Beyond Numbers at the Bali Retreat | Ep 524

25:43but let's be clear when you own a business it is not easy to get away for one day not less for a potential multiple month trip and i have christine up here to talk about this and i think both her and i can go back and forth on what you have to do both systems wise in your business finding the right people setting up the right systems but also frankly what you have to do mentally to be able to walk away for a period of time from the thing that maybe you've built around yourself as part of your identity. And okay, now I'm walking away for maybe in Christine's case, three plus months. And that does not happen overnight.

26:31And it's not easy. And I think, again, this can be illustrative for people who are business owners out there. We have a lot, right? And how do you make this not just a cult of personality? How do you make this not just about you being the single point of failure in your business, right? Because I think a lot of us have built businesses where we are the constraint. And Christine came up and actually did one of our case studies last night. And I think, and I hope that it was really helpful for her because I think just sometimes seeing that separate perspective just gives you an idea of, oh, wow, this is not so insurmountable.

27:09Oh, wow, there might be some options for me. And I think a lot of business owners feel trapped. And Christine, I want you to talk about where you are and what you had to do to get here. Well, Brad, I can tell you that I'm feeling significantly better today than yesterday, because yesterday was incredibly challenging. So this all came about starting in January when And a good friend of mine, Rachel Richards, texted me and said, hey, come to Bali and see me speak at this event. And I had it on my calendar to sign up for this event because I had met Amy Minkley in 2021. Amy and her fiance, Matthew, on a drive to Camp Fi in January of 2021.

27:53And it was amazing. And so I signed up to come to Bali to hang out with these amazing people who some of them I had met and Rachel who I hadn't. And over the next, I guess, nine months, I've taken the time to set up the systems in my business to hopefully be on the other side of the world for 12 to 15 weeks. And that looked like hiring a part-time manager, putting systems in place, really trusting my team. I will say I learned it's really hard to let go, that my part-time manager, full disclosure, was asking for more work in June. Like, hey, hand me more, hand me more. And there were things that I was unsure about letting go of.

28:33And then let's fast forward to October. I'm ready to go on this trip. I'm super excited. And less than 72 hours after I left, one of my tour guides quits with no notice. In fact, about 15 hours later, she was hosting two tours that we had to move around and reschedule as I'm underneath this Northern Lights exhibit in Singapore, having the time of my life going, oh my gosh, I'm constantly being pulled out of what I want to be doing to do things in my business. Also, my part-time manager took a full-time general manager job at a restaurant two weeks before I left. So I will say that I've been interrupted every day.

29:14At about every hour, I've had conversations at 5.30 in the morning because I'm 13 hours away from my business. And yesterday morning was kind of a breaking point for me where I was like, wow, I gave it my best shot. And this isn't working. And I don't know how I did everything I could. This maybe is what my life is going to look like. And I don't know that I can do the interruptions to my daily life like seven days a week, 365 days a year anymore. And thankfully, being at this event, I was able to be one of the case studies last night where there was an amazing panel with Brad and Mark and Rachel Richards, my dear friend who spoke at this event yesterday.

29:55And what that did was it gave me perspective and it gave me ideas on what I could do to fix this or my ways kind of out and it kind of showed me that this isn't this imprisoning thing that it felt like yesterday. And so last night, I will say I slept better than I have in months. I was up earlier than I ever am. And today I feel like myself again because I have hope and ideas and perspective on how this can get better and that these are just challenges and it didn't work this time. It doesn't mean it won't work next time. And I would say as we left the case study, I kind of threw it out to the audience and said, is there anyone here that has a similar situation?

30:39And I saw you talking with some people in the last 24 hours. And that is in essence, the sense of community coming together to help each other. Was that your experience? Yeah, it's been incredible. The people that have come up and to each of you that are sitting here, if you came up and first of all, I got a

30:59a room of the most brilliant people I've ever met in my life and the most creative people I've ever met in my life. And people have come up with the most amazing ideas from VAs to call centers to different ways that I could structure maybe a sale of my business if I wanted to do that in the future. And it's just been really incredible how much people really rallied around me and saw the physical and emotional struggle that I put forth pretty vulnerably in front of this amazing group of people last night. Christine, you use the word perspective. And I think that's just such a critical one, especially when you are in the depths of something that feels insurmountable and it feels like there's no way out.

31:44Right. And I think as business owners, it can often feel like that. And I'm curious if you can talk through what that word perspective means here, And especially in light of the case study where maybe it opened your aperture up a little bit to, okay, maybe I can kind of calm my central nervous system. Maybe I don't have to be in fight or flight. And maybe we can think through this. That's how I saw it unfolding almost as an epiphany. But I don't want to put words in your mouth, obviously. I'd love to hear. That word jumped off the page to me when you said it, perspective. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

32:22Yeah. That's a great question, Brad. So when you own a business, I think oftentimes you feel kind of alone, like you're kind of a little bit on an island because you don't have coworkers. And so I tend to rely on being able to talk to other business owners about their journey because they're the ones that are in the same shoes that I am. And it's hard to find other business owners that are open to talking about it and that are willing to be vulnerable about what it's really like sometimes. And so it's tough to find your tribe in those moments. And sometimes it's hard to talk to somebody and say, I may be not working a lot of hours, but the constant interruptions to my life, I will say 90 % of my time or my brain space revolves around my business.

33:12You're always thinking about it. There's always things happening. my business runs seven days a week. And there's a weight to that. And I think the weight sometimes gets so heavy that you can't see past the problems. The Donegan's talked about that this morning, that sometimes when there are a lot of problems, that's what we focus on. And I will stand here and openly admit that that was absolutely where I was at yesterday, which is there's a lot of problems and I want to be able to snap my fingers and have them all be solved so that I can focus and be present at this amazing event that I've really worked so hard to be at.

33:51And what last night did was I got to sit in a room with people that are far smarter than I am and they could take a look at my situation from an outside view. So instead of just me kind of just seeing the problems coming at me all the time and me seeing my limited perspective from being in the day-to-day, I got to have people kind of take a look at my situation from the outside and say, wait, Christine, there is some opportunity here. There's some opportunity here to use your business as a tool to get the freedom that you want. I was wondering if all the hard work I'd done was all for naught yesterday, honestly.

34:27And I walked away knowing and seeing that it's not, that there's a lot of hope. There's a good future to come. There is a future to a little local flavor and there's a path forward and it doesn't look as scary or as hard as it felt to me yesterday. Yeah. I mean, that's incredible, Christine. And you said something in there that I think just describes like this tunnel vision, the stress, and it's the weight gets so heavy, you can't see past the problems. That just, that resonated with me. That was like a goosebump type moment because I think a lot of us feel that, right? And you can't see a way out.

35:05And I think that again, it's like this biopic view and we just get caught in it. But I think that again, is the beauty of having people around you, not just an event like this, but having people you can trust, having people you can talk to, having maybe some type of, I don't know if you're a business owner, find other local business owners that you can just, Hey, can we just have a 30 minute chat? Cause I think, while I would love to say we came up with like world changing ideas, I think they were clear, but they aren't clear when you're stuck in this fight or flight mode. And I think that's what's so important about connection, about community.

35:45Obviously, I think we did a pretty good job, so let's be clear. You did a great job. But I really just wanted to hone in on that because it's astonishing to see the change in you as a human being, frankly. We're talking almost 24 hours to the minute. And it looks like that weight that you described was lifted off of your shoulders. So I just want to say a huge congrats to you. Huge congrats. And just go and enjoy your 12 to 15 weeks off. Thanks, Brad. Yeah. Thanks for being back on the show. I really appreciate it, Christine. Thank you.

36:23Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So our last guest today is Susanna. And I met her at our extraordinary event this past April in Las Vegas with the Donegan's and her life has undergone a pretty significant change since then. So that was April of 2024. And we're recording this November 3rd, 2024. So in the intervening time, Susanna actually left her job and she has officially fired. And yeah, it's remarkable to see the changes that can take place in a short period of time. And Susanna, first, congrats. Thank you, Brad. And welcome. I'm very excited to have you here. So I'm curious, did the event in April have anything to do with you firing or was it already on the table?

37:18I was hemming and hawing back in April, whether to fire or not. And I think it kind of solidified the decision to leave my job. Yes. Okay. That's, yeah, that's incredible. So talk me through, so we met in April and a couple of short months later, you made the decision, but that doesn't happen overnight. And I know you were a physician so talk me through the mechanics of it maybe the psychology if you're so inclined but also like how does a physician make that leap so it's been a very difficult decision to leave my job because for physicians it's a sense of identity also we feel some kind of obligation after so many years of training.

38:10And, you know, it's an honor to be elected to be a physician, but it's many, many years of training and many, many years of dedication to work. And I did one more year syndrome for 10 years, you know, just I knew I already was FI, but during that timeframe, it made it very difficult. It wasn't so much the financial part that made it difficult to leave, but also just, I felt like I was leaving the highest level of education and experience behind because it takes about five to 10 years to really, after you graduate residency and I did fellowship to kind of, cause it is a practice for all that duration.

38:57And after that, I feel like I was at the peak of my career when I finally started contemplating leaving. And that was part of the main issue that held me behind. Yeah. I mean, listen, I completely understand that. This is something that bedevils a lot of us. And I think, frankly, a lot of us get caught up in the word should, right? Should I do this? Should I keep doing this? Is this, again, part of my identity in this case? But I'm curious, did you feel like you owed this to anybody because of your position and the time spent and the resources, was there ever a sense of obligation or did that not come into it?

39:38Definitely a sense of obligation. And that's what kept me in the game for another 10 years. So I was going to say, this is a little different for somebody in your profession than some of the other people here. Many times we have discussions about, oh, well, you can leave your job. You can always work again. You can always do something else. But I would think that being a physician or some other professional, it's not so easy to just step back into. So that must have been part of your decision. How do you go through that mental process of saying, if I do this, this is probably a final decision.

40:13Can you expand on that a little bit? Because I'm very curious as to, you know, if you're, I don't know, like I was a money manager, I can probably go back and manage money. It's not a big deal. But I think a physician especially, that is a decision that's probably much harder to come to. And maybe you could speak to that a little bit. You're 100 % correct, Mark. That was one of the reasons that was holding me back from retiring early. When in medicine, if you don't work for a period of three to six months, a lot of your credentialing expires. I can't really ever go back once, probably at the end of this year into a hospital setting because I have to explain any type of leave of absence for a period longer than six months.

40:56I can't say, oh, I retired and then I decided to come back. But I can, if I eventually decide to come back into medicine, I'm going to keep my license. I've actually just renewed my Arizona license and I'm going to keep the basic requirements in place because I'm not, I would love to maybe at some point eventually do work more in a concierge capacity so I can just control my schedule, but I can do it in a private setting that does not involve hospital work or any type of, I'm a nephrologist. So basically credentialing dialysis units is going to be very difficult again, unless I do somewhere remote where there's a high, high I need like Indian reservations or the other ones would be like a severely in need rural communities because all of those will exempt me.

41:45But I think if I ever go back into medicine, it'll be more in the preventative setting and more in the like outside setting where I can just be not need hospital credentials. So do you have any suggestions for people that might be in a similar situation where So is it something like I need to have, you know, most people talk about the 4 % rule or 25 times. Is it something that you need more cushion to make this kind of final decision? Was that part of your thought process? You know, I hit FI 10 years ago. So anything after that was actually gravy on top. And I've made some crazy investments, especially during COVID and 2022, where I actually significantly increased my net worth.

42:30So money was never part of the issue towards the end, you know. So for me, making sure that I was comfortable never really factored in because I already had that comfort. So any suggestions to someone else who might be in a position? So what should they be thinking about when it comes to this kind of finality decision if they're in that situation? So I would recommend, I mean, we can always work. I mean, I quit private practice about 10 years ago, and I worked in private practice for about nine years. But after I left my private practice job, I just decided to work on my own terms. So I did something what's called locums, where you can control a lot of your schedule, you can decide which shifts you want to work.

43:13And for people that are thinking of transitioning, that are at the point of FI, and still want to keep their credentialing, locums is a great way to do it. And I found a lot of financial advantages to being locums because being paid as a 1099, you can write off quite a lot and significantly contribute to a solo 401k. So physicians that are thinking of retiring or want a different change of pace, they can kind of transition out through the locum's jobs and they can actually just keep one toe in the water while they're transitioning out, phasing out. So I'm curious, it's been about five months now since you left your job and that's not an easy transition.

43:56Yes, you're correct. The first couple of months, it really was a very difficult transition because you kind of have to just sit down and figure out you kind of have to have this conversation with yourself and just figure out what your values are, and I think that once I went over that hump and and even in the setting of slowly retiring over those 10 years it still was like a rude awakening I feel like the two months was actually short compared to what most other people go through I think relatively because I had been retiring I basically started 10 days a month for a couple years and then I would do one week every month and then one week every two months and then my recruiter said you either quit working or you got to have a more a busier schedule and i said i don't want that i think i'm just going to quit working at that point so rude awakening that's a term that i think a lot of people are gonna perk their ears up when they hear that because i think there is some concern when we reach five even though i hopefully people who have been listening to choose a five for years have realized this is not just about the money it's about getting our minds right and trying to figure this out.

45:07But nevertheless, it's not easy, right? So by no means do I think this is just, oh, we should all ride off into the sunset. And I mean, you were at five for 10 years. So I mean, this was something that was on your mind for a while. But yet it's still determined as a rude awakening. And believe me, I completely understand that. I'm curious, is there any advice you would give to yourself, maybe a year or two ago, that maybe, in hindsight, could have helped? in hindsight i wish i had retired a couple years earlier to tell you the truth i think that that transition period you should expect it like expect the worst and hopefully you'll come out with the best all right suzana that was the perfect way to end both this segment and the episode and i think i think it is something that a lot of us need to think about when we make the ultimate decision which is to leave our jobs and no matter what that looks like in your life it's something you need to prepare for and it's not going to be easy and I think we all need to be aware of that right so this is just a reality of life in fi it doesn't mean you've done anything wrong right and I think that's the most important thing and I'm curious as as we end what are you most excited about I think I'm excited to pursue the things that interest me and I'm really excited to be here in Bali with this fabulous crew and I feel like you guys are already my family so thank you

46:41so brad you asked me how these events affect me and now that you've been here and we've been a few days into this event you've traveled halfway around the world yourself how has this event affected you in any way i'm very curious about your perspective as a participant yeah it's a great question. I think for me in my real life, and I use that kind of facetiously, but in my real life, I am sorely lacking connection. And I think it's really special for me to come here and to meet new people and to find people that I'm going to be friends with for years. And it's so hard to describe an event like this because, I mean, I can picture someone listening to this saying like, Like, oh, come on, man.

47:29Like, you can't make a connection like that. You can't. It just, it doesn't make sense. But I mean, there are literally thousands of people in the FI community who have been to events like this and can corroborate this, right? It's like, there is something uniquely special about coming to an FI event and realizing that your people are out there. And it just, it means a lot. I mean, I think the best thing that I can say about it is I'm now planning on coming to many more of these and they aren't redundant. As you know, obviously, you of all people, right? Like they're not redundant at all. It's marvelous.

48:07Like there's nothing like it to sit down over a three, four, five day weekend or week and have these amazing conversations just one after the other. Like, how is it even possible? You know, it doesn't, if you get one of those conversations in a year at home, it's a lot, like a lot, a lot. I mean, I'll go like half a decade without a conversation like that, right? It's just like par for the course here. And that just, there's an alchemy here. It doesn't happen by accident. It happens through the amazing hard work of people like Amy and her team who's just been unbelievable. And it happens through a spirit of openness, right?

48:48Like all of these people took time out of their lives to come here and to connect. And it shows every single second that you're here. I mean, it's really special. And, you know, I want everyone here to know just how much it means to me. So I unfortunately haven't had a chance to talk to everybody, but I'm really trying. And if we haven't chatted, I'd love to sit down before we leave. But just know it genuinely means a lot to me. So thank you so much. Yeah. So I wanted to say now you understand why I go to all these events, right? And I'll be very curious to see how you progress over the next year.

49:29And maybe we can touch base in a year's time and see what's changed. And I'm very interested to see how this event affects all of you, because I saw it so vividly with the participants that went last year. And I think you're going to be shocked and very surprised to see how your life changes in the next 12 months. So thank you all for being here. And thank you for hanging out. Yeah. Let me hang out with you. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate it. And to the audience, I hope you get a sense of how much this means to us. And I really would advise, just take a look into one of these events. All right. So 2025, there are probably minimum a dozen of these.

50:12easily easily just think about it because it really makes an impact and i think it will potentially without hyperbole change the course of your life and it's done that for a lot of us that you heard from today and a lot of people that you haven't heard from today and i think i think it's really something special so again thank you for being here and thank you for listening to choose a pie thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the choose a pie community if you haven't already the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player and just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter.

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51:24So head to choose a buy.com slash local, and you'll find a list of all of those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with FI or you have a family member or a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways. Choose a Vi episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the Phi community. And even though it's a couple of years old at this point, it still stands up and it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence? What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life?

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