Episode Transcript
Daniel Wrenne: What's up guys? Hope you're having a great day. I am excited to share my conversation today with Dr. Mum Kamar. Hi. She has a really interesting story. she started out in, as a physician in traditional practice and had some big challenges come up and ultimately they propelled her in a different direction, a completely different direction.
at first, not so much. she at first transitioned into. more of like a integrative medicine type, practice that she created herself. but ultimately she transitioned into becoming an investor in real estate and in particular land investing, which is kind of a, a, a niche within real estate. And so her story, and that transition and how she was able to work through that, is a lot of what we talk about today.
And, you know, You might imagine it was a challenging decision for her to transition out of medicine, and there was a lot of guilt associated and a lot of of pressure around that. But she shares how education was really important and having a plan and a team in place and support systems. All those sorts of things were really, really key to her being able to make this big decision.
We also talk about mindset and how, how important that is and, and having, good awareness of your values and alignment with the actions that you're taking, which allow you to really focus, and ultimately take actions even when they're big, scary things that require a lot of courage.
So her story's really interesting. she was able kind of lean into that, some of these big scary decisions and had the courage, to make some big changes. And you can tell today, like from our conversation, she's happy, she's really doing what she's meant to do. And, and it shows from our conversation.
So, without further ado, we will jump into our conversation now.
Daniel Wrenne: Monta, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Daniel, for having me. I, am excited about our conversation. I know you've had some, a lot of stuff going on and we were just catching up about a few of the things. but you've had a, kind of an interesting transition from working, well, I guess originally we were talking before you started in traditional healthcare working as a physician and had had some burnout and made a, a pretty big shift into starting your own integrative medicine practice, and, and now you've been focusing more on land investing and even teaching other physicians how to do that. And so you've had quite a few different transitions, but I'm just curious, like after spending, you know, better than anybody in a lot of our audience does is like there's so much time dedicated to the training of becoming a physician and after spending so much time and effort in training to become a physician, What was, it had to have been some pretty big motivation to make a shift out of that, into something especially like completely different.
Like I can get like the starting your own practice thing. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. But like investing in land, like what's the motivation behind like the shift to going a different direction like that. And then is there any like, guilt around that? Does it feel you're kind of like leaving something behind?
Dr. Mamta: Yeah, that's a great question. And in fact you have summarized it so well, Daniel. This journey has been long getting into medicine. First of all, it's not easy. And after all that struggle getting into medicine, finishing the training, and I finished my residency in 2012, like exactly 11 years ago.
And I never thought I would be ever pivoting out because I thought I always loved medicine. I always wanted to continue to practice medicine, just being at dental physician, have a boring job, and just live in a town where, initially moved to and then just live in a beautiful house and then that's how life would be.
But as life changes, right? At that time I had just one little girl who had, I did have some, complexities around that, but she was okay. But the second child, which I had within two years of my attending job, was a complex pregnancy, had a complex, medically complex child. So that's what started that struggle feeling that I wanted to stay in medicine, but I didn't have that much time.
The time was something which was so scarce and I found myself just trying to kind of juggle and see was med medicine still a priority for me, or is it these kids and the family? And with time that it was not like in a day I realized that, oh no, I do wanna kind of cut down my work in clinical medicine and do other things.
But within six to seven years, after switching back and forth different jobs, different positions, different hours of work, just to see if I was able to have more personal time. Eventually in 2018, I switched to part-time hospital job. And then I had some more health issues and then I started degrading medicine training that was initially not per, it was not a career move, it was for my own health issues.
And I was like, you know what? This is great. I feel like this has changed my life and it is very different from traditional medicine. So how about, let me start practicing that because I was still not contemplating going totally away from medicine. So that's when I started this online telemedicine practice in pandemic.
But again, I never had a business background, so I didn't know how to kind of market, get clients and this and that, but also as a site gig, I had started in land investing, that was in 2018 as well, so that, whatever changes I was making in my job position, I was just building another side gig, which would have a solid income for me and provide some financial freedom for me and our family so that I could, I didn't need to trade my time with work, as an employee.
So that's when I realized that even though now the traditional medicine was gone and now the two things which were left was this integrative medicine and the land investing and I was trying to work on both. And I realized that with land investing I was able to get through those faster and I started to develop team around it.
That business just continued to grow. And integrative medicine, not necessarily. It's just different business, right? So it was, I, I started to just face those struggles of business owner, like how to run this business and it kept on loading the skills on the real estate side, which I kept on implementing.
And it seemed like at one point I had to choose, and this was basically actually in February, 2023, this year, I was like, you know what? I cannot just keep on doing these two things. Nothing is making sense. And a lot of physicians were interested in learning land investing at that time. I made this hard decision that I'm not gonna pursue integrated medicine at this point.
At one point that's still a possibility, but right now I just wanna focus on the real estate because this is not just the freedom for me for right now, it's for my own future, my kids, for the next generation freedom as well. It was a little bit of hard decision to make, but I really think for, with all my past years of slowly just going into that road l less traveled, I think I was almost getting to the point where I just, I was conscious and I just made a decision that okay, I don't have to keep on doing the things which is just expected out of me just because I'm a physician.
Daniel Wrenne: Was there any guilt around that? Leaving medicine? There was a
Dr. Mamta: lot of guilt around that, like throughout the pandemic when I quit clinical medicine, the traditional and then integrative I believe the integrative practice also came around with that guilt. I really think, at my core I didn't want to do it and that's why I would never market it and I would keep in doing the real estate gig and it started to give me results and I'll do more and more of that.
I had, multiple life coaches. I have had worked with two multiple, yeah, two life coaches, and I think the main issue was this. I don't know why I love medicine. I wanna continue to do medicine, but when it comes to action taking, my whole day goes in the real estate, not in medicine. And that's when they introduce this idea, what if you just don't expect anything out of it?
If you are doing something each day, just keep on taking it that way. And there were few instances, when a lot of my friends who had met in the virtual world, after the pandemic, we started to meet face-to-face. And they started to say, or notice that it seems like you get very excited when you talk about land investing.
But I don't notice that excitement in the integrative space, which was something which was eye-opening for me, which made me go back and rethink why is that or is that even true? And then I realized that, yeah, I mean, I, I do really feel lot more passionate about plan investing now that integrative medicine, and that was eye opener for me.
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. Yeah. We see that a lot in our, the families that we work with. So, I can't remember how much we talked about it, but my day job, we work with families, physician families and their, with their finances. And you know how finances, like, you get into everything. But like you can see it's hard sometimes to identify these things yourself really hard.
And so as like the third party that kind of like knows all the stuff. we really oftentimes will see these things. We're like, man, you just don't seem very excited about this thing. Or like, you get really excited about when you talk about this kind of thing. That's always such a great indicator of which direction you should go.
It's also like an indicator of burnout and like, If you're just dreading something, it's scary how many families we work with that are just like dreading their work. And that is like, that's no good. Like I don't want my physician to dread their work. Like that's scary and multiple levels.
But then when you're excited, that's like where you get the passion and you can really knock it outta the park. But like you have to, I don't know what it is. I guess you have to be willing to, because it's really, like I said, hard it sounds like with you, you didn't quite self-diagnose that Exactly.
Dr. Mamta: No, I didn't.
But one other thing. You are right. Like, you know, on the same part. When I decided, like in February, no, January, I was like, you know what? Let me look at some PRN job opportunities. And I was working as a hospitalist before that meant my shifts were going to be 12 hour shifts. And then I started to interview at some places, and then I started to imagine how it would feel to wake up at five o'clock, get ready and leave at six o'clock, and then be at work whole day and come back at around seven 30.
Gosh, I couldn't just digest that. I was like, I don't want to be in that situation. I just don't want that. Like I really do not like that. So coming from both places, when other people started to tell me, Hey, you seem to get too excited when you talk about land investing, and I realize that I'm not too excited about these P R N opportunities.
At all. And that's when it was just kind of so clear. I was like, you know, even though I have worked so hard for medicine, but it's just so clear as day and night that I do not, even though I love that clinical part of the patient and doctor relationship, but again, you know, it's just no way possible other than me practicing on my own terms, which I don't have time for right
Daniel Wrenne: now.
Yeah. When you have, the other thing is when your time, you, you mentioned earlier, like your time was so scarce it's almost compounds that I think when the time is limited to be able to self-diagnose things on top of the fact that you don't even have any time to like, look for opportunities or whatever you Totally, it makes you almost more stuck when you're mm-hmm.
So that's the challenge is like you get in these hos, you were in hos, hospitalists, right? That was my last job. Yeah. So that's like all in, and then you got nothing, nothing left in the tank when you get home. So it's like, how do you make a big shift if it's burning you out? Would you, when you got no, when you have no gas left in the tank, did, you, you had some outside things that prompted you to kind of make that shift or, or you were able to kind of take some part-time gigs and that kind of thing.
Is that, was your shift a little bit slower? It
Dr. Mamta: was very slow, as slow as I could have because I definitely wanted to give myself enough time to think. So between jobs, I had taken some time off. I was a nighttime nocturnists before then hospitals, even though I was part-time. So I have to, I know for physicians, when anybody's working full-time all the time, they don't have time at all.
Mm-hmm. But since I had taken breaks in between jobs, I was taking part-time jobs. So I had like one week of like a lot of work, 80 plus hours of work, but three weeks were off. I did have a little bit of time, way more than compared to 80. Anyone else would have to kind of ponder and go through that and create a plan, which worked for me and my needs and our family.
It was very personalized thing. I don't think anybody talks about. Like, it's, it's very hard to kind of have these kind of conversations of pivoting, especially in the physician world because, you know, it's just so hard to get into. And even that thought, nobody entertains to leave or have life on your terms.
Like, nobody entertains that thought long enough.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. It's like you got, you don't have anybody to talk to. Yeah. And it's difficult to figure out yourself when you're just talking to yourself or googling online or whatever. So who did you talk to about it? Well, who were some of the people that you were able to talk to?
Because I mean, like, I can imagine, you know, your spouse or close friends, but like the challenge there is like maybe they don't have the expertise Exactly. Or like your certain relationships are kind of like you're Yes. People, like, they just try to build you up So
Dr. Mamta: it was very slow transition and I was just being open to the idea that I could be somebody who is not practicing traditional medicine in the virtual world, just being an inter physician entrepreneur.
And I really think, not necessarily talking to somebody, but seeing different role models during this pandemic when we were not able to meet in person, but there were multiple virtual groups out there where I could see and in connect virtually with a lot of other physician entrepreneurs. Mm-hmm. Who were not necessarily leaving the medicine per se right away, but were starting the site gigs where being more successful were able to cut down their hours at their clinical role.
I really think that's was something which made it possible for me to even think that that's a possibility for me. And after seeing that, I was just kind of open to that idea. It took. A long time to kind of think that, oh, okay. It's good for them. Like they were able to do it. Like, it's not gonna be possible for me.
But after just seeing different examples again and again in different arena, even though nobody was in land investing, but other kind of investment. Yeah. Even non investing, other things. So I was like, you know what, if they can do it, then all I have to do is just persist. And continue to practice what I know.
time is what is gonna compound things. And that's what was kind of motivational for me to kind of, so that I could just
Speaker view: perceive
Daniel Wrenne: this. It was like a mindset. Mindset.
Dr. Mamta: Yeah. It was way more than a Yeah. Mindset. It was not like a day decision where decided, oh, I'm gonna be investor
Daniel Wrenne: No, tomorrow.
It was,
Dr. Mamta: it was a very slow transition, which I could take. It was not an overnight, I wish it was overnight right. Then it would have saved me that many years of pain and agony and then not knowing what should I do, should I even leave medicine, but why these kind of things. But I'm glad that I went through that process and now I feel very comfortable and at at ease of whatever choices I've made in my life.
Daniel Wrenne: And you, you mentioned you'd worked with some life coaches and I imagine that that sort of thing helped
Dr. Mamta: too. I was, the first one was, yeah. Second one was a business coach, but the first one was like right when I left medicine and I was just in this identity crisis where I have been physician for 20 years, and if I'm not practicing physician and I don't even know if I want to go back, what am I going to be?
You know? Mm-hmm. I was just like totally lost.
Daniel Wrenne: You're like, I don't know what I wanna be when I grow up. I mean, most people don't actually, if they're honest. Yes. it's evolving too. So, how did your finances play into the fears and the concerns around, those big potential decisions and the, you know, the shifts that you had along the way?
Dr. Mamta: I definitely think finances was a big, big reason why I made this massive pivots and changes. So, when I left clinical medicine in pandemic, I looked at my finances. I went to medical college in year 2000, and this happened in 2020, so this was 20 years later. Finances were never a priority. I didn't have any knowledge around it.
But when I left, then I had to go back and look at my accounts. And I was not necessarily very happy with what I saw because not having any knowledge around finances, I always shied away from making those financial decision which was gonna be helpful for me. I just didn't wanna learn those skills.
And when I saw the numbers at that time, I was really not happy. And when I decided to be entrepreneur, the two options which I had was, telemedicine, you know, clinical owner versus the investor. the main reason I really think, you know, day-to-day while I was choosing to be an investor, not a clinic owner, was because even as somebody who was running or owning a telemedicine practice, I was going to be exchanging my time for what I would earn.
Mm-hmm. And I didn't want to do that. So that was my core, even though I loved to do that, but I was like, gosh, I'll be changing my time for money again. You know? And I don't want to do that. So, and that's why I chose the investing route, because I was like, okay, I can invest and I can get my return, and then I can build a business around it.
I can hire other people who can do certain things for me and I can have my time back. So this was the main reason why I kind of choose, being a land investor and created the business around it and the way it is right now. Now while we're talking about there is quite a bit of time involved in real estate.
Daniel Wrenne: However, I mean, well, if I'm a physician, I'm listening and I'm like, that sounds really nice, you know? Mm-hmm. Like what you just described is, does sound really good. It's like, I like the idea of not swapping time for dollars because I'm so in, in the practice of medicine, it's like very much time for dollars.
And although you do get a really good hourly rate, that's what it is. It's time for, unless you own a practice. Now, when you own a practice, you can start to get some sort of equity building or that kind of thing. But if you're not there, you're just swabbing time for dollars. So the idea of not doing as much of that in building equity sounds really nice.
Dr. Mamta: Mm-hmm. It is. You know, I wish I said, you know, it was as easy as it sounds because for one year when I decided that this is what I'm gonna be doing and I'm gonna be full in, I honestly was working 40 hours per week at that point to kind of make same income, which I did as a physician. So my work hour to income ratio for first year was exactly the same.
I was putting that much hours, but after that
Daniel Wrenne: I stopped into real estate.
Dr. Mamta: Yeah. because I was like, you know, I can't hire anybody. I need to do this, or we need to buy this property, this and that. Evaluation everything. I was like, you know, just doing it by myself. Yeah. But after one year I was like, okay, well remember what your priorities were.
You wanted time freedom, right? So then I started to kind of hire and build a little bit more system behind it because nobody teaches you how to be a business owner Canada. Right. And like I have no background whatsoever, not even in my remote family who are business owners. So I had no clue. But I had to learn that way.
And then I started to hire and teach them. Like for example, this morning I met with my two team members and the whole meeting last for an hour and 45 minutes. I think I have to kind of do what is assigned to me. It'll take me an hour. And then after that we'll be packing and we'll be going out on vacation.
And when I come on Monday, I'll be probably spending a few more hours. Mm-hmm. So having that team, they are able to put in that 40 hours per week for me. But my time gets freed up. All I have to do is probably 10 hours per week unless we are doing some massive changes and stuff like that. But I don't think I was gonna be able to do that being a full-time physician.
I think it's come almost impossible for somebody to do that. Somebody's working
Daniel Wrenne: full-time. Yeah. I think that's usually the challenge is like a lot of families we work with are um, will kinda like dabble in real estate a little bit. Yeah. And it becomes, I think they really hear this sort of thing we're talking about and Yep.
It sounds real catchy. Yeah.
Dr. Mamta: Dabbling is different. I knew I was not here to dabble.
Daniel Wrenne: You were all in, you were like not
Dr. Mamta: dabbling in. Yeah. And there were some times up till 2:00 AM and doing what I needed to do and get done.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. That's super important to take away. Yes. Like dabbling in real estate, I'm not doing that.
Yeah. Often doesn't go too well or I mean it. It's okay to dabble this.
Dr. Mamta: Yeah. You could even lose, you could even lose because we lost in real estate before when I was dabbling and right now, like my husband is a IT person and I'm non it, but I can fix the tech issues behind the system and CRM way better than him because I'm the one who learned all this skills and built it from the scratch and I created a system around it like this is how we are gonna be doing it and stuff like that.
Even though I don't have an mba, he has an mba, but he works full-time at his work. Mm-hmm. So there were a lot of skills, which I learned on the way, which requires quite a bit of commitment that you are gonna make it work.
Daniel Wrenne: Did anybody help you with finances? You had mentioned, we talked about like prior to like some of these big shifts when you were working in traditional healthcare and you kind of got to that breaking point, but prior to that, did anyone help you with your finances?
You had mentioned you didn't have a lot of. Background in it, but what was your experience with learning? it
Dr. Mamta: pretty much I never tried to, honestly, I never tried to learn because I always thought as a physician I would have the earning ability to be able to kind of exchange my hours for a salary, so I never thought that would be an issue.
I believe I met with a financial planner once and we went through the numbers and stuff like that. It sounded very overwhelming to me and my husband and both of us just quit and never made that appointment back. I honestly didn't even know or understand any of the discussions which happened. Other than that, no.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. It's like a foreign topic and You know, if you're not feeling like you, it's really difficult to make a decision when you're, Not even really?
Dr. Mamta: Yeah. that topic was just not interesting to me at all. Like, I never cared, never read anything about it, yeah, I never tried to educate myself, which I think as physicians we should do way early on, even during the residency when we are not earning enough.
I think we need to be, because we continue to get older and then by the time we started to have the attending salary, we are older, you know? Right. All the situations, they creep up. Family, kids happen. I think somebody needs to tell us that we need to be, we more prepared than
Daniel Wrenne: we are. Yeah. I mean, we advocate for like financial literacy for physicians, as a financial planner, like my business is in helping people with their finances, which is sometimes a little counterintuitive to people that are like, what do you mean you advocate for financial?
Yeah. Literacy. Like, no, you're like doing it for people, but that's not actually true. Like people have to be like what you just said before, like when we have these conversations with people that have low financial literacy, it's really difficult for us to make any progress. Yes. Because there's not even a level of knowledge to Yeah.
We're not in the business of like educating. Mm-hmm. We're in the business of like saving people time and like shorting and helping them make decisions. And so you have to have for it to be efficient, just like in your real estate business now, like a lot of the people you've hired, I'm sure are doing things you could completely do yourself.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. there's a point where in certain situations, like even though you know the thing, yeah. I don't have to do it. Like, you, you ought to like outsource or, or, or seek some help. but it's a difficult thing to, I think in medicine and the training.
The way that training goes. it seems very difficult. Well, it's part, it's not in the curriculum. It's not in the natural training Yes. At
Dr. Mamta: all. And there's no extra hours. You are working so much. There's no hours. Yeah. There's no hours left to kind of even think about mys, I never thought about it. I never talked, even in our break rooms, like we never talked about the finances because everybody Yeah.
Is excited about the medicine, the so.case and their call shifts and stuff like that. There's just like finances is never open discussion among physicians. Mm-hmm. (Mid Roll)
Daniel Wrenne: I feel like when you connect the dots between, not finances are boring, kind of, when you start to look at the numbers, it's like, eh.
But the more you can connect the dots on like money as a tool. Yeah. And tool for what? Like living a good life. So the living the good life. There's not enough focus on the living, the good life part and using money. Efficiently to accomplish that. Once you like connect those dots, I think it becomes a lot more motivational and you're like, oh yeah, okay.
It can make my life better. Mm-hmm. And so then it's like, oh, maybe I do wanna learn this stuff I
Dr. Mamta: think I had a little guilt around finances as well. Yeah. Like thinking about, because medicine, most of the people who have gone into medicine have chosen the medicine. They have the service mindset.
You know, they're willing to read thousands of pages of the books, go through all the tasks, go through this brutal hours of training. Mm-hmm. Brutal residency. They're willing to just give your tenures of life to be able to save somebody else's life. So when they think like, oh, and then they get paid or not paid, I don't, I'm not talking about what's enough or not.
But by the time they're getting paid and stuff like that, the, that thought process still continues to be same. But I really think there's so much gap already created financially, because by the time, you know, if somebody starts to work when they're 21, 22, or 20, the amount of, financial stability or investment, the compounding, which could happen in 10 years, and by the time somebody who graduates out of residency with this debt, you know, I really think there's just so much discrepancy that, and then you could think like, oh, now I'm making way more money, then why should I even, like, there's a guilt around it as well.
So I, I almost went through that part as well, and it, when I went into investing, when I started to think about investing and finances, when I was educating myself, I would not talk about it because I was like, oh, I don't want to be sounding selfish here in pandemic, everybody's serving. And I left clinical medicine even though it was because of our family situation, my health situation.
But still there was guilt around it.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. That makes it hard. so like with finances too, I mean they, it can be a healthy thing. It can also be an unhealthy thing. but like, finances play into giving you these options to do things. I imagine you had to have had your finances in some level of order.
Like you kind of downplayed a little bit. You're like, you had, you know, you didn't focus a lot on finances, but, your finances have to be in pretty solid shape to be able to like, make a shift like this or scale back. and so that's empowering and in some level or, maybe it's just like, thank goodness we can at least do this, this baseline thing.
But I think a lot of people are stuck financially speaking. Yeah. They can't, even consider what we're talking about.
Dr. Mamta: right. And that
Speaker view: is
Daniel Wrenne: so true. And that's even more paralyzing on top of all the guilt and all the other stuff. And Yes. The
Dr. Mamta: identity and, and then they don't wanna make decision.
They're like, oh, but I can't do it. I do not know what to do next.
Daniel Wrenne: Mm-hmm. And then that's it. Yeah. I think life coaches are fantastic for, that's when you feel stuck. Or even therapy can be great when you're feeling stuck. I guess it kind of depends on what the cause is. Like if it's like a past experience, sometimes that's like therapy.
Versus if it's just like you're stuck and you're not sure what the future looks like, or there's some like mindset issues or whatever. Coaching is great for getting unstuck and you got, you got unstuck, which is huge. Some people stay stuck forever. but like, kudos to you for getting unstuck.
and now you can tell you're more passionate about this direction you're going. And land investing. So maybe we can talk about land investing. What in the world is, I mean, I kind of know what land investing is in investing in land, but like talk about what that is and how you're turning, how is that a business for you?
Yeah,
Dr. Mamta: so yeah, there are different kind of like it, the real estate has so much variety at all different niches of there. Even in the land investing, there are some different ways you can invest. The way we do it is reaching out directly to the landowners and purchasing a lot at the, you know, cheaper price and then be able to kind of sell it in the market and make the profit in between.
And we try our best to kind of, you know, turn it around pretty fast. Like last year I did the, like, you know, did the whole calculation and our whole period for a property was like around 114 days on average. So we try to kind of, you know, buy and sell. We try to kind of, our goal is to buy it for and sell for.
And then we have someone in inventory per month. So that's what our kind of goal is. And then I've created the system around it, build a team around it, and we have our process, which everybody just continued to do their stuff so that we are able to kinda attain that
Daniel Wrenne: goal. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a lot like, I mean, it's like any business, I think there, there's, that's the misconception is like we were talking about earlier, it's like you hear this idea that's like, I'd like to make money when I sleep.
That sounds cool, but like, so let's do real estate. But no, it's like, actually you've gotta fine tune business. Really. I think your shift was from going to maybe like an employee ish. Mm-hmm. To like a business owner. Now you're a business owner. A business owner like is creating something bigger than themselves, and it's kind of like a fine tuned machine.
So when you can, when you're doing real estate, like dabbling, like we were saying earlier, Yeah. Like, you're gonna get eaten up because there's so many people like you that are like spending hours. You have a team and you spend lots of hours on it. Mm-hmm. Like how in the world could someone dabbling Yeah.
Compete and, and mm-hmm. I mean, not to say that like you can't ever get to where you are. Yeah. But like, it takes, I think that's a good Yes. You're such a good example of like doing it the right way. Like, but it takes a lot of like, it does time and energy mm-hmm. And good smart people. Yeah. To do it efficiently.
Yeah. Because there's all different, I mean, it's complicated, right? Yep.
Dr. Mamta: It is very complicated. It's very complicated. It did have like some benefits of like, you know, being a physician, I was always used to making those difficult decisions, right? Right. Like when patients like this and that somebody could die if we did this or that.
I really think those analytical skills helped me. But other than that, everything was like learning from scratch on the ground while this was happening. So just learning the process took way more hours than doing it. Because there's no curriculum out there where you read this book and you execute and everything will be fine.
Easy, easy. Here, you have to kind of, you know, as you said, as a business owner, you have to tweak a little thing, fine, tune it and see if it worked or not. If not, then what else? And this and that. I really think most of my time goes in that fine tune business and the system and the processes in the backend.
The manual labor can be done by anybody else, but creating the systems is what takes most of my time. Mm-hmm.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. And tinkering and tweaking and, and problem solving. And, but that's the thing, like physicians are like the smartest people I know. Like y'all are all super smart. So you're like kind of like really well positioned for.
Dr. Mamta: Yeah, I like that. A lot of different things, honestly. And that's why probably I don't miss medicine because I'm still doing something which is very challenging, intricate important to me. So I find it exciting as well.
Daniel Wrenne: So, yeah. No, that's, that's excellent. Could you have imagined any scenario where you wouldn't have made this shift?
Like could there have been a story that you play out in your head that would've been like, maybe things would've worked out in healthcare?
Dr. Mamta: I honestly think if pandemic didn't happen, I would've not left clinical medicine, to be honest. Like I am, like a hundred percent sure because I was immunocompromised and I was going to the hospital and stuff like that.
But when pandemic came in, COVID was going to affect my lungs. I used to have you know, the pneumonias every four months, and I thought, that's what it is. You know, it's related to my autoimmune, you know, it's my autoimmune condition. I didn't realize that me getting exposed to these viruses and bacterias are the what are causing this.
So Covid, when I saw the pandemic came in, within a week, I realized that, oh my God, the extent of this, and I, I honestly saw, I didn't see myself out of, you know, COVID. I was like, gosh, COVID is what is going to take my life. Yeah. Because I was so immunocompromised, my lungs are affected in certain way with my autoimmune condition.
I really think that's what it took over a weekend. I was like, I am, I talked to my husband, I was like, are we willing to take the risk? I cannot see myself, I. Past this pandemic, but I, I cannot leave job either. And at that time there was shortage of masks, pp, you know, PPEs. I was like, wow. So the employers cannot provide you the masks.
They will not provide you the p e. And as a physician in a service mindset, I'm supposed to sacrifice my own life. Right? And what will happen to my kiddo is I really think if pandemic didn't happen, I would've not left. I really think at that time it was like choosing myself and my family versus serving in medicine.
And I decided to just choose myself. Right.
Daniel Wrenne: Family. Well, sometimes it takes like pretty substantial pain. Yeah. Suffering is where you grow. Yeah.
Dr. Mamta: But it was painful realization that for employers I was replaceable. They could replace me any day, but if something happened to me, you know, everything, the whole things will change for the whole family
Daniel Wrenne: of mine.
Yeah. Your family doesn't replace you. I mean, that, that's a different ballgame.
Dr. Mamta: Yeah. So, yeah. So I know that was like, that was very like extreme situation, but you know, sometimes we have to, even if it's not real, I think we have to imagine those scenarios and then do what is right for us.
Daniel Wrenne: do you think if the pandemic hadn't hit, do you think you would've gravitated towards integrative medicine?
Dr. Mamta: I think no, because at that time my mindset was still that, oh, I have done it for my own health, but I'm not a business owner. I cannot run the medicine or practice and this hospitalist work, even though seven days were brutal, 80 plus hours. But I used to get three weeks off, which I cherished. So I really liked, so I, at that location was 10 minutes from my home.
Very beautiful facility. There were residents I could teach, so I really think I was enjoying that setting. And I thought that was my ideal jobs situation, and I would retire from there eventually. Mm-hmm.
Daniel Wrenne: So now, so you're, you're, you've made the shift. Are you doing any medicine anymore? Are you a hundred percent out
Dr. Mamta: or are you No, I just kind of quit and then I tried to or thought that I would do health coaching, not telemedicine.
Mm-hmm. Because, but practicing medicine, as you know, they're quite a bit of restrictions. The license, the malpractice, the state borders. We have to look at a lot of things and at this time and believe that it's just not worth me looking into that. So I'm not practicing at
Daniel Wrenne: all. yeah. so real estate's going really well and you've got a team and now you're even helping teach other physicians, right?
Yeah. Like how to do
Dr. Mamta: it. Yeah, yeah. There was so much interest out there. I was like, you know what? Why not? Because this has been life changing for me. So I started to do that, which I find fulfilling as well. So I think I'm gonna just continue these things, which I'm doing more passion projects and future maybe.
Daniel Wrenne: What does that look like for teaching physicians?
Dr. Mamta: So there is a kind of course, which is like recorded course. Everybody gets module release every week and then we do group calls where we can brainstorm any questions or anything we can do. So it goes for 12 weeks and we open it like we just had one open.
So we almost at the end tail end of it, this whole June, it will wrap up and maybe I'll open it in a fall
Daniel Wrenne: again. Yeah, that sounds like you're getting into flavor of kind of like what we do because you know, that's like kinda like coaching ish, handholding, short cutting kind of thing. Yes. Yeah. Cuz in it's complicated like you're saying.
Like you, you, that's the one thing if, if you're listening, you like the idea of real estate. Like you can't just like go do it. You gotta educate a lot first. Mm-hmm. And then think about hiring people like your team. And have a plan and your ducks in row.
Dr. Mamta: Yeah, I think having a plan is what matters the most because each person is gonna have different vision of their personal life, how they want to live.
For me, I was like very clear that I wanted to work from nine to 12 virtually from computer, and then take a lunch hour break. And then for one to three, I was like that specific, like, this is what I want my future to look like, you know? And after that, you know, it should be optional. And that's when I realized that I could do telemedicine maybe during those hours, but who was gonna be the employer who would allow me to just work within these specific cards?
It would be hard. So I was that specific that I want my life to just look like this so that I can be working from anywhere as well. That was one of my other, you know, criteria. So I really think each one of us have to create our own vision and then see what can get them to that vision.
Daniel Wrenne: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
That's we, we spend. Quite a bit of time doing that with families too. Like what my experience has been that cuz we get to, you know, ask these fun questions like, you know, what's most important to you? Like, what is, what do you use your ideal future look like? And all those kinds of things. And my experience, it's fairly regular that people are like, I've never thought about this.
And,
Dr. Mamta: but it's so interesting, right? Like, I asked myself that question and I realized that I never said, or even it came to my mind that I wanted to have a perfect day in the hospital. Like I would go in the hospital at seven o'clock, whatever, like the work was not there at all in my ideal day. And I was like, well I am the one and it's my life.
I wanna create the way I want. Why not create all those ideal days every day or right for the
Daniel Wrenne: vacations, right? It's like, what do you love doing? Like what are the things in your day that you value? I think it comes down to value. So like, yes. Yeah. My favorite quote, I say it all the time, it's like, don't tell me what's most important.
Show me your calendar and your checkbook and I'll tell you what's most important. Yeah. But like, you know, the question is what do you value? So if you're, you really value the work that you're doing now, like lean into that. But if you like, can't see yourself doing the things you're doing in your day to day, like makes you gotta make some changes.
Yes. And that's the hard part is the change part. Like, making changes can be difficult, but that's when other people, I think like we've thrown out some ideas. Planning is huge. Yeah. Having a plan. But I think the other people around you is maybe even equal, if not more important. Like, you had some people in your life that were like throwing in some influence, like life coach kind of people and friends and, and then, and like in mentors it sounded like, like some, some people around you, that's like a huge thing.
Yes. Because then you, they opened your mind up to the possibilities. Yes.
Dr. Mamta: Yeah, like for me, freedom is my, like, probably the core value. Like, I wanna just feel free. I know none of us are like free, but I like to intentionally create so many freedoms, you know, freedom of time, freedom to work from anywhere, freedom to take a day off.
If will want to, like, on a short note, like just tell them, Hey, I'm out today, if anything, So I really think that was one of the, which I could just never get when I was employed. So that's why I kind of felt so overwhelmed, kind of like so much pressure on me. I don't think there was pressure.
It was just like it was not aligned. Mm-hmm. Because I could never feel free. My time was already committed to my employer, and those were very extended hours of work and so much commitment that when I came home, I was so empty that I just never felt
Daniel Wrenne: free at all. Yeah. And it drains you. Mm-hmm. So if you're like, so if freedom is a value and family is a value and mm-hmm.
Those sorts of things. And then you look at your, so it's important to clarify those things, like getting, you know, a lot of times we don't quite keep that top of mind, but when you put that top of mind and then you start to. Run everything through the lens of like, of those roles, how am I doing in relation?
So then if you look at your job and you're like, Ooh, yeah. Like not like nothing. That's the thing. And then that's,
Dr. Mamta: you're like, that's what happened to me too. I was like, it just doesn't meet. It was just meeting the need of like, okay, it was just exchanging the time for the income. Right. And then was there any other income?
Then you're doing it for the money. Yeah. It eventually it came down to that, right? Cause all that passion and serving where, why, why I went to new medicine. Eventually in the end, the passion was gone because obviously brutal. Mm-hmm. You know? And then in the end I was like, but I can't leave because this is the only skill I have.
I don't have any other skill to make money. Right. That's where I can't feel felt too, but I was like, wow, this is just not aligned to my values. Even though sometimes when I think right now, wow. I've left medicine and I'm not going back. That just seems like, but I'm like, gosh, but I'm free now. Mm-hmm. I'm living the life which I want.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah, it's, I'm sure it's much more gratifying even if you weren't doing better or worse financially Agree. That's the thing. Like you wanna, like, ideally you'd kind of make finances a non-issue. They just kind of do their thing. But you know, the key is like living the good life and I think I, I see a lot of times in, in medicine too, people struggle with their values and the values that are kind of, you know, forced on them.
Yeah. From the system. So like the system of medicine I'm talking about. So, you know, if you say for example, like your professional values are like to take the best care of the patient possible and give them the time necessary to do that, and, you know, Be cordial and like have a relationship. And those are common things that people say, and even friends
Dr. Mamta: and family members, because they have like, oh, you've worked so hard, you're a physician.
I really kind of felt a little bit of that as well, but thankfully my parents are back in India. They're not here in town like telling me like, you know, these things. But yeah, there was that as well. They're like, oh, so you are not doing that anymore? You know,
Daniel Wrenne: like, oh, in that zone. Yes. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean it, and it's, it's a big, so it's a, there's so much pressure to, to, to stay in the status quo and do it, cuz that's how it's always been done.
But like, you gotta lean on what's most important to you. And nobody knows. People don't understand what's actually happening behind the scenes and the fact that like, maybe the place you're working at is in complete conflict with what's most important to you. Mm-hmm. But like, if you have a l if you like.
Subject yourself to living in the condition of like complete conflict with your values at work. I think that's like the number one cause of burnout. I mean like we've all these, oh my God, yes. Or
Dr. Mamta: whatever. But yeah, like I never felt like laughing, smiling. It was not a normal thing because I used to be so stressed out.
You could just tell. I could tell. Even looking at my pictures from before. Yeah. And after I quit, even in the pandemic, I'm like, okay, I'm just laughing at this picture and smiling on this one. But the other ones, I could just see that pain because I'm just carrying that burden without even knowing it. I don't think I ever identified myself as somebody who was going through burnout, but I never knew what life was like without that because I just lived in that.
Forever. Like just being in certain kind of water or seen through like blue, you know, smoke. And that's how you have seen the world forever. And when that smoke goes away, everything becomes clear and you're like, wow, this is how it's supposed to look like. I never knew.
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. And it's, and once you hindsight's 2020, you're like, man, yeah.
Thank, thank goodness. Yeah. I made some changes, but you know, good for you for making all those changes cuz the changes are like hard. That's, change is really hard. Especially when all the stuff you're describing, it's like you went against the grain of what like the world is saying you should be doing.
Or even your family is like kind of implying like mm-hmm. And it kind of, it do it. If you look at it on the surface, you're like, that doesn't make a lot of sense to go through training and do this thing and get really good at it and then leave. But like, that's just, that's not the full story. And Yeah.
And like, is it worth, I. Like being depressed, like no, you know, if
Dr. Mamta: it's, if it's not, and I go back to like, I went to medical college when I was 20 and then I was like, okay, whenever I made that decision to go with medicine, I was teenage. So I was like a teenager version of me, cannot decide how I'm going to like, you know, this is enough.
Like, I can make another decision and make a choice as an adult. Now, again, you know, who's a parent as well, who's a wife, you know, who has two little girls I can, adult version of me like right now can make decision again to live 10 years or 20 years of my life differently. Like the teenager version of me doesn't get to dictate whole life of me.
That was something which kind of changed in my perspective right away as well. I was like, oh, I get to choose again. You know, and what would I like to choose?
Daniel Wrenne: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't even, like, most people never know exactly what they wanna do, but like in medicine, it's like you gotta decide at such a young age and you're kinda like committing a really long period of time and even financially committing and, you know, it's, it's a big kind of lock in.
But so educating yourself is huge. Mm-hmm. Whether it's in real estate or personal finances either way, like in your finances, I think financial literacy is a huge deal. Yeah. Making a plan, having a team, we talked about that and support and getting your mindset right. I know you've kind of done some hard work on that and, and if you feel like you don't have a good mindset, like that's coaching life coaches are fantastic.
Mm-hmm. For that kind of thing. And having a values focus, which you've done it, it's obvious that you're living in alignment with your values cuz you're happy. I mean, that's kind of the end result of that. And I think when you kind of mesh all those things together, that's where you start. You have motivation to take action.
Like even if it's. Scary or, you know, hard work or big changes and mm-hmm. It's clear you've done a good job with all that. So, nice work with
Dr. Mamta: everything. Usually it's still scary when I decide to, oh, I would've be doing this. I'm like, it's really, it's gonna be hard,
Daniel Wrenne: but not Yeah. But it's good. Not hard.
Hard. It's like, yes. And who wants, I mean, everybody, it's weird cuz you want, everybody's like, working to make life more comfortable, but like, at the end of the day, if I ask myself, I'm like, do I actually wanna live a comfortable life? No. Like, I would rather No. Yeah. Live a courageous life. Like, courage is more important to me than like, comfort.
Yeah. But yet I'm like, sh you know, everybody's striving for comfort, so you have to remind yourself of that sometimes. And yeah. And well I have enjoyed the conversation. I appreciate you coming on. We were talking about your businesses and we'll link to some of your, some of your websites to kind of, for you guys that wanna learn more about this they can go check it out.
Fast Fire, MD. Dot com is your website, so make sure to go check that out and you can find out more information. But it's been fun talking about this and congrats on all your success and good things going on.
Dr. Mamta: Thank you so much. It was so fun talking to you as well.
