really go buy this BMW or not, or whatever. And so, it was things like that, I was like, wow, these, this is a problem that should have been behaviorally addressed before they even started making resident money. Because, because these are, these are some fundamental issues here. So, so what I did is, I decided, rather than making the course surgeries specific and only reaching, you know, 30 or 40 residents and students that I would broaden it and expand it to be available to the whole fourth year medical school class, because I really need they were right on the cusp of a transition into where they would go from, you know, paying to work to actually getting paid or so. So I decided that doing a course in the spring of their fourth year, really, whenever they were pretty much past the interview season, and their minds had shifted away from match and all that to where they could really just settle in and learn stuff that was kind of fun, you know, at that point, and stuff that they really knew was going to really matter, right. So I usually start the course now in about mid January. And it runs through mid April. And rather than the talks being surgery specific, they’re, they’re much broader now. And so it’s a 20 hour course, 20 hours of content spread out over 10 weeks. And with some gaps in there, cuz I don’t make them come to match. We can do some other holidays and things. But, but we do it every Monday night for two hours. So their clinical duties are done. Most students come in their workout clothes, or, you know, scrubs, or whatever, and just sit and they’ll eat food and bring their spouse. Some of them, someone will bring their kids if they can’t find babysitters, or whatever. And we cover your various different topics. this past Monday night was about life and disability insurance and estate planning. And so there’s 20 hours that that we do over the course of the spring. And I really enjoy it. Because whenever I am able to teach a topic such as retirement, I’m able to say look, in two months, whenever you go to your new hospital, somebody’s going to bring a piece of paper in front of you that says pick out your retirement mutual funds and what you want to invest it in and give it back to me tomorrow. And so I’m like, this really does matter you’re about to have to make these decisions in two months. So you need to know this now, you know, because it so it it does, you know, they have a little more skin in the game, I guess, you know, because they know it’s really about to happen rather than teaching a lot of stuff whenever their first years when it doesn’t matter as much. You know,

Tarang P  14:02

you talked about curriculum a little bit, but kind of go into it a little bit more what what what are some of the what are what are what are what are your most popular topics that you’re teaching about?

Jason Mizell  14:06

the curriculum changes a little bit each year. But what I tried to do make sure that the the topics are all relevant to the students that I want to make sure that it’s one of those things where I don’t teach what I think is important. But I teach what I know is important. But then also that they are very interested in so. So what I mean by that is I i survey all of the students at the very beginning of the course each year, and I asked him really two questions on the proposed topics. So I say, all right, how interested Are you in topic x. And then I asked him, What is your knowledge level, self assessed knowledge level. And then at the end of the course, I asked the same questions. And what I have found is the topics that they’re always the most interested in his contract negotiation, because they know, they know, that’s what’s going to help get them paid. But their their knowledge pretty much every year is always the lowest in that topic.

They’re always very interested in retirement planning and investing. They know very little about it, but are very interested. And then after that, some other ones that are interesting to them, or malpractice, things that they are less interested in are things like

Medicare and Medicaid, we did that last year, they didn’t, they didn’t have any interest in that at all, which is kind of fun. You know, because I’m like, that’s how you get paid. So, so very low interest in that they have not very much interest in estate planning, you know, and doing wills and stuff and preparing for their family.

They, they like billing and coding, oddly enough, I think it’s just because this non descriptive thing that they know, they need to know. But they know zero of that but are you are the most boring topics, billing and coding, and they didn’t even have an interest in it. So that’s, that’s encouraging. But, but that’s some of the main topics. We also talk about home buying versus renting, I’ll talk to him about physician recruitment, you know, like, I’ll have a recruiter come and talk to him and say, This is what we already know about you, this is what you should know about yourself. And this is why we’re scouting you out and how we’re gonna try to make money off of you and things like that. And the topic that I think is the most engaging to them. And the one that really gives them the most aha moment is the one about budgeting and the personal personal finance side of it, when one funny thing that we do with that each year is that we divide the class up into four parts, basically. And we, you know, there, we usually have 160 students, each class, about 120 of them sign up for the course as an elective. And so we we divide them up. So it’s about roughly 20 to 30 each group, and we give one the hidden task of car buying one house buying one lifestyle, and one usually kids college and school and we tell them, which car do you want to buy, you know, the, the Nissan the, you know, mid level Toad, or the Lexus or BMW, whatever in the house, do you want the 200,000 to 500,000 or a million dollar, whatever, we sort of give them examples.

And every year so far, when the four groups come back together, and they add up what they want to spend on lifestyle, it’s always always exceeds the theoretical budget, we’ve given them of 300 grand a year. So it’s this, it’s this sort of aha moment for them where they realize, so you’re telling me, I can’t have everything I want. Whenever I become a doctor. It’s like, No, you cannot. But that’s always this, this

lecture that I don’t think they anticipate leaving with that sort of a grasp of reality. But I always like to watch this scenario play out, and the look of sadness on their face when they realize that I can’t have you know, the high end car in the high end house and the high on lifestyle and send my kids to private school. No, sorry, you can’t, you can’t.

So that’s sort of the general overview of it.

Tarang P  18:13

Okay. And, and how, over the years now, you’ve been doing this for for a while, has has the level of like, pre existing knowledge improved at all amongst the fourth year medical students? Or is it still, you know, not as not, not to where you would like it to be?

Jason Mizell  18:33

It’s still quite low. We, one of the questions I asked them is, how many of them have ever taken a finance class ever high school, college, whatever. And usually, about 20% of them have taken at least just a single finance course. So 80% have never taken finance at all. But so they come in very deficient and that’s been consistent over each year. But what I am noticing is that the, the question that I’m getting during the lectures do seem to be a little bit more solid. And you can tell their understanding is a little better. When we first started when the home buying versus renting guys are talking. One of the first questions was, what is a mortgage? Like, they didn’t, they didn’t know the word mortgage. But I don’t get quite as many, quite as many questions about that as much anymore. But, but we still do get some very basic questions. And honestly, I love those questions. Because I just helps reinforce to me how necessary the course is. Absolutely, you know,

Tarang P  19:33

it’s it, despite what’s, you know, for, for yourself, and, and people like myself, who do the podcasts and things like that. But it seems like there’s a lot of people talking about this now. Now, granted, we all have an interest in this, but you’re absolutely right. It, it’s, you know, it’s probably we talk amongst each other. And there’s a huge segment of the not just the medical student and resident population, but the practicing physician population, that’s that’s still woefully deficient in in some of these these areas. And, you know, we’re just, we’re just getting a fraction of them. But anything anything is better than, than, than none. So I totally agree.

Jason Mizell  20:15

Yeah, yeah. And what I’ve, what I’ve noticed is that as more and more blogs rollout and things like that they’re available it is, is getting a little bit to the point, when you do have a student that’s generally interested it, it’s begin to be a little bit where it’s like, wow, where do I go, there are quite a few resources now. So. So I feel like part of my job to is to filter through some of that and give them the stuff that’s is very high yield for them and say,

Look, if you if you’re going to read two books, or if you’re going to read, you know, five blog posts, here’s what you need to read, because I know that they’re tired, they’re at the end of their fourth year of medical school. Absolutely. So I, I don’t want to have a lot of homework for them or anything, but I just want to point them to the stuff like nothing else read this, this and this, and this will get you going. Right, right. So see you started, you know, you started the course of a few years back now,

Tarang P  21:08

have you seen this this type of curriculum, you know, has, has it been developed at any other school? Or have anyone contacted you about kind of doing the same thing, or teaching them how to do this at their medical school?

Jason Mizell  21:23

Yeah, so, so I get probably an email maybe maybe once a month or so from somebody that seen the paper that we published, and the on the initial part of the course. And then my piece that I wrote for the white coat investor, people kind of find me in different ways. And I’ve spoken at a couple, you know, regional meetings, and then, you know, my name would be on the program, so people will find it my Twitter page and things. But so people will email me and say, What did you do? Can you send me the schedule, can you give me an idea of what worked What didn’t, you know, store troubleshoot but process of right now of writing up our results of the four years of the curriculum, and we’re going to try to write that and get that submitted as a research paper. And so I’ve done a pretty extensive lit review, getting ready to write the paper. And there are some programs that will do bits and pieces of our course, you know, they’ll do either just the business aspect of it, or just the personal finance aspect of it, or they’ll cover both topics, but just have like, maybe one one full day, like a weekend retreat, or something like that. But, but nothing really, to the extent of this course to the the depth and the comprehensiveness of it, doing business and finance because it, it ends up being about about 60%, personal finance, about 40% business. And so the, the content is, is pretty comprehensive, and it’s spread out so that they can kind of chew on it, and process it and think through it, and then come back with questions so that they can really be able to really digest it, no, know what they’re dealing with, and what they’re learning.

Tarang P  23:02

Right. And, you know, I was looking at an article from from University of Arkansas, his own you, you ain’t, you know, I don’t know, it’s just a flyer, or a weekly, monthly journal that they put out, but they they mentioned your course specifically. And, you know, it says it’s, the word is spreading amongst the students. And approximately Well, it says up in spring of 2017, 100% of the students rated the course as helpful. And 90% said, the course should be mandatory in medical school. So obviously, it’s something that is necessary and, and wanted by the students. So I One can only hope that, you know, this type of curriculum does make its way to the other medical schools, dental schools, any of these graduate programs, because we are that we get so much stuff that we have to teach, and I, you know, but, but some of the most precious tactical things seem to slip by the cracks. And I’m glad that people like yourself, or are kind of remedying that. Let me ask you this. So you’ve you’ve been doing this for a while. And like you said, when you first got out, you, you you didn’t know anything about the professional side of it, that ICD nine codes and stuff how has this course as it has it had any impact on your own personal finance?

Jason Mizell  24:25

Yeah, so you got this is like our fourth iteration of the course I’ve heard the talk on taxes for different times now, and estate planning for different times, and, you know, the budgeting and cash flow. And every time I sit through these topics, and a lot of our speakers are the same, because we have a pretty solid lineup now that we’ve gotten, I learned stuff every time and always tinker with mo and finances and, and whether it’s a talk on malpractice, just how to protect yourself and or whatever it is, you know, it’s, it’s been very helpful for me. And now as I have going around to some of our residency programs. As I give talks on this, I’m constantly learning because I want to be prepared for questions that may come from the audience and the students. They’re smart people, you know, these are some very smart medical students and they catch on quickly, and they have some in depth questions. And I often feel like who, I’m I’m glad you asked that to the the tax guy and not me, cuz I’m not sure I could answer that question. So I really like having the experts be able to give the lectures and then I can get all this education essentially for free while I sit there. And so I do, I learned stuff all the time, and tinker with my own finances, and, you know, try to make sure that I’m on the right trajectory for good out, you know, successful financial outcomes, too.

Tarang P  25:44 So, and that’s a, you know, honestly, that was one of my goals with with this podcast is similar to be able to speak to people and, and, you know, just kind of get the right information from the experts. So, you know, I think you as kind of the person who kind of filters out some of this information, and then guides the students, in a way is invaluable. Let me ask you this. One more question about the course if you could, you know, so, at the University of Arkansas, the students are lucky to have this course. But if you’re a medical student, let’s say, you know, across the country, and you’re interested in this topic, what would the one takeaway one point that you would like to make to, you know, fourth year medical students? If there’s one idea that you could put in their head?

What would that be about? Finance?

Jason Mizell  26:28

Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. You know, I, I feel like, despite really not having any knowledge at all coming out, I felt like while I was a resident, there was so little time to try to self educate. Like, I, I know that I was with my attendings for a limited time, so I needed to learn as much surgery as I possibly could in that amount of time. And that was, honestly that was all I had time for, right. And I knew that whenever I graduated fellowship, that was it, there wasn’t anybody over my shoulder anymore. And fortunately, like you guys and byte code, and like, all these different people have done such a good job of making resources available, you don’t really need to have a mentor, per se, to educate and some of the finance stuff and to have a basic plan. And so I would say there is a little bit more more hype about the finance which I think is amazing and very good. But I want to make sure that while they are in training to be physicians to devote themselves to being amazing it that gleam gleam, what you can offer your mentors. And if you are super bored with your studying under product syndrome, or whatever it is that here you study, and you want to pick up something that I would say pick up the white good investor book on your leisure time, your vacation, or something like that. And, and just you’ll get your basics in order. But don’t feel too pressure to be able to know how the, you know, the finer points of active versus passive investing or all that are because that that can come. But it’s some basic behavioral principles that you’d want to do, you know, contributing to retirement and not, you know, overextending yourself that you can get, I think, by some fairly straightforward simple reading from from you guys podcast, or from like, White Coat investor books, or whatever. And as long as you’ve got that, then you’re, you’re good, don’t don’t do things. Learn what you need to be learning and then you get out, then you can really fine tune in and know some of the deeper points

Tarang P  28:22

Absolutely, I think that’s, that’s it, I think one of the key things is that you, you made it through medical school, or you’re, you’re going through residency, that is the primary reason you’re there and doing a good job at what you’re training for. That’s the best financial decision you’re ever going to make. So make sure like you said, you do great at that. But the other thing that I would add to that is that the rest of this stuff is really not that complicated. As long as you’re doing some simple things. Yes, you get very esoteric into some of the terminology and things but even if you understand those points, it’s it’s only going to be marginally, you know, you might be marginally better. But, but the key thing is, like you said, being the best physician you can be, and, and just not making any heinous financial mistakes. And, and those are the big ones that you can learn about within a very short time. So totally agree. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s good. Well, I wanna thank you, Dr. myself for for appearing on this podcast. Is there is there any resource obviously, we mentioned, like code investor, but any resources that you might recommend to our listeners about finding out more about your, your own, you know, your curriculum, your course, or just resources that you would recommend?

Jason Mizell  29:41

so I from from my course, I always on Twitter, anytime I try to mention something finance wise, whether it’s our speakers, or when I go to other conferences, always hashtag it with business of medicine. And there’s not many people use that hashtag. So you should be able to find interesting little little points and articles that I’ll try to pluck out and retweet so that’s easy to follow. And then the as far as books, yeah, there’s, I get that question quite a bit. As far as, you know, do you have a syllabus or whatever, I don’t really, I’m actually in the process of trying to accumulate a decent list of articles for different topics. But I think one book but obviously the white coat investor book helped me quite a bit. And but one book of recent that really helped me a lot was how to think about money, the Jonathan Clements book. And that was interesting, because I, as you mentioned earlier, you know, we’re, we are taught to be healers. And that’s what that’s what we’re here for. And we put a lot of hours into making sure we do a good job of that. I think sometimes we can get so lost in our purpose of what we’re supposed to do, we almost forget what we like. And that that book was very interesting for me, because this was sort of things like if you had all the money that you you needed or wanted, what would you do with it? And, and I had almost forgotten what that was like, for me, you know, because you become such a server. And so I think keeping that mindset of of, as much as we don’t like to talk about money, it is very real in our profession, and to not lose yourself so much in the profession. You forget what you really do enjoy and why you’re working this hard. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I think that book is a is a good refocus or of of, you know, if because it does no good to earn a bunch of money but then not really realize how you can use it, you know, further your, your plans and purposes and happiness and so that that book was particularly helpful for me So, oh, good, good. I’ll have to I haven’t read that one off to check that out. It’s good. Yeah. Alright, as far as the the actual courses itself I what I’m hoping is that once we get this last course completed next week, then I’ll actually write it up and then I’ll try to put it out there as far as once the paper gets written just to find out some more details and some of the ways we researched it and I’ll include our surveys and stuff so that people want to try to roll this out of the their own place how they can get started with you know surveys and things to try to make an academic because that’s that’s been a huge benefit to me is in my academic setting it has allowed me to proceed up through the assistant Associate Professor ranks and things and that’s all you know important academics so it’s been it’s been helpful from that standpoint as well.

Tarang P  32:21

I want to thank Dr. Jason Mizell for coming on this show and for starting this conversation and this course for for the medical students at the University of Arkansas it’s great to see someone taking initiative to help educate our younger colleagues doing it in the structured way that he does really brings value to these students maybe some of you are already helping out your students or residents by bringing the these topics up informally if you do please let me know how you’re doing so by you can tweet me or email to me at tarang@doctormoneymatters.com

Sometimes when you start learning about these financial topics the basics such as interest, inflation, compounding seem pretty simple but an article I read recently talked about how the majority of people around the world and they surveyed people in many countries developed and undeveloped and most people could not get even two of these questions right to it to two out of three questions correct. If you don’t understand these fundamental concepts are going to have a hard time getting ahead financially.

Once again, thanks for listening to this podcast. Please let your friends know your colleagues know and just share it with them. And please continue to leave us positive reviews on Apple podcast. It really helps move up move the show up into the rankings and so the appropriate audience can see it.

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Episode 33 Transcription

– Tarang Patel

Hello and welcome to the Dr. Money Matters podcast show where we discuss unfortunate financial topics that never covered in school. I’m your host Dr. Tarang Patel.

Welcome to another episode of The Dr. Money Matters podcast. In this episode I talk with Dr Amy Shah, an allergy specialist in Arizona and good friend who’s turned her passion for nutrition and health into a few solid side games. Before I introduce me I’d like to talk a little bit about why so many doctors are looking for side gigs. It seems crazy that people would undergo about 11 to 17 years of post high school training and then want to look for an additional job after they’ve worked after they worked so hard to achieve the primary goal. It speaks to this. It speaks to the dissatisfaction disillusionment and loss of autonomy that so many in medicine feel now. The Wall Street Journal had an article this past weekend about physician burnout and I’ve addressed the topic on prior episodes but we didn’t get into medicine to have our expertise undermined or questioned by those with less training were also less likely to be allowed to use our creative sides in medicine than generations past. And so some of the desire for side gigs maybe as a part as a way to try to express that. Finally in this era of living in the day and age of side gigs it’s just more common and acceptable thing to do. And also with cheap and easy technologies to help us start our businesses it also facilitates getting involved in more side gigs. Succeeding though is another story and that leads me back to my guest today who is succeeding. Amy Shah is a relative pioneer for physicians and using social media to expand her reach and develop a personal brand.

It’s been great to watch her develop this nontraditional endeavor over the past few years. She’s definitely been an inspiration and source of encouragement as I started my own podcast. In this episode we talk about how she developed an interest in nutrition at an early age. Her mindset about developing your passion into a viable business rather than just a hobby. Some of the fears that she faced while trying to develop her status as an authority on these topics. Her advice for those who are starting this process and her goals for the future of her various endeavors in addition to practicing and as an allergist she does personal wellness consults has developed products including supplements and ear buds that mold to your the shape of your ear called Sound Mole’s in conjunction with physician at her medical practice. Also she’s worked with Bobby Brown in the cosmetics industry and is now working with Genexa, an organic medication company. She’s also starting to do physician webinars and live person coaching to help those physicians interested in starting their own journey in social media and developing sidekicks. OK let’s get started with my interview with Dr. Amy Shah.

Welcome to another episode of The Dr. Money Matters podcast. My guest today is Dr. Amy Shah, a friend of ours from Phoenix who has developed a thriving side gig in the wellness field. Welcome to the show.

– Amy Shah

Thanks. Happy to be here.

– Tarang Patel

So I want to I wanted to talk to you because you’re one of the inspirations for many of us locally to kind of get branch out of our traditional aspects of medicine. And you were one of the pioneers at least you know that I can think of of the physicians in the wellness field. But before we get into that let’s talk a little bit about your background about how you got into medicine and your analogy. So tell us how you ended up choosing that specialty in college.

– Amy Shah

You know when you have all those late night deep discussions with your friends I’m not sure if you guys see this you actually did it with a lot of my guy friends who you know those. What am I going to do with my life. Talks or thoughts. And I came up with nutrition because I thought well it’s how food affects the body. So I ended up going to Cornell which has one of the best nutrition programs in the country. And lo and behold I realized that nutritionists make like 30 thousand dollars a year. And it was it. And you could be a dietitian which was like very similar. And there was all these classes you would have to take. That had nothing to do with health in the body. So I decided that I had to think of a different way to incorporate nutrition because I definitely wanted to be in a challenging career. And I just felt like this is not going to get me where I want to go. So I decided to kind of the premed route where you can combine nutrition health biology and society that was like it was my own major. So I did that and then went to med school because I was like oh this is perfect. I’m a calling like I’m going to combine nutrition and health and do all this stuff. And of course as you know like you know day one of your med school there is nothing to do with nutrition at all. There is not even talk about food and is at least in the way that I thought would be impactful. So I knew that there was something there but I couldn’t decide. And then when it’s time to pick what we wanted to do I picked internal medicine because I thought that was kind of you know the way it actually is deciding between internal medicine radiology. I applied for both actually. I interviewed for both specialties absolutely was because I think I was like a little bit disgruntled with clinical medicine. But then once they interviewed for radiology I realized that was not maybe what I would want to do for the rest of my life only because I’m a people person and I felt like maybe that for certain.

Most radiologists at least at that point.

It seems like you know it wasn’t the right fit for me

– Tarang Patel

Plus it’s not very conducive to nutrition because we’re sitting around a lot and we’re eating you know the snack food of the doctors lounge.

– Amy Shah

I already had thought about my sidekick back then and I was like You know I can do radiology and then on the side they can you know do all this nutrition stuff that was like my plan if I ever did radiology.

– Tarang Patel

Wow. You were ahead of the curve.

– Amy Shah

Yes I did internal medicine and died because I did I was in the Harvard hospital system and it was I thought it was pretty malignant but I guess there there make way more malignant programs and were doing a lot of ice. You and I still really interested. But what I was picking my and fellowship I definitely was thinking along the lines along the lines of nutrition where can you do that. And I didn’t pick G.I. because that was anxious for my husband. For those of you who don’t know is a gastroenterologist and he had decided like day one that he was G.I.. And so there was not going to be. It was a little too much you know competition or strange it would be too much of an overlap. So I picked him up. So that’s basically I knew all along. I mean there is everybody who knew me knew that I was nutrition and health was my thing. It was like from the time I was 10 years old I’m not sure why or what it was. But sometimes as we all see with our children sometimes they have these passions in life and they’re just looking for ways to express them. So that’s basically the long version of the story. And as you can imagine once they started a private practice I had this amazing Private Practice opportunity where I was the only Allergy Immunology specialist in a group of 34 doctors who are ENT and so I had a great referral base and it was amazing. Private practice except that I didn’t do even 1 percent nutrition. Like not even I mean there was nothing there was like maybe one second of talk I was just like a machine, a factory. And so that’s that’s really what prompted me to start thinking outside of the box to think like OK how can I start to do this without completely shutting down my clinical practice. And also up selling you know kind of like that larger need. The other reason was I feel like were such were so tied to these insurance companies as they’re basically determine our our wealth our you know our patient care our costs. And I just felt like wow.

If insurance decides tomorrow that they’re not going to pay for these like five codes because I’m so super super specialized like I said I’m done you know and that was another impetus for me to say I need to lay down the groundwork for when the when the medical system as we know it changes.

– Tarang Patel

Right. Right now let me ask you then specifically on that point when when did that thought occur to you. Because that’s a very it’s a it’s a smart thing to think about but I don’t think a lot of a lot of physicians especially while they’re in medical school training you know think about that type of thing.

– Amy Shah

Well it wasn’t until I was a partner in my practice where I really started to think OK I need to lay down the groundwork for my plan was a 20 year plan. My plan was when my children are you know 15 to 20 years. My children are in college. I don’t want to depend on insurance as you know or the system as we know it for my career. And so it was like I wanted to lay down the groundwork because I know that it takes many years to become independent of me of insurance based medicine so I basically was like let me just start you know start so.

– Tarang Patel

So you took what was a lifelong interest passion in nutrition and you decided to you know you were trying to incorporate that into your practice but in reality you know it was pretty difficult to do.

So you started branching out kind of separate from your existing practice. So talk to me about the time span when you started doing that. How long it’s been about now and and what it was like when you were first starting out.

– Amy Shah

So 2010. Actually like I think of 2012 when I started just thinking like I said that’s when I made partner and I started thinking OK now I have power over my schedule so I can feel like carve out an afternoon here and there to really work on something different. And I knew that I wanted to do something in wellness medicine nutrition but I also knew that if it was going to take over if I was going to switch like I was someday going to switch careers. Then it would have to make money because it couldn’t be just like a passion On-Site passion. I mean I was always nice how. I want to make it into more than that. And so the first thing that happened is when I was reading all these books I was reading I was listening to like books in a car or whatever and I listened to four hour workweek. I’m sure you are embarrassed. And it was so inspirational. And then I listened to the podcast with you know Rich Roll. I don’t know this until our podcast. I thought. He’s like a very inspirational lawyer turned vegan and he has. And he had talked interviewed this. Mind Body Green founder his friend and he said Oh anyway with you that we’re are into wellness you must know mind body green dot com. This is 2012 when I was like literally just started. And they’re always looking for doctors or professionals to write for them. So literally the next day in-between patients I wrote a post and I sent it to like submit at Mind Body Green Dot Com and it was just like a cold post about something patients should know before they go to the doctor or whatever. And I think a couple days later I got an e-mail that said oh your post has been accepted and it really like open these floodgates at me like I was like oh my god I’m I’m going to start doing something. This was like going to be my outlet. So I started writing for them and quite often like once a week in between patients I would just create a post and I would send it. And that was basically how this all started.

– Tarang Patel

1. OK. And so you know you knew that this is something that you wanted to pursue. When when did you like, when did you start seeing results from it? Because anytime someone starts a venture initially it’s always difficult right. You know you’re working hard you’re you’re very passionate about it but then you know you get a setback and it’s very hard for people to then push beyond that.

So what kind of challenges did you have when you first started. And then you know how did you know you were actually going in the right direction?

– Amy Shah

I had every fear that I talk when I talk to people now it’s every single fear that everyone has.

1. You’re afraid your colleagues are going to make fun of you.
2. They’re going to think you’re not a serious doctor anymore.
3. They’re going to critique.

You know it’s all about what with what we think or perceive that other people are going to think of us. Like what if someone reads my article and thinks it’s bad. You know that kind of thing. And also really in medicine you just feel like what if I’m breaking some rule like it’s like I was doing a secret thing and tell you what about it because I didn’t know if it was right or if I was doing the wrong thing or if I was going to get in trouble by I don’t know God knows who I am and it was all these irrational fears that I look back at them like that was holding me back for two years from like 2012 to maybe like 2014. I literally just put I said post for Mind Body green. Like every week or every other week without telling anyone about it. And I didn’t want to like I didn’t want to rock any boats at work. I didn’t want to tell my friends. What if they made fun of me. I don’t know. I was just scared.

– Tarang Patel

Understood.

– Amy Shah

Dipping your toes into something that you’re not really sure what’s going to happen. 2014 Mind body green approached me and said hey a lot of people are asking how to contact you. Do you have a website. And I said No I don’t have a website. And so I looked up you know how to create a website and like five minutes or you know those videos whatever.

And I created a website and then I sent it to them and I said Oh in case they actually didn’t have an e-mail lists originally which I’m kicking myself for but I think 2015 I created an email list on my Web site. And you know Mind Body Green was blowing up at that point. And so I would get you know thousands and thousands of people coming to this like five minute WordPress website and signing up. And it was like really I didn’t realize what a big deal was back then. Because to me it didn’t make any sense like I didn’t know what I was going to do with it anyways. I had no business plan at all I just knew that I was setting up a foundation for something.

– Tarang Patel

And I think that’s a lot of how this starts and and you like I said you were one of the earlier people that I knew.

– Amy Shah

Yeah

– Tarang Patel

in this type of field we see a lot of it now on social media where you know people are describing kind of some of the things that you describe that you felt early on disenfranchised with the traditional practice model looking for outlets looking for their interests and so they’re kind of going through it you know and looking for things that you have already been through. And you know they’re kind of doing it now. So it’s always nice to hear from someone who’s gone do it.

But you know it doesn’t go without challenges and like you said you’ve you’ve experienced some of those and some of the same fears that we all experience when when we’re kind of branching out of our traditional roles that we’ve established in medicine.

So one of the things that I think you posted on I was imposter syndrome and this this is it was a really good post that got I think a lot of people that talking about it and subsequently heard other people would kind of mentioned the same thing.

But what is that

– Amy Shah

it’s like you know when you enter this world of wellness for example or nutrition any any world where there was no formal nobody gave me a degree and wellness hard like nobody told me like I was like we study 25 plus years to become a physician.

And I feel comfortable with the role of physician. But when it comes to expert expert in something in this world I really felt like. Who am I to tell patients what to eat or what to do or who might right. In 2015 mind body green actually awarded me one of the top women to watch in wellness and I really felt it then I’m like wait like how is that me. Or are they talking about someone else. And I would look at these other people and think they’re so amazing. But then when it came to myself I felt like there was I was trying to be someone that you know didn’t deserve the attention or the status. And I think that happens to so many people because I think that we think that maybe we’re always looking for somebody to give us permission. When I talk to physicians all the time and I talk to them about wellness or doing things like this. They ask me you know so what certifications did you get or who, there’s a lot of that imposter syndrome feeling like you don’t feel like you’re going to be able to do it or you deserve to be there.

– Tarang Patel

And I mean you know it’s funny because you spend so much time like you said 20 plus years in training to get your you know your medical degree residency fellowship things like that. And yet we’re still always looking for that additional validation, certification or whatever. And the reality is is that there’s no one better qualified than you or you know physicians in general to to speak on these things. A lot of other people who are not who don’t; who lack these credentials are talking about it.

– Amy Shah

I see the same thing. I always say that you know we think that there is somebody going to like what I for my world. There’s these made up. And I hate to say it but it’s true. Like you know they made up certifications in certain you know things that can be integrative, it can be functional or it can be obesity special and all of them are just someone’s opinion.

It’s literally like one head doctors opinion on how he thinks that nutrition or wellness or whatever lifestyle should be at it but that doesn’t have to be your opinion. And if it’s not you don’t need to go through that certification. So I’ll tell people like you know learn from them like I read those books, take those courses but you don’t need to pay them three thousand dollars so they can give you a stamp like this is not. You know what I mean we we can make our own decisions we can read the literature ourselves we can read the books ourselves. So I think that was a big big realization for me and I still struggle with that I mean I think we all struggle with that I’m sure you do and your podcast for all when people ask you for or think your authority on something you definitely inside feel like wow how did I become the authority on something that I barely knew anything about a year ago or something like that.

– Tarang Patel

Right. Right. No it’s true. And you know I know I talk more about financial stuff but I similarly in the finance world there’s there’s a lot of certifications there’s a lot of pseudo certifications and you know yes I didn’t train 20 plus years for that but I can read a book I can learn things and exactly you know I feel as qualified as some of the people out there not not all of them. But you know I can speak to certain basic things. And so you know I think that I think at this point most of us physicians have spent so much time training that it is you know we’re used to that mentality and then I talk to people about you know they talk about getting their MBA or you know I’m like… No you don’t have to have an MBA, you can start something without that. So  it’s great that you did that and you went for it and you know success or not and early on you know you push through it. And now you are you know very successful in this and you work within you’ve been featured in the national media and you work with celebrities. When you started did you. Did you foresee any of this kind of success that you’re having?

– Amy Shah

No I thought that when my kids go to college I will do this side thing.

You know I went to a conference when I was in Fellowship like a financial conference for fellows and I remember the guy asking the group like how many of you close to retirement are planning a second career or are pursuing it already and the entire group. Almost everyone who was close to retirement age or retirement raised their hands like they people want to do so much more they wanted to have a second career. They were done with that. And I kind of felt sad that a lot of these people waited till their retirement age to pursue something maybe they were wanting to do their whole lives and they’re waiting till they’re retiring. And so that was also another thing I didn’t want to wait till I was about to retire to write a book or do something and while writing a book was always something in my mind because I thought that that was the only way because at that time the Internet was just blooming you know in our college and medschool years. So I thought oh I’ll write a book one day about all the things that I have thoughts about and so on.

That was the plan. The plan was I never thought especially because like I said I have this private practice that I had to work to get into a partnership. And then I was a partner and I have a lot of responsibilities. Clinically and so I never I’m actually in a place really difficult place at this point. Because I have two kind of very demanding things happening at the same time and it’s really hard for me to divide my time now.

– Tarang Patel

 You know I want to I’m going to get back to that in a second. But one of the things you said early on was what the fear is that everyone goes through is like you know I spent all this time and energy becoming a physician.

You know it’s not the normal model that we were you know we’re in that pathway for where you do your residency or fellowship. You go into practice you become partner and that’s that’s the end point. And you know you so you’re kind of branching away from that a little bit. And one of the things you bring up and I think a lot of doctors face this is you know what do what do my colleagues think did you. Once you started doing this I know you said initially you were kind of keeping it you know kind of quiet and you were just doing it.

Have you know now that you’ve gotten a little bit more success a little bit more publicity about it. How has the feedback been from your physician colleagues?

– Amy Shah

Really good actually. So all those irrational fears are really are irrational because honestly when all of this started happening and I started to travel more and do more collaboration with these well-known people they and my colleagues were actually extremely supportive of course there’s definitely some questioning of you know what does this mean for the future kind of thing but very little of that mostly. It was so in fact one of my colleagues pigs Dr. Altman and I actually created a product. And I know you know about it but called Sound Molds because we knew that. Now they have created the other product, the supplement product. I kind of know how to create products although I know I did not know how to create a physical product it was a very very steep learning curve. But he was definitely super interested and in collaborating with me because he has lots of aspirations as we all do you know to do cool things outside of medicine and we should. And so it was it was very very supportive. And I’m I can’t say that it’s been 100 percent like anything right life. Nobody nobody’s going to support you 100 percent. Honestly it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. I thought I would be so insulted or you know. But really it hasn’t. It’s such a small amount of the feedback that I’ve gotten that it maybe you know makes me feel bad for one minute. But really that’s about it.

– Tarang Patel

No that’s good I think.

I think at least now it seems like more people are kind of open about their feelings and their and their just in general disenchantment with the traditional model of medical practice and I think more and more people are are open to you know branching out and doing something on the site or just completely changing you know the model in general. So you know with that being said now you were talking about how how you know you basically are in two full time situations. Now one with your traditional allergy practice and then with your wellness practice. So how are you balancing that.

– Amy Shah

Yeah good question. Figure that out. Luckily our kids go to school that’s quite long a day long. And so what I’ve been really doing is bashing my work on you know two options a week. Basically I’ve been figuring it out and slowly cutting down my clinical hours just so I can accommodate some more of the Wellness stuff. And I think that this year has been a lot better than last year and I’m doing a little more on the weekends and evenings just to fit it all in and I’m doing a little more travel which is fine because it’s you know it’s fine.

And I really pick and choose. I haven’t been going to everything that I can go to just picking and choosing. You know what. What works for me. The amazing thing about online world. Like for example if I do a wellness consults or collaboration almost everything I do now is online which is amazing. Of course I love interacting with people in real life but all the stuff I can do at home or on the computer on my phone in between. You know when you have like that downtime between patients like I do I take up every minute like there’s no more online shopping there’s no more like it to be like practising you know all that stuff is done like I have to I have to do all my work during that time.

– Tarang Patel

Gotcha. Well I mean you’re doing very very impressive job with it.

So let’s let’s talk about you know like you said a lot of other physicians kind of have aspirations of kind of branching into these type of fields and a lot of them specifically are looking into the wellness sector. So what would your advice be to someone who you know just starting that process.

– Amy Shah

My advice is just to go for it. Go for it. I think you have to match your interests with your strengths and the things that are going to make you money. I think that the biggest hard part. Unless you’re just doing it as a hobby and if it is just as a hobby. More power to you. Great. That’s amazing. But if you’re doing it as you know a you’re putting down the groundwork for a future career or site career. I think that you really need to see OK where’s my strengths where’s my interest and where is the where’s the money in this in strength and interests like where’s that intersection between all of that. Because I think I found that. Otherwise you’re just so in disarray. You’re doing like a million different things. I was like writing for these free blog sites but then I was you know doing this. And once they started to say OK where am I going to concentrate my efforts. I can grow this as a real business. That’s when it started to become clear to me like what I can say yes you I can say no to. And that’s helped a lot.

And that’s where I think you know just start doing what you love and then start to make that congruence that that area where all three meet

– Tarang Patel

that’s that’s good advice because I think a lot of people it’s kind of a vague notion of what they want to do but they’re not really you know they haven’t hammered down details so you really do have to look at it especially like you said if you want to do it as a business you have to do a really good critical analysis like you would do for any business that you’re starting.

– Amy Shah

Yeah for example.

I realize that you know people need to know that the places where you’d actually make this into business are you know smaller it’s a smaller pool of things you can be doing when you’re doing it just as a hobby or a side thing. It’s a huge pool of things that you could be doing but you just have to decide what you want from it. If for me it’s like this I’m studying I I want to do things that set the groundwork for me. It’s like investing in myself because I know that that investment will pay off in the future. So anything I do in this world like this wellness world I want to make sure that it it’s adding to that investment that groundwork that I’m setting and not just kind of like you know wasting 3 hours a day. Right.

– Tarang Patel

Right. And I mean you’ve you’ve done a really good job you’ve developed a brand now. And so you kind of need to make sure that anything you do subsequent to this will add and not detract or you know is contributing to your brand. So I think that’s that’s a very good point. Since you brought up investing this being a financial podcast. Yeah we have to talk about it. So how has Has doing this as a side gig and turning into a full on business impacted you financially.

– Amy Shah

Yes so that’s I’ve thought about that such a good question because there’s you know of course from afar. It’s really it’s gotten me. There’s many many avenues of revenue that I never had there’s so many different investment opportunities that I’ve had because of this for example I’m on I think you know because we were out at those events the Genexa board.

There’s a few things where I’m actually part of these companies and there’s a lot of potential there.

So it’s really exciting and there’s lots.

I think it’s more about than money because I don’t think that it has not yet replaced my clinical income. And I think that. But for me it makes me feel that I feel free like I feel like I do not need insurance based money anymore. If I go if I decide tomorrow that I want to do this as a full time job I took I definitely could. However I feel like a sense of you know commitment to my patients, my practice, the doctors that I work with and I kind of enjoy clinical medicine I feel like I get so much inspiration from there. So I think that my goal is to balance the two so that there are two independent revenue streams that I don’t have to depend on any one of those to you know satisfied

– Tarang Patel

Yeah I think that will I think that’s the thing is it doesn’t.

So a lot of people get with the you know the mindset of oh am I going to you know make money doing this.

And that’s not the only mindset. What you described about you know the freedom that you feel. Yeah that’s that’s that’s you know you can’t put a price on that. Now that being said you have to do it intelligently like you’re describing that you know you have certain you have to approach it like a business you have to do certain things that make sure that you are getting something out of it. But but it’s you know whether you replace your income full from full time clinical practice is probably not the point. The point is that you’re diversifying your revenues like you said and that that gives you a more stable foundation for the future and you’re not susceptible to those risks like you talked about earlier about the coding changes and things like that. So I think that’s something that you know people don’t pay attention to enough and whether it’s in the investment world whether you’re talking about investing in stocks real estate you know passive income from other ventures. I think you know these are the concepts that apply to starting your own business like this.

I think you know

– Amy Shah

yeah just being independent like feeling that if that insurance system change completely tomorrow what is your fallback option or what are you going to be doing. That’s going to make you happy also unsatisfied. So that was kind of that might. And it’s funny I think it’s a very unique. There are some people who have no aspirations outside of mainstream medicine and they just want to do things as a hobby. And that’s totally fine. I think you have to do what you’re passionate about and why you feel like even if there was zero money what you would do just for fun. But I love having the opportunity to do something that I really am passionate about. And it also could be a. Side slashed fallback career for me right now.

– Tarang Patel

Absolutely. I think that’s a great way to approach it and you’re doing a really good job with it. So let’s talk one. One thing you’ve you’ve inspired a lot of us to reach out of our traditional niches and kind of you know branch outside of it but in general you also are an inspiration amongst your followers and then with a lot of your friends locally about just you know becoming more healthy and improving our lifestyles that way.

So a lot of physicians in Arizona I’ve noticed have kind of you know started becoming a little bit more healthy. I myself have have have tried to incorporate some of your intermittent fasting tips but you know I think that a lot of physicians particularly those in training you know still even though we preach healthy lifestyles don’t don’t actually practice it. What would be one tip that you would you would recommend for a physician to kind of just improve their health?.

– Amy Shah

I think I didn’t realize that there is such a big connection between the mind and the body because we don’t really talk about that much in training in med school.

And I think that when I started looking into nutrition wellness and got health present I realized wow it’s not just this weird thing about stress and the brain and the talks you know the things that you are thinking about. And I think I really understood the mind body connection so much more and that’s why I’m so much more into yoga and doing these.

Doing all these like stress relieving activities because I think that physicians as physicians we feel like that’s a waste of time. Our what you know that has nothing to do with your body. And so I think tuning in to your mind your stress levels if you are a person who doesn’t sleep well and then you’re type A and you drink a ton of caffeine like you are not doing your body and he got you need to find at least a 10 minute thing that you enjoy as a release every day. And you know you’ll notice your health improving just from that.

– Tarang Patel

Perfect perfect. I think that’s that’s very good advice. Amy, I want to thank you. Doctor Dr. Shah. I want to thank you for participating in this podcast.

So I want to tell you you have a lot of social media outlets and a lot of endeavors. Let’s talk a little bit about where the listeners can find you and then talk about a little bit about what you are doing in the future as part of your your your different ventures.

Yes so I and most commonly found on Instagram because I’ve decided in the last year and this is a good piece of advice for you too and all the people it’s just don’t dip your toes in the pool or just jump in. You know like hey I think that for a long time I was trying to dip my toes and I just I’m like it is what it is I’m just going to put it out there. And so Instagram is @dramyshah

– Tarang Patel

Link-Up on the show notes for all these.

But yeah go ahead.

– Amy Shah

And then I have my Facebook group. Desi Carb Fix . then I have my Amy Shah MD  Facebook page. And I’ve been doing a lot more.

I started actually just in the last few months doing these mastermind’s for physicians and wellness practitioners because there’s a lot of common topics that come up. One of the biggest thing is law. Like what are the laws around wellness. We’re giving it based on the internet in general. And the second big topic that we talk about is products like how do you make a physical product. How do you make an informational product. How do you do consulting. A lot of these things that I’ve read all these mistakes so many mistakes I can’t even tell you.

I’m going to basically break it down for people because it’s really not that hard especially if you have the right connections

– Tarang Patel

good good and we can we’ll be able to find all these on your Web site the links to different groups and things. Perfect. Perfect. Well thank you. This was informative I think the listeners will get a lot out and I think a lot of it you know the inspiration is the most important thing that you provide and I think that you know it was one of the earlier people in this field but there’s still plenty of room so I hope she inspires you too to you know to kind of branch out of your traditional fields and go forward if you have an interest in whatever venture outside of medicine.

– Amy Shah

Yeah. Happy to help OK.

– Tarang Patel

Thanks for listening to another episode of The Dr. Money Matters podcast. I want to thank my guest today Dr. Amy Shah. I hope you found her story inspirational and as you try to develop your own side gigs her Endeavor’s know that success has not always come immediately but perseverance is the key.

You can follow me on Instagram at Diyar Amisha. That’s D-R am Y S H H or her website Aimee M.D. wellness dot com. She’s also created a popular Facebook group for those interested in healthier South Asian cooking called Bessey carb fix which has over 5000 members now I’ll link to all of those on the show notes and any comments or suggestions for me you can send e-mail.

Comments@doctormoneymatters.com all spelled out or you can you can post them in the Dr. Money Matters Facebook group or you can tweet to me as though put a link up on the show notes

thanks for joining us on another episode of Doctor money matters.

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