RPF0455-Marilyn_Brodeur
00:00:00.000 | Are you ready to make your next pro basketball, football, hockey, concert or live event unforgettable?
00:00:05.440 | Let Sweet Hop take your game to the next level.
00:00:08.080 | Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best premium tickets at stadiums, arenas and amphitheaters nationwide.
00:00:14.800 | Sweet Hop's online marketplace makes it easy to browse and book the best seats.
00:00:19.360 | With no hidden fees and a 100% purchase guarantee, you can feel confident when you book your premium LA tickets with Sweet Hop.
00:00:26.440 | Visit suitehop.com today.
00:00:30.960 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,
00:00:38.720 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:41.800 | Financial freedom often involves figuring out how to integrate the finances and the family life.
00:00:46.880 | And today I've invited Dr. Marilyn Broderon.
00:00:49.800 | She is the founder of the Infant Dental Center and she is going to share with us a little bit about her journey to that business.
00:00:56.720 | Welcome, Marilyn, to Radical Personal Finance.
00:00:58.960 | Hey, Joshua. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
00:01:02.200 | So you reached out to me after a show that I did, a Q&A show, in which a listener called in and said that she was conflicted over whether or not she should continue her professional education at the master's level,
00:01:14.920 | or whether she should put that on hold in order to be able to spend more time with her child.
00:01:19.640 | And you had some great commentary on that and had, you know, you've worked through that same challenge of decision yourself.
00:01:27.840 | So I wanted to invite you on to share your story.
00:01:29.720 | So share with us a little bit about your story, especially as it relates to finances and your family.
00:01:35.720 | Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:37.720 | You know, when you were doing that Q&A, I was riding in the, I was driving in my car and I was literally screaming out loud at the girl.
00:01:47.200 | Like, I was so, I was so, I felt so passionate about this.
00:01:50.920 | So, yeah, to answer your question about, you know, finances and family, I don't feel like those need to be mutually exclusive entities.
00:02:03.040 | Like, you need to, you can only choose one or the other, or you have to sacrifice a lot of family time to have decent finances.
00:02:10.720 | Like, that doesn't need to be the case.
00:02:12.720 | So, yeah.
00:02:14.720 | What did I say that got you so upset?
00:02:16.720 | It wasn't anything that you said.
00:02:21.440 | It was just her way of thinking.
00:02:25.680 | And I totally see where she's coming from, where she was thinking, you know, it has to be a one or the other.
00:02:33.280 | The Q&A was about a girl who's living in Hawaii and she didn't know, and she couldn't finish her master's program.
00:02:43.040 | And I was thinking in my head, you have a small child and you live in Hawaii.
00:02:47.360 | Like, go just live in Hawaii and be with your child and enjoy that time.
00:02:51.760 | And it's okay to push pause on things and then start back up again.
00:02:57.520 | So, I actually thought you gave really, really excellent, excellent insights.
00:03:02.480 | So, tell us your story.
00:03:03.840 | Have you always felt that family and finances didn't have to be in conflict?
00:03:07.920 | You know, I think I always wanted to feel that way, but I wasn't quite sure how to make that work.
00:03:15.840 | I was always a very precocious child.
00:03:19.520 | I told people when I was 10 that I wanted to be a neurosurgeon.
00:03:22.960 | And then I had a mid or quarter life crisis when I was 13 and realized that to become a neurosurgeon,
00:03:32.720 | you don't have to have so many years of schooling afterwards.
00:03:36.480 | And I come from a large family.
00:03:38.480 | I'm the oldest of five kids.
00:03:40.240 | And I loved living it.
00:03:41.920 | I loved being a part of my large family.
00:03:44.320 | And I didn't know how I would be able to make that work, how I would be able to be,
00:03:49.040 | how I would be able to have a mom and have this really rewarding family life
00:03:53.440 | and also be able to pursue professional things that I was interested in.
00:03:59.840 | So, that was always something I was thinking about.
00:04:03.280 | How do I make that balance work?
00:04:06.080 | And one of the things that I did was I graduated from high school when I was 17.
00:04:12.080 | And I got, as soon as I got accepted into college, I promptly got the course catalog
00:04:19.920 | and I mapped out my whole college career because I wanted to be able to graduate in three years.
00:04:25.280 | So, within the parameters and with good course selection, I was able to do that.
00:04:29.440 | So, I graduated from college when I was 20 and I had also gotten accepted into dental
00:04:36.240 | school right upon graduation.
00:04:37.680 | So, from all my calculations, I was going to be 24 when I graduated from dental school.
00:04:42.640 | And I did.
00:04:43.120 | So, yeah, my approach was I want to get finished with my schooling as soon as possible so that
00:04:53.280 | then I can figure out this work-life balance.
00:04:56.960 | - What did you do after school?
00:04:58.800 | - I did a residency program for, you know, unfortunately, I was actually only able to
00:05:08.080 | do it for nine months because nine months into my residency program, I got disabled.
00:05:15.600 | So, it was interesting.
00:05:17.280 | We were in a conference and someone was doing a lecture when all of a sudden I felt like
00:05:24.560 | I was going to pass out.
00:05:26.000 | And I wasn't pregnant.
00:05:27.200 | I was, you know, there was no reason for that to happen.
00:05:29.840 | It just kind of came on all of a sudden.
00:05:31.760 | And it actually turned out to be a quite serious medical condition that it wasn't going to
00:05:38.240 | affect my lifespan or anything.
00:05:41.280 | It was just extremely, extremely debilitating.
00:05:44.320 | So, at 25 years old, I found myself disabled and unable to work.
00:05:52.160 | And I was actually out on disability for about three, four years.
00:05:57.360 | You know, so it was interesting.
00:06:00.000 | I was surrounded in this very like hyper competitive environment.
00:06:08.160 | I was actually a resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital, which, you know, an incredible institution
00:06:14.560 | and lots of really incredible smart people.
00:06:16.480 | And I was in this environment and then all of a sudden everything stopped.
00:06:21.440 | - Right.
00:06:21.920 | - And it was a very introspective and almost like a very spiritual time for me because
00:06:27.840 | I had to really identify what made me, what made me me, what was actually important.
00:06:34.800 | Because this identity of being a hospital-based practicing dentist, that wasn't something
00:06:41.600 | that I was anymore.
00:06:42.880 | My body physically couldn't do it.
00:06:44.400 | - Wow.
00:06:45.440 | So, after a few years, you recovered.
00:06:48.960 | And is that when you started your specialist practice?
00:06:51.280 | - Yeah, yeah, it was.
00:06:54.800 | So, we figured out all the health stuff and I had a child.
00:07:00.560 | And in that timeframe, actually becoming a mom, I learned about my niche that I practice
00:07:06.720 | in.
00:07:06.880 | So, I do a laser procedure on babies for having difficulty feeding.
00:07:11.520 | And it was funny, actually.
00:07:14.560 | So, it's interesting that becoming a mom actually was very helpful for me professionally because
00:07:20.160 | I was able to understand from the patient side, from the mom's side, of being able to
00:07:24.320 | feed a baby who's having difficulties, what that feels like.
00:07:28.080 | And my lactation consultant actually suggested that I start a practice like this.
00:07:33.760 | But at the time she suggested it, we were about to make a move across the country.
00:07:40.080 | I had a three-month-old.
00:07:41.600 | My husband was about to start residency.
00:07:43.920 | I'm like, I'm in no position to even think about this.
00:07:46.720 | That's a cute idea.
00:07:47.760 | But no, I still need some time to figure out my place right now.
00:07:53.760 | But when my son was about a year and a half old, that's when I started to really think
00:08:03.200 | about that.
00:08:03.680 | I was to the point where I felt like I hit my stride as a new mother.
00:08:08.800 | And in our family life with my husband in residency, I was starting to get a little
00:08:14.880 | bored and wanted to be able to use my time and my skills.
00:08:19.680 | So I started thinking about what I could do.
00:08:21.920 | And that comment from my lactation consultant kept coming back to me.
00:08:26.240 | So when your son was a year and a half old, then you began your specialist practice.
00:08:32.720 | And your area of practice is you perform a laser surgery.
00:08:37.520 | It's called phrenectomy, is that right?
00:08:39.040 | Uh-huh, yep.
00:08:40.400 | So this for children, infants who are tongue-tied, then you perform this laser surgery that frees
00:08:47.440 | their tongues, which allows them to feed successfully and allows them to latch properly to their
00:08:53.040 | mother's breasts.
00:08:54.000 | So without this surgery, the mother would most likely be unable to breastfeed their
00:09:00.240 | child.
00:09:01.120 | Is that an accurate summary?
00:09:02.320 | Yeah, yeah.
00:09:03.840 | And sometimes the severity depends.
00:09:06.160 | Some babies are able to get by breastfeeding.
00:09:10.240 | In my estimation, the biggest benefit of this is that it makes the breastfeeding experience
00:09:15.840 | so much smoother.
00:09:17.040 | Which is a big deal.
00:09:17.840 | As a father, I will affirm that that is an incredibly important, if you can make breastfeeding
00:09:28.480 | not a big deal, that is a hugely valuable service that you provide.
00:09:32.400 | Oh my gosh, it's the best.
00:09:33.840 | I get emails from families who are saying, "Oh, I have a completely new baby.
00:09:38.800 | We're really being able to enjoy our newborn."
00:09:40.720 | And as someone who really values family time, this newborn period can be so fleeting.
00:09:47.120 | So if there's something to be done to make it more, where you can really savor those
00:09:53.600 | moments with your baby, it's the best.
00:09:56.080 | Standard advice that I give, and since a massive percentage of my audience is male, I'll give
00:10:01.120 | it here.
00:10:01.760 | A standard of advice that I give to prospective parents, people who are expecting their first
00:10:08.240 | child, as I say, there's so much emphasis placed on having a healthy, successful birthing
00:10:16.320 | experience.
00:10:16.800 | A lot of people have gone and educated themselves extensively about all their different options,
00:10:21.600 | especially among many new mothers who have studied a lot of the different details.
00:10:29.760 | They know exactly what they want.
00:10:31.360 | And so when my wife and I had our first baby, we felt very well prepared for the birthing
00:10:36.560 | experience.
00:10:37.120 | But nobody told me that the birth wasn't all there was.
00:10:41.760 | And all of a sudden, facing those first few days with all the challenges of breastfeeding,
00:10:45.440 | it blindsided me.
00:10:46.880 | And we felt woefully unprepared for that.
00:10:50.800 | And so that's become my standard piece of advice, is to say that, yes, do your homework
00:10:55.280 | on the birthing experience, but you should also make sure that you prepare, at least
00:11:00.960 | mentally prepare, that it's not necessarily all roses and butterflies from there on out.
00:11:06.320 | >> Oh, absolutely.
00:11:08.000 | You know, one of the pieces of advice I give to my postpartum moms is, you know, breastfeeding
00:11:13.680 | is a very natural thing, but it is not something that is naturally ingrained in us.
00:11:21.600 | It's still a learned skill.
00:11:23.440 | It's something that the baby and the mom needs to learn how to do.
00:11:28.000 | So and it's okay if they're struggling.
00:11:30.560 | >> No question.
00:11:31.280 | >> That's part of the process.
00:11:33.600 | >> Yeah.
00:11:34.240 | >> It can be.
00:11:35.600 | >> Yeah, absolutely.
00:11:36.800 | So in your commentary, connecting back, lest this become the lactation consultancy show,
00:11:43.920 | which is not the, although I am educated on the subject due to my desire to be a good
00:11:49.920 | father, it's not a specialty that I desire to teach others about.
00:11:52.640 | >> [LAUGH]
00:11:54.000 | >> So back to how this relates to finances.
00:11:58.640 | As I understand it, this business provides for you an ability to earn a healthy income
00:12:04.880 | while also giving you a significant amount of flexibility and timing flexibility because
00:12:11.280 | it's your own practice, because it's somewhat versatile.
00:12:13.680 | And this allows you to be extremely involved in the care for your son rather than needing
00:12:21.280 | to hire all those services out.
00:12:22.560 | Is that accurate?
00:12:23.200 | >> Yep.
00:12:24.160 | >> So tell us more.
00:12:25.200 | >> Absolutely.
00:12:25.760 | Yeah, there's so many great things with having my own business.
00:12:33.280 | So I actually worked with a business counselor when I initially had this idea.
00:12:37.200 | I was actually in Milan.
00:12:39.440 | I'm a travel hacker and we had a bunch of credit card and airline miles.
00:12:46.000 | And we were staying in this really nice hotel in Milan and like, wow, your life doesn't
00:12:50.960 | have to be, there don't have to be as many barriers as you think there are in your life.
00:12:54.800 | Like if I could stay here, maybe I could do something else crazy.
00:12:57.760 | Maybe I could start my own business.
00:12:59.200 | So I worked with a business counselor to flesh out all of the details.
00:13:04.640 | I kind of had a model of about how much money I thought I could make, how expensive all of my
00:13:10.080 | different supplies would be.
00:13:12.800 | And as I worked with the business counselor, it was starting to look like I would be working
00:13:19.360 | maybe three to five hours a week, clinical time.
00:13:24.400 | And when I sat down with her and we made all of these spreadsheets and came up with the
00:13:30.080 | different insurances, I would need the equipment, the upkeep, all employees, all of the different
00:13:36.720 | things I would need.
00:13:37.520 | I remember there was this moment I looked up at her and I asked her, I'm like, is this
00:13:41.840 | even allowed?
00:13:42.560 | Is this okay?
00:13:43.840 | Is this really okay for me to do this?
00:13:46.720 | And she said, Marilyn, yeah, of course you can do this.
00:13:50.320 | This is your life.
00:13:51.920 | If you want to, if your priority at this time is you want to be able to have more time with
00:13:58.400 | your child and you don't want to work full time, that's okay.
00:14:02.480 | The numbers are working out.
00:14:04.960 | So that's what I did.
00:14:05.760 | - Well, it shows the benefit of having a high hourly wage.
00:14:11.520 | Always recognizing that there are only three things that you can coordinate that are going
00:14:17.120 | to control the outcome of your income, the number of hours that you work, the amount
00:14:20.720 | of work that you output per hour, and the value in the marketplace of the output of
00:14:26.560 | your work.
00:14:27.280 | And so you've invested up front a tremendous number of hours of study, preparation, and
00:14:32.640 | professional training in order to be able to command a very high hourly wage, which
00:14:37.440 | opens up tremendous possibilities for you.
00:14:40.000 | And that's absolutely fantastic.
00:14:41.840 | - Yeah, you know, there was a lot of market research that I did.
00:14:45.680 | I was on some Facebook groups where other women had gone to different professionals
00:14:51.360 | all across the US.
00:14:53.040 | And so I had an idea of what the fee was, you know, across different states.
00:14:58.000 | And when I started putting all of the pieces together of how much it would cost for me
00:15:04.480 | to get all my equipment, all the supplies that were needed, I realized, like, I would
00:15:10.800 | be making a decent profit, especially in a setting where I did not have huge overhead
00:15:17.440 | from a dental office, you know.
00:15:20.240 | In my practice, I do not have dental plumbing.
00:15:23.760 | I do not have an x-ray unit.
00:15:25.360 | I don't have dental chairs.
00:15:26.800 | I don't have a lot of things that really can cut into the profit margin in a regular office
00:15:33.120 | setting.
00:15:33.520 | I was really able to pare down to exactly what I needed to be able to provide a good
00:15:38.240 | service to the families that I see.
00:15:40.400 | - Do you have staff?
00:15:42.800 | - I do, I do.
00:15:44.880 | Yeah, so because this is such a part-time, this is such part-time work that I do, like
00:15:50.000 | for instance, this week, I'm in my office six hours seeing babies this week.
00:15:56.800 | And I always need to have an assistant with me as I do the procedure to help stabilize
00:16:04.560 | the baby's head and swaddle them and whatnot.
00:16:07.200 | And I actually use college students.
00:16:09.760 | So I have two pre-dental students who are my assistants.
00:16:13.200 | It's really wonderful for them because the schedule, it's not a high amount of time that
00:16:17.360 | they need to commit.
00:16:18.240 | And it's also a really good learning experience for them, especially as they're going to
00:16:23.200 | try for dental school.
00:16:25.360 | - So let me clarify.
00:16:26.480 | So you do need dental assistance during the surgery.
00:16:29.280 | But beyond that, one of the potential benefits I could see of your business is that because
00:16:33.840 | your marketing is exclusive on one specific niche, you're not going to be fielding generalized
00:16:40.000 | telephone calls, which means it opens up that either you could probably answer your phone
00:16:44.080 | yourself or just simply have a very, a contracted answering service.
00:16:49.840 | And you don't need to handle office staff for customer inquiries and things like that.
00:16:55.200 | Is that accurate?
00:16:55.840 | - Yeah, yeah.
00:16:58.400 | So I do have one, I have a virtual assistant who does do some of that admin work and she
00:17:04.640 | will answer phone calls for me, especially if I'm on vacation or if I'm away for a while.
00:17:09.280 | I am actually the one who answers all, most, the majority of the phone calls I answer myself.
00:17:15.040 | 'Cause like you said, all of the inquiries are from new mothers who have questions about
00:17:21.920 | their baby being tongue-tied.
00:17:23.840 | I don't, and it was an interesting switch in the beginning, I was so nervous about building
00:17:29.840 | up my patient base that anytime the phone rang, I had to drop everything I was doing
00:17:33.440 | and answer the phone.
00:17:35.360 | Now I'm to the point where I'll answer, I'll return phone calls once a day.
00:17:40.400 | So I'll block off maybe a half an hour, an hour every day.
00:17:44.400 | And I call and talk to the families directly, which I've actually found has been really
00:17:48.960 | great, a really great practice builder for me.
00:17:52.240 | Most times when you call to schedule an appointment, you're talking to a receptionist who probably
00:17:57.680 | is familiar with the procedure maybe, but they probably don't work around it.
00:18:02.560 | Whereas when I call these moms back, a lot of times I can answer a lot of really detailed
00:18:08.240 | questions for them.
00:18:09.040 | I can put their mind at ease.
00:18:10.640 | And I also have a really low no-show rate as well.
00:18:14.160 | That can be a big problem in medical offices, people just not showing up to their appointments.
00:18:18.880 | But because people are talking to me, the doctor directly, they know that if they don't
00:18:24.400 | come, they know who it is that they're putting out in that setting.
00:18:29.760 | So…
00:18:30.240 | That's fantastic.
00:18:31.840 | Yeah, it works really well.
00:18:33.360 | Now you built this business starting in a new city where you and your husband had just
00:18:38.560 | moved to.
00:18:39.520 | How did you market and start to establish yourself in the new location?
00:18:44.800 | Yeah, so I…
00:18:45.920 | That's a good question.
00:18:49.600 | I knew of breastfeeding support groups and I was actually breastfeeding my own child
00:18:56.960 | at the time.
00:18:57.520 | So I went to one of them.
00:18:58.880 | I also knew different midwives and lactation consultants.
00:19:03.200 | I reached out to them, just introduced myself.
00:19:06.240 | Because my husband's also a physician, I know other physicians in the area.
00:19:10.800 | So I know some pediatricians.
00:19:13.120 | And once they found out about my services, this isn't something that a lot of pediatricians
00:19:19.600 | are super familiar with.
00:19:20.720 | So if they had a baby where they had a question about it, they would send the babies to me
00:19:26.960 | for evaluations and treatment if needed.
00:19:29.200 | A lot of it ended up being through Facebook mom support groups.
00:19:37.600 | You have to go where your clients are.
00:19:40.880 | So a lot of moms get respite from going on Facebook and kind of talking to each other
00:19:46.960 | about their day or what's going on.
00:19:48.880 | Adult communication.
00:19:50.240 | Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:19:52.480 | Exactly.
00:19:53.200 | And in those groups, sometimes people would tag me or they're like, "Oh, you should go
00:19:59.040 | to her.
00:20:00.000 | She's really great."
00:20:00.960 | And then the more I started seeing mothers, the more word of mouth got out with what a
00:20:06.800 | valuable service this can be.
00:20:09.440 | And in fact, it's funny, I was telling you about that national Facebook group.
00:20:14.880 | They have a preferred providers list.
00:20:16.960 | And I ended up getting on that list.
00:20:18.880 | And from that, so I live in Corpus Christi, Texas.
00:20:21.360 | It's about three hours south of Houston.
00:20:23.120 | And from that, I've had families travel from as far away as New Mexico, Louisiana.
00:20:28.880 | Routinely, I'll have people come travel to see me from within a three-hour radius of
00:20:35.600 | where I am.
00:20:36.320 | So people know about me.
00:20:40.000 | Well, so I'm going to draw a couple of business lessons for the broader audience, things that
00:20:45.760 | I observe in your story.
00:20:47.840 | First and foremost, I don't think that this topic is or should be restricted in the context
00:20:56.080 | of stay-at-home mothering or specifically in terms of moms versus dads.
00:21:01.280 | I think it's rather obvious that babies have a much bigger need for mom during the early
00:21:06.240 | years, but that doesn't mean that dad doesn't need to be involved.
00:21:08.480 | And this has been my vision all the way through.
00:21:12.000 | In order to be able to produce the type of family that my wife and I dream of, it requires
00:21:17.680 | a lot more active approach.
00:21:20.320 | And all of us make this choice every single day.
00:21:23.280 | All of us make the choice to be engaged in the jobs and the businesses and the careers
00:21:27.680 | that we are involved in.
00:21:29.520 | And in terms of is there a choice that has to be made, mutually exclusive choice between
00:21:36.800 | finances and family, on the one hand, no, there doesn't have to be a mutually exclusive
00:21:42.000 | choice.
00:21:42.320 | They're not necessarily opposed to one another.
00:21:45.200 | But on the other hand, yes, there are ways of earning money that are going to conflict
00:21:49.680 | with working as a family.
00:21:51.600 | There's no chance in the world you're going to get me to sign up to be a politician at
00:21:56.720 | this stage of my family's life.
00:21:57.840 | There's no chance that you're going to get me to sign up as the CEO of a publicly traded
00:22:01.760 | corporation.
00:22:02.640 | I mean, you cannot function in those environments on any kind of reasonable work schedule, and
00:22:08.720 | you are at the mercy of your boards of directors or other people.
00:22:13.200 | And so if you desire to have flexibility and freedom, you're going to have to make
00:22:17.120 | different choices.
00:22:17.760 | Doesn't mean you got to be broke, but it does mean you have to make different choices.
00:22:21.440 | And one of the tremendous benefits that we face, as we record this in 2017, is it's never
00:22:28.560 | been easier to set up a specialized cottage industry, so to speak.
00:22:33.440 | And cottage industry doesn't mean you have to make soap in your kitchen and sell it for
00:22:36.960 | a dollar a bar.
00:22:38.240 | I mean, that's great.
00:22:39.040 | People do well with making soap, but you can make soap or you can slice babies' tongues
00:22:43.680 | as they should be sliced with a laser and make a little bit more than a dollar per ton.
00:22:48.640 | So that's the benefit that we face.
00:22:51.120 | And from a business perspective, by choosing a very focused, very tight specialty, you
00:22:58.720 | can turn the marketing machine to work for you.
00:23:01.440 | If you were just a general dentist, if you were one of many, then the only basis of your
00:23:08.000 | referability is the fact that, yes, you're a nice dentist and you are effective at what
00:23:13.520 | you're doing and your pricing.
00:23:16.480 | And so you're in a world of commodities where you have commodity-based pricing and it's
00:23:20.880 | very, very challenging to differentiate yourself.
00:23:23.520 | But by choosing a very small specialty, something that has personal importance to you, something
00:23:28.880 | in which you're going to be very effectively connecting with your patients, that opens
00:23:34.000 | up the ability to be referable.
00:23:37.440 | And you don't have a ton of competition.
00:23:39.760 | And when somebody needs your services, if we had a baby that had tongue problems and
00:23:46.000 | we needed it to go, we would drive to Orlando, we'd drive to Tampa in an instant to get it
00:23:50.000 | done because you know you want to work with a specialist.
00:23:53.280 | And that can be applied in all of our businesses.
00:23:56.640 | That can be applied in financial planning.
00:23:58.120 | That can be applied in investments.
00:24:00.000 | That can be applied in real estate.
00:24:01.160 | That can be applied in engineering.
00:24:03.000 | And with the simple ability to hang out your shingle through the use of a web page and
00:24:08.760 | to market your services through a national and international Facebook group, it opens
00:24:12.960 | up the possibility for so many of us to follow your path, Marilyn, and enjoy some of the
00:24:18.720 | same benefits.
00:24:19.720 | - Yeah, you know, I was actually just having a conversation with a girlfriend of mine.
00:24:24.480 | So complicating our family life is my husband is a ER physician.
00:24:29.360 | He just finished his residency.
00:24:31.240 | So his schedule's all over the place.
00:24:33.160 | If I was working in a dental office and regular, you know, I've seen patients from eight to
00:24:38.360 | five every day, you know, sometimes he's off on a random Wednesday or Thursday.
00:24:43.760 | I would miss those days off.
00:24:46.240 | So having something that's a little more flexible is extremely important to us.
00:24:51.600 | So anyway, one of my other friends who's married to a colleague of my husband's, she was a
00:24:57.200 | lawyer, and she worked for the DA, and she had these horrible daytime working hours.
00:25:04.800 | When her husband was working night shifts, forget about it.
00:25:07.480 | Like, they didn't see each other at all.
00:25:10.320 | And she ended up quitting her job because it was just way too hard on her marriage.
00:25:14.600 | So I was talking with her, and you know, she was talking about wanting to start up her
00:25:19.080 | own law firm.
00:25:20.080 | She was interested in the building that I had gotten my office in.
00:25:23.760 | She was looking into all of these things.
00:25:25.560 | And one of the suggestions I made was, you know, why don't you, you could specialize
00:25:32.600 | your law practice to looking over physician employment contracts.
00:25:37.360 | And that's all you do.
00:25:39.120 | And that's something where you don't even need an office.
00:25:41.080 | They can email you the contract.
00:25:42.600 | You can review it at your leisure.
00:25:44.240 | If your husband is off in the morning, you guys could go to the beach or go do something
00:25:48.560 | together and then review the employment contract in the afternoon when he's sleeping.
00:25:52.800 | You know, like you have the flexibility to be able to do that.
00:25:56.280 | So I'm happy to report that she's starting to look into that business model for herself,
00:26:02.640 | you know, and especially how you're talking about with these cottage industries.
00:26:06.680 | What sets you apart?
00:26:08.720 | Why should someone go to you?
00:26:11.280 | For me, they should go to me because I've traveled to other dentist offices.
00:26:15.040 | I've learned specifically how to do this.
00:26:17.240 | I'm very comfortable treating babies with a laser.
00:26:21.160 | That's not something I learned how to do in dental school.
00:26:23.920 | That was something that I went out and got on my own.
00:26:27.040 | So I am very different from any other dentist in my area because of that.
00:26:33.080 | And with my friend wanting to do physician employment contracts, that's something that
00:26:37.800 | she can learn about.
00:26:38.960 | She can gain the expertise to do that.
00:26:41.040 | She can look at some of our friends and look at their contracts and see what amendments
00:26:46.200 | they were making.
00:26:48.960 | There are ways that you can gain a skill where you can become an expert in that area.
00:26:54.360 | Absolutely.
00:26:55.360 | And you can become an expert in a relatively short period of time with study and focused
00:27:01.240 | study.
00:27:02.600 | Most areas of expertise, some areas, for example, law, will build on a general understanding,
00:27:08.440 | a generalized legal knowledge.
00:27:10.240 | But most areas of expertise, a few hundred hours of focused study, of diligent investigation,
00:27:17.080 | and you can become an expert.
00:27:18.880 | And that becomes a huge time-saving device.
00:27:20.960 | I want to point out a couple of the benefits also for your friend to spark our audience's
00:27:25.960 | thinking.
00:27:27.400 | By having a small specialized practice like that, and she's in an ideal situation where
00:27:32.200 | she's not required to make a huge amount of money immediately.
00:27:35.520 | This is one of the biggest challenges that professionals often face, is if you are required
00:27:40.400 | to support a high-expense family life immediately, or if you're required to support a high-expense
00:27:49.160 | personal life based upon your past expenses, i.e., I have $200,000 of student loans that
00:27:54.240 | are not in deferral.
00:27:55.600 | This can be a real challenge to start a business because you need to make a lot of money quickly.
00:28:00.840 | And generally, specialty businesses are going to be slower in the beginning.
00:28:06.800 | You could go and make more money working as a dentist just if you just go right into the
00:28:10.920 | mainstream approach than if you start with having a series of small referrals because
00:28:16.360 | referrals take time.
00:28:18.140 | But on the backside, you can cut so much in expenses.
00:28:21.800 | You can cut out the need to maintain an office.
00:28:25.360 | And in most metropolitan areas like mine or probably like Corpus Christi, just to have
00:28:30.560 | a relatively small reasonable office, if you share the space with a bunch of other people,
00:28:34.760 | you're at $1,000 a month.
00:28:36.120 | If you have any kind of private space where your clients are coming in, you're at $1,500
00:28:39.920 | a month by the time you go all in and include all the extra expenses.
00:28:44.140 | You can probably cut out any need for staff requirements.
00:28:46.800 | A simple answering service or virtual assistant to help with scheduling, you can replace a
00:28:52.000 | lot of those functions.
00:28:53.160 | That eliminates the need for employees.
00:28:54.960 | Employees are expensive.
00:28:55.960 | That eliminates the need for a lot of insurance and things like that.
00:28:59.080 | And you can cut a few thousand dollars off of most businesses by turning them into cottage
00:29:05.320 | industries or "lifestyle businesses" instead of trying to be big and huge.
00:29:10.440 | Well, count the hours.
00:29:12.080 | Let's say that you're billing at $200, $200, $300 an hour.
00:29:16.920 | Let's just use $200.
00:29:17.920 | If you can cut $3,000 a month out of your expenses at $200 an hour, that's 15 hours
00:29:24.400 | less of work.
00:29:26.040 | That's just pure expenses right off the top.
00:29:28.400 | And so that's a huge benefit for professionals who've developed a skill and a knowledge and
00:29:34.160 | an expertise in an area.
00:29:35.680 | Yeah.
00:29:36.680 | I'd say overhead is really, really important to look at.
00:29:40.440 | So my husband and I, we think of my overhead in terms of baby units.
00:29:47.200 | So how many babies do I need to treat in order to meet my rent?
00:29:57.500 | In order to meet all of my licensing fees, my payroll?
00:30:03.040 | And I was very mustache-y about how I ended up setting up my practice.
00:30:08.760 | Is this a truly necessary expense?
00:30:12.320 | Is there another way we can go around this?
00:30:14.320 | Could I have a smaller office?
00:30:16.880 | All of these things.
00:30:17.880 | And that really benefited me, especially while I was starting out.
00:30:21.000 | So I can share my baby unit.
00:30:23.480 | I'm actually at about five to six baby units a month to break even.
00:30:28.840 | So anything over that, I'm making profit.
00:30:32.040 | That's great.
00:30:33.200 | That's awesome.
00:30:34.200 | Now, one of the things that you had written in your communication to me after that episode,
00:30:38.760 | which was 417, in which you responded, you wrote to me that you have a number of benefits
00:30:44.340 | because you do work and you do earn income.
00:30:47.040 | That gives you – and yes, it's very, very flexible.
00:30:49.680 | You get a lot of the benefits of being a stay-at-home mom, but you get other benefits as well.
00:30:54.000 | What are some of those benefits that you get from maintaining your medical practice?
00:30:58.000 | Yeah, so sure.
00:31:00.000 | So one of them is health insurance.
00:31:02.520 | When my husband became a grown-up doctor – he's not in residency anymore – he lost his insurance.
00:31:12.280 | He became an independent contractor.
00:31:14.040 | We had to get insurance ourselves.
00:31:16.360 | And through the Obamacare marketplace, the insurance in Texas was horrible.
00:31:20.520 | You could only get HMOs.
00:31:24.400 | Especially considering my health problems, if I need to go to the doctor, I wanted to
00:31:28.720 | be able to have strong coverage.
00:31:31.040 | And because I had a business and I have W-2 employees, I was actually able to qualify
00:31:37.920 | for a group insurance through a PPO because of the structure of my business.
00:31:45.160 | And then I'm also able to pay the insurance premiums through the income that I earn from
00:31:50.920 | my business as well.
00:31:52.120 | So that's a really great thing for a family.
00:31:56.640 | I'm also able to contribute to retirement plans.
00:31:59.680 | So now that my husband has started earning real doctor money, we've bumped up in our
00:32:06.320 | tax bracket.
00:32:07.320 | So the name of the game right now for us in our situation is we want to put as much money
00:32:11.640 | into tax-deferred accounts as possible.
00:32:14.600 | And because he's able to put money into a SEP IRA, I've been putting money into a SEP
00:32:22.120 | IRA, but now I'm starting an individual 401(k) so I can contribute an additional $18,000
00:32:28.400 | every year on top.
00:32:30.120 | So anyway, it just overall is a really great situation for a family with tax deferrals.
00:32:35.840 | I can also write off my cell phone, our internet service, a lot of other things, our business
00:32:43.800 | expenses that I can write off.
00:32:45.800 | And especially being in a higher tax bracket, that's a pretty huge savings because our after-tax
00:32:53.520 | money is like 30%.
00:32:57.320 | You have to take off like 30% of whatever we have to get to our after-tax dollars.
00:33:02.880 | So anything we can be writing off free tax is saving us money.
00:33:06.800 | That's fantastic.
00:33:08.680 | How about the flip side?
00:33:12.200 | Have you had any regrets along this journey?
00:33:14.720 | Is there anything that because of your decision to pursue building this practice and not to
00:33:20.920 | stay exclusively as a stay-at-home mom, have you had any regrets or disadvantages from
00:33:24.840 | this path?
00:33:25.840 | In the motherhood aspect, not so much.
00:33:35.720 | Occasionally I have some mom guilt because I have to do admin activities and my son was
00:33:40.160 | watching Rescue Box a little longer than I would have liked.
00:33:46.600 | But on the motherhood front, really not so much because it is a fairly limited time that
00:33:53.680 | we need somebody to be watching our kids or we need someone to be here.
00:33:58.200 | Professionally, I do deal with a little bit of regret.
00:34:04.800 | What I was trained to do in dental school, I don't do any of that.
00:34:09.160 | I haven't done a root canal in six years.
00:34:11.800 | I haven't done a denture filling.
00:34:13.360 | I don't do any of that anymore.
00:34:14.840 | I haven't picked up a drill in years.
00:34:17.640 | And so for some, it can seem like this was a waste of education because I spent four
00:34:24.280 | years and then an additional year in my residency program developing expertise in that.
00:34:30.600 | But I don't see it that way.
00:34:32.200 | I see that it's almost like that time was necessary to get my professional credentialing
00:34:39.800 | so that I'm a licensed dentist.
00:34:43.640 | But that's almost like that time is a sunk cost.
00:34:47.080 | I do have no desire to do those procedures anymore, so I don't.
00:34:54.440 | I think our society is going to try to put mom guilt on you no matter what you do.
00:34:58.800 | Yeah, right.
00:34:59.800 | There's always that.
00:35:00.800 | You can never be good enough to match up with all the moms on Pinterest.
00:35:06.880 | Right, right.
00:35:07.880 | And that's okay.
00:35:10.320 | One of the benefits, just a couple things that occurred to me that I was kind of expecting
00:35:13.880 | you to say, one of the benefits I would imagine is that by maintaining your professional work,
00:35:18.920 | it does give you more opportunity to continue adult conversations.
00:35:22.480 | I think that's a huge benefit.
00:35:24.480 | Oh, very much so.
00:35:26.640 | One of the biggest costs for full-time mothers is often that their adult interaction can
00:35:33.680 | become so diminished, and that's a huge, huge cost.
00:35:37.400 | And now my wife and I have to work constantly at it to make sure that there's lots of adult
00:35:41.480 | interaction for her.
00:35:42.480 | And so I've got to imagine that's a big benefit for you.
00:35:44.920 | Yeah, there is something nice to being ... Women, we're multidimensional.
00:35:53.440 | We have that motherhood hat that we put on, but then it's also nice to be able to have
00:35:57.160 | this professional hat that I put on.
00:35:59.320 | I can speak very intelligently about the different peer-reviewed journals on ankyloglossia and
00:36:07.360 | tongue-tie.
00:36:08.360 | I can talk about laser physics to concerned parents.
00:36:12.480 | I've been invited to speak at the local children's hospital at different events, talking about
00:36:18.480 | breastfeeding.
00:36:19.480 | And it's nice to be able to use my brain in a different way.
00:36:22.840 | Absolutely.
00:36:23.840 | Is there anything I've missed?
00:36:25.840 | Anything you'd like to share with my audience?
00:36:27.880 | You've got the soapbox.
00:36:28.960 | Anything you'd like to share as we wrap up?
00:36:30.280 | Oh, goodness.
00:36:31.280 | I should have thought about ... I should have just thought about my soapbox more.
00:36:36.480 | Well, I will say when starting a practice or a firm or a business of this sort, there's
00:36:45.040 | always the element of having no idea if it will actually work or not.
00:36:52.240 | And having that fear is completely normal.
00:36:56.760 | You have to build up the courage and decide, "You know what?
00:37:03.000 | I'm going to expend X amount of dollars."
00:37:06.520 | And for me, I actually had a time limit.
00:37:08.520 | I had a year.
00:37:09.520 | I was going to really dedicate a year of my extra brainpower to building this practice.
00:37:15.200 | And if it didn't work ... And after a year, I would reevaluate.
00:37:17.640 | If it didn't work, I could walk away and I wouldn't feel bad about it.
00:37:20.800 | I knew I had given it a good try.
00:37:23.840 | So it's okay to feel scared or nervous about doing this.
00:37:30.040 | And that's part of the joy.
00:37:34.120 | Now I'm two and a half years into this and my practice definitely works.
00:37:37.560 | And it's a really beautiful situation for our family.
00:37:40.480 | I think almost all of us who've started a business spend some amount of our ... There's
00:37:47.560 | a quote.
00:37:48.560 | I can't come up with it.
00:37:49.560 | Along the lines of, "50% of your time is spent in a euphoric state, just so excited about
00:37:56.120 | how rich you're going to be and how great your life is going to be, just absolute euphoria.
00:38:00.800 | The other 50% has spent in absolute terror."
00:38:04.160 | And they cycle back and forth pretty consistently.
00:38:06.760 | Oh yeah.
00:38:07.760 | Oh yeah.
00:38:08.760 | I definitely went through all of those changes.
00:38:11.760 | Oh, and one other thing I thought of.
00:38:14.240 | So I'm still in close contact with a lot of my classmates from dental school.
00:38:19.120 | And a lot of them are in the throes of having their own general dentistry practice or their
00:38:23.640 | specialty practices.
00:38:24.640 | And they have a career.
00:38:27.640 | They have everything set up.
00:38:31.120 | And I don't.
00:38:33.040 | My life doesn't look that way.
00:38:35.480 | It's okay for your life to look different than your peers do.
00:38:41.360 | Sometimes I feel like your career is this sacred priority that you have to do what's
00:38:47.920 | good for your career.
00:38:49.440 | You have to make this move because it's good for your career.
00:38:52.080 | Do this thing because it's good for your career.
00:38:54.840 | Sometimes it's okay to do things that's good for you as a person, that's good for you as
00:39:00.400 | a mom, good for you as a wife, good for you as a human being who likes to go to the beach.
00:39:08.720 | It's okay to give yourself permission to make decisions in that capacity.
00:39:13.240 | I've got to imagine your husband's a big encouragement to you there.
00:39:16.920 | I know my wife is for me because I've made many decisions.
00:39:20.740 | And I've often felt the same thing as I've left the career path, the normal career path
00:39:27.540 | of working as a financial advisor and gone in other directions.
00:39:31.680 | I know that I've faced so many decisions where I've said, "Wait a second.
00:39:36.280 | This is going to cause me to be looked down upon.
00:39:38.840 | This is going to cause me not to be the big hot shot that I could have been.
00:39:42.280 | I know I'm walking away from this notoriety and this public acclaim.
00:39:46.120 | And I know I'm walking away from this particular career benefit."
00:39:49.840 | And I so value she's so good at saying, "Just hold on a second.
00:39:54.020 | Why are you doing what you're doing and are you focusing on your design or are you trying
00:39:58.460 | to live somebody else's dream?"
00:40:00.320 | Right, right.
00:40:01.320 | Yeah, as an anecdote, my husband went to University of Maryland for medical school.
00:40:08.600 | And there's a thing in March called Match Day where everyone in front of their whole
00:40:14.280 | medical school reads where they're going for residency.
00:40:18.920 | And so I was there at Match Day and there were a lot of very like sexy sounding places
00:40:27.060 | that people were going like Yale and Harvard and UPenn and all of these like really incredible
00:40:32.380 | residency programs.
00:40:34.520 | And you're picked based off of your ranking that the program ranks you and also that the
00:40:41.660 | student ranks the program and then there's a computerized match.
00:40:45.380 | And my husband got up there and he read Corpus Christi, Christus Spahn Medical Center and
00:40:51.620 | all these people in Baltimore, they're like, "Oh, I wonder if that's a low priority."
00:40:59.620 | He got matched really low down on his rank list or something.
00:41:03.420 | But Corpus Christi was actually our number one choice.
00:41:06.780 | And it was our number one choice because it's by the beach.
00:41:10.620 | He ended up getting the residency program, how they structure it was very family friendly.
00:41:17.580 | They get excellent training.
00:41:20.300 | They do a ton of procedures.
00:41:22.300 | It was an all around really great program.
00:41:25.020 | The only quote unquote negative about it was that nobody had really heard of it.
00:41:30.420 | And it was out in the middle of nowhere.
00:41:33.180 | And as we were making our rank list, I remember looking at him and we were talking about it.
00:41:37.580 | I'm like, "We don't owe anyone anything as far as on our resume, we need to look a certain
00:41:44.180 | way."
00:41:45.180 | It doesn't matter.
00:41:46.180 | If this fits with our family, that's what we need to do.
00:41:49.980 | And as your virtual financial advisor, it warms my heart.
00:41:52.900 | Texas, growing economy, not a dying economy like many other places, no state income taxes,
00:41:58.860 | low cost of living.
00:42:01.300 | It's a great place.
00:42:02.300 | I know, I know.
00:42:03.300 | We love growing income taxes.
00:42:04.300 | Well, Marilyn, thank you for coming on the show.
00:42:08.300 | I appreciate your sharing your story and I hope that it serves as inspiration to so many
00:42:13.420 | other people listening that you can sit down and you can take an inventory of your skills
00:42:18.860 | and your abilities and you can design an opportunity that'll help you to fit your life goals while
00:42:24.000 | also meeting your financial goals such that your highest priorities, whatever they be,
00:42:28.540 | can be fulfilled and finances and family both included in that.
00:42:32.260 | So thank you for coming on today.
00:42:33.260 | Yeah, yeah.
00:42:34.260 | Thank you for having me, Joshua.
00:42:35.260 | Yeah, I hope this helps spur some thinking in someone else who's listening.
00:42:40.900 | And I forgot your website is infantdentalcenter.com.
00:42:44.440 | So if anybody in the Texas or surrounding region and has a child with tongue tie or
00:42:52.700 | what's the other name of the other condition?
00:42:54.660 | Tongue tie or what?
00:42:55.660 | Ankle colosseum is the medical term for it.
00:42:58.820 | That would be hilarious if somebody came to my practice because they listen to me a lot
00:43:02.940 | of the time.
00:43:03.940 | You never know.
00:43:04.940 | There's probably lots of crunchy.
00:43:05.940 | My wife and I are pretty crunchy these days.
00:43:07.340 | There's probably lots of crunchy listeners who are looking for services like yours.
00:43:10.860 | I love it.
00:43:11.860 | I love it.
00:43:12.860 | Thanks, Marilyn.
00:43:13.860 | Call me.
00:43:14.860 | I'd be happy to talk to you about your breastfeeding challenges.
00:43:19.940 | This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources.
00:43:25.580 | Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com.
00:43:28.940 | Don't just dream about paradise.
00:43:32.860 | Live it with Fiji Airways.
00:43:34.620 | Escape the ordinary with Fiji Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale.
00:43:38.700 | Immerse yourself in white sandy beaches or dive deep into coral reefs.
00:43:43.660 | Fiji Airways has flights to Nadi starting at just $748 for light and just $798 for value.
00:43:51.260 | Discover your tropical dreams at FijiAirways.com.
00:43:54.620 | That's FijiAirways.com.
00:43:56.300 | From here to happy.
00:43:57.820 | Flying direct with Fiji Airways.
00:43:59.340 | (upbeat music)