193: The Real Investors of Wealth Formula Nation: The High Paid Doctor!

Buck: Welcome back to the show everyone. Today my guest on Wealth Formula Podcast is the poster child of successful high paid professionals taking ownership of their personal financial situation. His name is Dr. Ian Kurt. He is a neuroradiologist and he is also a member of our private community Wealth Formula Network. He’s an active participant there and in Investor Club and Physicians Wealth Formula, he’s all over the place. Anyway Ian, welcome to Wealth Formula Podcast.

Ian: Thank you Buck, appreciate it.

Buck: So I want to just start out because you know obviously we’ve done this kind of show once before, we did it with Jerry and you know aka the mascot but your story’s a little bit different and I think it there there represents probably a lot of individuals who listen to our show, not that Jerry didn’t, but this is a slightly different one in that you are a doctor. So tell us just so that we have an idea who you are, where’d you grow up, you know what was it like, why did you become a doctor, etc.

Ian: Sure so I grew up in a middle-class family of five, had two brothers, grew up in Michigan, my brothers and I were pretty athletic we were involved in you know all kinds of ball sports ended up playing soccer being pretty proficient at that followed that through college and my mom was a schoolteacher my dad was in real estate. He was in many areas of real estate from being an agent to a broker to a developer in shopping malls and multifamily to landlord family houses and you know with specific sort of attention to the the subject matter of this show I in reflecting back my dinner table conversations had a lot of words that I didn’t have any context for at the time but in reflecting back they were common so things like leases and taxes and sued and attorneys and assessments and all of those things like I just associated them with what my dad did and and and I didn’t really have a great context for just that association. The other thing that you know in growing up we were he was it he was an active real estate investor so he believed in being very involved with his properties. He believed in sweat equity he didn’t like to do things on his own and so what that meant for me as a kid and maybe yourself as well as we were I was dragged to two construction sites I was sweeping up after the crews for the day my pirate salute was to be able to take the the mountain Dew bottles that they left and and bring those in for deposit you know I was tasked with helping put concrete down and drywall and painting and realize that I wasn’t good at any of that. I didn’t like it. I knew the association that the real estate could provide you know it provided a you know a nice existence for our family but I wasn’t that interested in the active portion of it.

Buck: Actually that’s very familiar to you know my story I you know you probably know a little bit about it but my dad to this day primarily I mean he’s almost 81 I guess he’s you know he is like you know apartment building or you know small apartment building kind of guy maybe some mix commercial use but he’s very, very much hands-on and you know he’s very scrappy and when I was a kid he used to do a lot of like lower income stuff and um so you know and he rented his own places and so I remember my childhood being like the phone ringing and it was like tenants ringing off the hook and it was like swearing going on and stuff like that I mean it was like I mean I’m not even joking I was like embarrassed to bring friends home because of the conversations and the yelling and screaming it was that kind of like tenant.

Ian: I’m laughing because I had the same experience like you know the phone would not stop ringing it actually wouldn’t ring during the day and then you know come dinnertime it would it would ring off the same experience.

Buck: You know yeah so so then of course in my experience you know because I was just about to ask you you know why you became a doctor but for me part of it was a absolute repulsiveness, you know I was just repulsed by everything I saw as a child and I’m like you know what I want nothing nothing to do with real estate and I’m gonna do something you know that I’m like that that is as far away as possible and ultimately land into becoming a physician. Now how about you, why did you why did you become a doctor?

Ian: Similarly I mean I if I have sort of a superpower it’s it’s that I can see sort of associations in people and personalities and so forth and I had aspirations to live a good life you know I wanted to make some money I wanted to be able to take vacations and to do the things that I wanted to do but as I said like I knew my skill set wasn’t aligned with that. So what else well you know the guys on my soccer team that had parents who were physicians they seem to drive nice cars quick good house is it you know that seemed like a logical progression then and as I looked into it you know frankly the the grind of the path aligned with my character so you know I could I cannot work most people I’m like I have this discipline I’ve perseverance and those attributes you know serve well the aspiring physician when you’re going when you’re jumping into hoop after hoop after hoop. I had to learn that path on my own though. I was you know the first person in our family to become a physician and you know this is some other business owner there’s in our family kind of look at me like really that’s what you want to do? But ultimately I figured out you know jumped through all the required hoops and became a physician.

Buck: So people actually were trying to sort of talk you out of it?

Ian: Well not necessarily talked me out of it but I do recall a very vivid conversation when I knew that I got into med school. One of my co-captain’s dad who was an oral surgeon he’s like I’ll see you in a decade. And I’m like oh yeah and it’s true like I talked to my wife about this frequently I can’t remember my 20s that well. Like my 20s were spent in white-walled you know hospitals just grinding and you know there are life events that happen that I look at pictures where I was involved I can’t really remember very well and he was right I mean you you it’s a tremendous sacrifice a tremendous amount of work that is required on that path and being the first through I didn’t really know enough.

Buck: Well so many things you’re talking about just ring true for me too again because it’s like alright for me you know there was always this idea of the doctor thing in the back of my head but you know on the other hand you know I my brother was supposed to be the one who was good at science and math and you know I didn’t want to compete with him and then when he decide he didn’t want to be a doctor somehow I ended up doing it. But you know it’s so hard when you’re a young kid and you know you’re pretty good at school you’re good at other stuff you know like it’s amazing how quickly in some respects you have to make that decision right and I totally hear you also about like forgetting or just not remembering your 20s I mean that is absolutely me as a surgical person it’s just I look back and that’s one of the real especially for guy who doesn’t practice anymore to give up his twenties and look back and say well gosh you know was it worth it but yeah it’s a tremendous sacrifice. So ok so during this period of time though I mean growing up middle middle class maybe upper middle class you know not really wanting for anything per se but you know not being rich came being a kid, did you even think about money I mean did you think was it was it a you know I know you kind of alluded to the fact that you know you thought maybe a doctor would be you know you’d be comfortable but did you really think about money?

Ian: I did I did but I it was all the abstract he was I never really at the time I it was just sort of like beyond associations I associated a certain profession or certain status or with with affluence certain associations I didn’t have any association. I didn’t have an association with a large business owner who might be able to maybe advise or I didn’t know any movie stars so the local nucleus that I had access to the association that aligned with what my aspirations were in terms of that were for physicians.

Buck: Yeah great they were sort of like the type of star that you could become.

Ian: Yeah yes it was it was achievable and it was achievable because it was a reasonably predictable path and the thing that you needed to be okay with was you were gonna you were gonna sacrifice and keep your head down and grind.

Buck: The funny thing is you know and I think about back in those days, one other thing I want to mention is that you know I my dad didn’t even my dad didn’t want me to be a doctor that it was ludicrous. He was in real estate and he was doing well and told me you do make more money than all the doctors. I said yeah and and he said well so do you want to be a doctor do you want to make money and I just thought he was full of it and I was like you just don’t understand. I’m like highly-evolved than you dad.

Ian: But you understand now?

Buck: Yeah. But so okay so you’ve got you know you see these guys but back then again now we’re talking about you and I are around the same age so we’re watching people in the 80’s and 90’s and I remember if you look back at those those guys back then and the surgeons and the you know the radiologists stuff they were making they were making seven figures back then right. So like seven figures in the 80s is like a million dollars in the 80s is like three million bucks today right I mean and they had massive tax benefits because the Reagan tax law that took away all these passive losses we’re not that was not in place right so they were writing off all this income they basically had tax-free like you know three million bucks a year in today’s income. They were you know it was insane right. Times have changed. Doctors make less there’s more work there’s you know the tax loopholes are closed. When did you really start thinking about personal finance?

Ian: Personal finance probably I began to sort of recognize it probably late in residency and the reason was before we like early in residency my wife was an HR consultant. So she worked from home and we had dual income we didn’t have any kids while I wasn’t making a ton of money you know we could survive without it without an issue. We weren’t like we didn’t have a ton of kids on a residence budget and my wife would it wasn’t hurting we were forced to sort of focus in on that. But then we had our first child and she stopped working and I realized that in order to make this thing work for the last two years of training I needed to moonlight.

Buck: Where were you training.

Ian: This was at Duke so we were down in Durham yeah yeah and so you know you’re working a ton right as a resident in a fellow anyways and then to pile on you know to one to two weekends a month of travel and additional work just to make ends meet because at the time I didn’t know that there was another way other than trading time for money and that forced me to sort of alright at least think about our household budget I got to make more than what we’re spending and but that was also tempered by the fact that I’m almost at the finish line and once I make it to the finish line then there’s this bountyett

Buck: Significantly better. Not what they did in the 80s and 90s but at least you know you’d be in much better shape.

Ian: Sure sure. That’s what I was counting on. And it you know it’s true so when you start into practice here’s where I made some in my estimation some mistakes right off the bat. Like I fell victim to what I think most people do when they’re really on a tight budget and you know and now somebody says okay we’re gonna we’re gonna quadruple 10x whatever your paycheck for the same thing you’ve been doing essentially and you’re gonna work less you’re gonna make more what do you do with that okay let’s let’s live like we’re supposed to live let’s live like that like that image that that made you go into medicine in the first place.

Buck: So right away you bought the big house get the nice car you know get Packer season tickets.

Ian: You have to live like for generations to get Packers seats

Buck: But you still moved to Wisconsin though, so I mean that was pretty cost-effective.

Ian: So yeah so I did like there were a couple smart things that we did. One is like I really took my job search seriously I knew certain things that I wanted, I wanted private practice I want to have influence in the way that I practice, I want to have some influence in to the operations of the practice. I wanted to you know leverage the area that we were decided to live in so it’s we generally have better reimbursements lower cost of living you know those kind of parameters and so I did my homework there and fortunate to have joined an outstanding practice and it’s the same practices that I work at today but I did fall victim to yeah we bought you know the lake house big house and and you know I woke up about six months later into it I’m like man what did I do, I got an issue here I got a problem and I need to solve it.

Buck: Were you thinking about investing at this point or were you just in sort of spend mode and getting into golden handcuffs mode?

Ian: Well I didn’t I wasn’t in total spend mode other than those big assets but I realized that I had I quickly realize that I did have a problem and so I fortunately I recognized that a problem and fortunately I have character attributes that like you know I’m hardwired to solve problems. So when whenever people hear personal finance debt who do you relate to so I went down the demon Dave Ramsey, alright so I started the baby steps. Well I started slamming money at every debt and in a year and a half we like paid off our student loans paid off her car’s paid off her house we were like we did that debt-free screen right and that was that was pretty cool

Buck: Would you would you have done that same thing now?

Ian: On the finance side yes.

Buck: The house too?

Ian: yes I would I would and we can have some conversation we can but here’s what happened is that the Dave Ramsey like first four steps or five steps or whatever I think I’m very effective I think they’re I think they’re well intended and it’s a it’s a programmatic way to get yourself into a good foundation. Beyond that where the advice is to pick mutual funds and you know you know this is how you invest, I had so much success in the first part I just mindlessly followed it through

Buck: So then you were investing so what did your investing look like?

Ian: It was just that it was like okay three index funds it was small cap large-cap index plow it into that. Our practice had you know some tax deferred 401ks and DB plans like maximize that you know maximize your HSA maximize your 529 get some additional money to invest plow that into a you know portfolio of dividend stocks that was it it was like automated take it out of my paycheck I don’t see it you know the conventional the conventional sort of advice.

Buck: Did your dad ever say Ian, what are you doing?

Ian: He didn’t you know but what he did okay he didn’t he’s more nuanced than that fortunately but he encouraged me to co-invest with him and some vacation rental development and so while I was on this sort of mindless automated I also was sort of led into real estate investing with him and that was great, it was great you know we those have been very successful I’ve learned a lot from those who have been very effective now and at the time you know our timing was really good and that was helpful to sort of at least lead me out of going all in with the conventional stuff.

Buck: So you know there’s a couple things I think about too like what makes you know what kind of leads you to where you are now? For me one of the you know one of the I think really valuable things from having my dad being a real estate guy and even though I completely rejected it was repulsed by it etc, I also had this keen sense that what he was doing was working because in my case you know he did pretty well and and I didn’t pay for college and I didn’t pay for med school he paid for it and I know I’ll say it out loud yeah I mean I was lucky he paid for that stuff and so if he did that I’m thinking well you know people saying that real estate is risky well I don’t know about that the one time I saw him lose money it was during the dot-com era. So I was sort of primed for it and for me it was a you know it was a truly seminal moment after reading the Kiyosaki Cashflow Quadrant book shortly after getting married and I completely was like whoa what is this whole you know idea behind sort of taking personal finance into your hands and cashflow an entrepreneurship and all these things it hit me like a bolt of lightning and I could define that as a point that really changed the trajectory of my life. Do you have that kind of moment or was it all very gradual?

Ian: Well ironically I read Rich Dad Poor Dad in med school and it struck a chord with me then but I dismissed it because I couldn’t see a path where I was in the path of becoming a physician, how I could do both, how I could be a business owner. I was kind of I was like okay this is this is important stuff this is relevant, I align myself with that sort of thinking and cash flow and creating different streams of income but the way that I’m gonna get to ultimately the I quadrant which is what I thought was sort of the the you know the ultimate destination was that I was gonna join a practice and kind of be an SB type person and then just pile cash into the I quadrant. I couldn’t see a way to become you know a pure business owner as a physician I didn’t I didn’t have any sort of connection to that but I’ve always thought about that all the way through. And you know my path through medical school and like I’m nowhere near the smartest person, I’m not the you know I’m not the whatever I just work my way through and I figured out different interstitial avenues where it’s just a little bit atypical you know like I didn’t go to lectures I went to coffee shops to study because it was more time effective and I could do it you know that kind of stuff. Like why go take notes when something else is gonna do it for you and then read it twice as fast so I yeah totally totally did that and it was looking for ways to sort of unconventionally hack my way through and like that’s sort of approach in the quote-unquote alternative investing approach that Rich Dad Poor Dad in the line with sort of those tactics that I was already doing and a very very small scale. I just the other thing with real estate is that my only exposure at that time was the active real estate side and I couldn’t see how I would be able to effectively do what my dad was doing as a full-time practicing physician. I was completely aware that many many many people made money in real estate and many many people who had money put money in real estate like that was very apparent and I knew that. So I knew like at some point I wanted to get involved in real estate but the only sort of thing like I talked about the the the lexicon at the dinner table, I recall silent partner like he’s a silent partner in that and I didn’t know what that meant but come to find out a quote-unquote silent partner is a limited partner is it’s a person in a syndication, the person who’s investing money it goes along for the ride but I didn’t know that there were avenues like that available.

Buck: So when does when does this all turn like you know I mean now you know when I know what I know of you is and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is I think of you as one of the more thoughtful more sophisticated individuals within our you know ecosystem right within the Wealth Formula you know private community and somebody who’s really thought about a lot of this different stuff and who’s really for the most part all in. But there had to have been some kind of moment where you’re like okay I’m all-in and I’m done with stocks bonds and mutual funds and I believe that I know what I’m doing and I can you know, I can take personal finance issues into my own hands and make these decisions and I have made a decision that hard assets are the way to go.

Ian: Yeah it happened about probably four or so years ago where it was April again and every April up until that point I was nauseous. Taxes I mean it that’s what it did. I was I you know every year annually I would be nauseous looking at that bill and just thinking man there’s got to be a better way, yeah well it’s a good problem to have is what I hear you know you’re making a lot of money and it’s a good problem to have and so I would just shelve the problem till the next year and you know like I said about four or five years ago I just got disgusted I’m like okay I’m gonna solve this problem. I’m a problem solver. I’m gonna solve this problem. And so I went into the deep dive and one thing led to another you know a lot of different topics within you know sort of personal finance and business and asset protection and all of these things started weaving themselves together and the information that I learned and one thing led me down another route and all that knowledge started to compound and when I actually took action on the things that I was learning I realized that that action began to produce results that were not linear they were compounding results and when you see that play out in real time that is enough of motivation for me to continue.

Buck: I’m curious how you found Wealth Formula.

Ian: Part of that deep dive like you know I became a podcast junkie. I would find you know a topic and I would like search a guest and I would listen to everything about that guest I would find wherever they were I would listen to a topic I would listen to all podcasts that had that topic. And you know I stumbled upon you being interviewed by another person I’m like okay this guy it is my age is a physician is you know Midwest you know had some real estate roots like okay like there’s some commonality here, let me let me deep dive on this guy and so I listened to a few other interviews and I’m like okay that makes sense let me let me follow up.

Buck: Yeah it’s I mean it’s it’s a nice right I mean high paid professionals and we’re not talking about jumping out of you know trying to escape the cubicles we’re talking about good problems to have but you know listen here’s the deal right I mean one of the things that people kind of talk about they say is well you know my situation right now though Buck is different than you and they’re right I mean I I’m like you know I’m not a practicing physician anymore, I’m a business owner, I’m a real estate person, all these things that I have changed my facts as Tom Wheelwright would say so that it would affect my tax as well, but you, you are doing something I think is really unique which is kind of kind of that, you know you’re not changing your entire life all you’re doing is taking charge of something that a lot of people do not take charge of and what I think is really interesting about that because I think that for most people for most people for most professionals who are making you know multiple six figures or seven figures whatever the answer is not to quit what you’re doing and start something you know start overdoing something else because you got inspired by it. That’s usually not the answer as much as it was the answer for me being an entrepreneur is a curse, it’s not a you know it’s something that I am right, it’s something that I have gone into because it’s in my DNA, it’s not for everybody. And for most people you know there there is this opportunity as you kind of alluded to to take that money and you know go directly from a you know a W quadrant or a S quadrant to the Robert Kiyosaki would say self-employed or wage earners or whatever and then take that money and really build up the investment quadrant. And I think that what I admire about what you have done is exactly that right? If I was not an entrepreneur, if I did not have this desire or curse to go in that direction and put my family at risk all the time, I would have stayed in medicine and the solution would have been to do exactly what you’re doing. So what are you doing now?

Ian: Well you know to that to that point I think a lot of people you know to your situation would make excuses right, I can’t because I’m not that person and you know for me my why became big and once the why becomes big the how will really reveal itself. And so my why was okay I’m gonna figure this thing out and then the house has been a Plinko board of discoveries as I’ve gone through it. So basically what I do now is my approach I guess to you know setting up my portfolio in simplest terms is it’s a teeter totter and on one side of my portfolio is there is asymmetrically risk-adjusted fairly illiquid cash flowing tax-efficient investments okay. So I’m expecting a higher rate of return I’m expecting more predictable to return I’m expecting tax advantages I’m willing to give up liquidity to obtain those and on the other side of the teeter-totter would be very liquid very safe basically cash in various forms that serve as an opportunity fund to take advantage of some of those opportunities when they come up on the other side of the teeter-totter as well as to literally ensure against life. Life is gonna deal you stuff that you’re that you know you weren’t expecting and if you have if there’s a problem that can be solved by money you don’t have a problem so if you have a cash reserve to handle those kind of things you know it’s a huge stress relief. And so that’s basically what the teeter totters are, it’s not balanced by numbers. It’s balanced by how effective each component of those portfolio is doing.

Buck: So for me it’s very similar as you know for me when you talk about the teeter-totter in the one side it is you know it for the most part it’s a real estate right, equities people talk about stocks and they use equities and mine is equity in real estate. So that’s all my equities all my real estate. On the other side as you mentioned there is some level of liquidity and for me you know I’ll use the Wealth Formula Banking type stuff so and then I’ll have like a small percent ten percent five to ten percent where it’s completely like I could lose all this money or I could 10x it you know like the currency or something like that. What do you use specifically are your is your equity primarily real estate equity is it passive is it active you know do you have a philosophy on that?

Ian: Yeah so it’s primarily real estate as well but I like to have a mix of active and passive. So there’s a lot of benefits to passive real estate investing right I mean you can hitch a ride with great operators who that’s their game they have access to deals that you’re never gonna get they have management systems in place that there’s no way that you’re gonna have the time to to implement yourself but what you do give up in that environment is control okay. So they may decide that they’re gonna dispose of an asset at a time that’s not it’s not timely for you personally, that’s sorry that’s the way it goes. I like to mix that with some actively controlled real estate investments so that if I did want to sell or dispose of one of those assets or I did want to do something to it I could. And so those are sort of the two components of the you know illiquid side, I do like to balance that I know not everybody does and not everybody has to right but that is that’s kind of how I approach it. I have the approach that like all investments have pros and cons they have their strengths they have the weaknesses and it’s a board game of creativity and strategy to match the investments pros and cons to what you’re trying to achieve within your own life and so that that’s what I do repeatedly.

Buck: What’s on the what’s on the liquid side is it just cash or do you use you know the insurance products like you know Wealth Formula Banking type products or are you a cash person or you what do you use personally on that liquidity side?

Ian: I use both I use both cash, money market and I use high cash value life insurance. So you know I think it’s too simplistic to say that it’s just a teeter-totter and it’s just these things that go in isolation is actually a flow. And so I try also to have each dollar perform more than one task. So if you were to take you know if you were to follow that dollar through you might put it into in this analogy you would put it into a high cash value whole life okay and so the additional benefit you would get some death benefit you would get some asset protection, some anonymity, you would get some compounded tax-free growth in that, now you can borrow that out and redeploy it into the other side on the real estate where you’re going to get tax advantage, you’re going to get some leverage, you’re going to get some you know some insider trading if you will in the expertise of the operator and then there’s going to be a value add component perhaps to that project where you’re going to get that dollar back in a tax advantage way to be real deployed. And so now that dollar has just gone through the system and and flowed through and it’s not linear in its benefit its exponential in its benefit. You keep repeating that cycle and good things happen.

Buck: Velocity you know you’ve got you’ve got mass velocity and leverage. I’m gonna ask you some rapid-fire questions. How much does tax efficiency affect your investment thinking now compared to before?

Ian: Oh it’s night and day actually it’s first and foremost.

Buck: I mean it’s one of the things that I think is is a huge game-changer for people like to understand is that pretty much when most people invest in stocks and bonds whatever it’s all after-tax income, it’s not gonna affect what you are going to pay in taxes but the way Ian invests, the way I invest obviously it’s not only going to create equity and create returns, but it’s actually going to reduce our tax obligation for the year in which we invest it. That is a huge huge deal. I mean anybody who starts talking about compounding and fees and all this other you know stuff they talk about you know in that stocks and bonds world they completely like I mean do they have any idea what they’re missing out on? This is crazy.

Ian: Yeah you know it it’s uh if you look at your the the and your on your personal budget what is your highest expense it’s gonna be generally it’s gonna be taxes unless you’ve addressed it already and if you could come up with a way to take that off of your liability side and your under balance or the law side and you could deploy it into something that’s going to be an asset it’s going to generate revenue for you it’s going to put money in your pocket later on you can’t compound any faster.

Buck: And one of the nice things for Ian is that he’s passed that there is a point of initial pain we’re like okay you don’t have a lot of investments you don’t have a lot of gains to offset those losses because unless you’re a real estate professional you can’t do that. Well Ian passed that right, so he’s got returns coming in that typically are just going to be you know tax-free so that’s huge but it takes some time. Okay next question do you have a retirement account why or why not?

Ian: I do and it’s through our practice and it’s not ideal, it’s not my preference, but given my personal circumstances, it still is the best play initially. I have done another one of my deep dives and I figured out some ways to put money away in a pre-tax way and then have it be processed around so that it will not be taxed at the same rate that it will be that it would have been.

Buck: Through some of the whole life or through some of the insurance?

Ian: That’s one way so you know there’s probably four or five different ways I’m still sort of analyzing those but but it can be done let’s put it that way so it’s a way to arbitrage that money.

Buck: Yeah next question. People talk about college funds for kids you’ve got kids? Doing these 529s and all that mumbo jumbo?

Ian: I used to. I don’t anymore. I used to back in this sort of like days where I was just mindlessly plowing things out that 529 that’s what you’re supposed to do I did that and I don’t anymore. I took a look at them they’re they’re generally fee laid in, they’re very restrictive and you know the benefit that you gain at least from my perspective doesn’t doesn’t offset the gives that you have to do the restrictions they have to endure to have those so I have stopped funding them on my project task list is to see how I can unwind those in an efficient way, I haven’t.

Buck: Yeah that itself is somewhat of a challenge I think just because like 529s they’re really like they have to be used for education right basically it and there’s just a lot of disadvantages 529s at you know we’ve talked about many times in Wealth Formula Network but we won’t get into that anymore. What about you know just some other basic stuff for people who are in their situation, your situation, basic advice in terms of what you’ve done, not advice but you know what have you done for asset protection?

Ian: Asset protection you know you if you align yourself with the mantra of own nothing control everything, you’ll be fine. And so that means they’re getting your personal name off of you know your your your assets place them in trust put them in entities use you know considering insurance products you know start businesses that kind of thing you need to get like depending on your specialty at least for the professionals you may be at risk for you know a suit, it might be frivolous whatever, but what you want to do is is make sure that you at least are cognizant of that and take action to sort of mitigate that. And so if you get things out of your out of your name but yet maintain control through various vehicles that’s generally good advice.

Buck: Estate planning?

Ian: Yeah you gotta have a will and a living trust, okay, will and living trust.

Buck: You’ll be amazed at how many people I talked to that they’ve not gotten that advice and the amount of danger your family is in if you don’t do that is incredible.

Ian: People have their head in the sand, I mean for better for worse like a lot of professionals have large egos because they’ve they’ve earned the right to be a specialist in their field, right they they are the one and only person that knows the most about Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome right but they know in their heart that they are out of their league in some areas of personal finance. You have two options stick your head in the sand and just kind of ignore it and then that doesn’t apply to me, or cede control to somebody else who’s supposedly looking after things or you actually just like you know set your ego aside and realize that you need to take ownership of these activities and and that you know eventually everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences, I mean like you you know your actions or non actions result in your situation.

Buck: You know I think I think Ben Hardy who’s an author who’s on here before I think one of his quotes is effectively like changes in habit all right change is gonna happen now whether or not you grow is not inevitable. Yeah the change is gonna happen whether you like it or not. You are you know obviously a big believer in personal growth abundance mentality, you’re part of multiple groups are part of Wealth Formula Network and all this. What do you learn from these kinds of things?

Ian: I feel it’s as I’ve gone through this process in this journey like I am more and more aligned with you know the Jim Rohn quote that you are the average of the five people you surround herself with. So I have made it a point to surround myself with people who are you know a half level to a level above in whatever area that I’m you know interested in in growing into, you know. So I’m a long course triathlete I’ve done a bunch of iron man’s and bunch of marathons and so forth for a long time I did a deep dive into triathlon and I align myself with people who had been there done that could could help me in that you know learn aerodynamics on the bike and learn power and so forth I did the same thing here with with with tax advisers I did the same thing here with with finding people who are of similar mindset in similar profession and you know the problems and the challenges that we face have commonalities and maybe we can help each other. And then I also sort of align myself with sort of the hero’s journey where you know your and one point your apprentice and a knight is sort of helping you and and at some point you are faced with becoming the night and going out and slaying the dragon and that process in itself will give you experiences that you can never predict and you know you’re going to slay that dragon and then eventually you’re going to come back to you know the town and you’re going to tell everybody how you did it and you’re gonna lend a hand down and help somebody else.

Buck: That’s exactly what you’re doing right now my friend. The hero’s journey. We’re always I mean it I always now every year two or three times of the year I learned something in personal finance that or you know some sort of strategy or whatever that absolutely blows my mind or I just think of something a different way and I’m like damn what was I thinking, right? So it’s a constant learning process but I think it’s been fun you know having people like you to roll things off on Wealth Formula Network and you know have that sort of camaraderie. But I want to thank you in this is I know you were saying that you’re not you’re you know you’re not you you told me you were not a polished podcast guest, but I think this is a really useful you know discussion and you know you’re talking about real world stuff, you’re talking about everybody’s stories that who are listening to this show, so I want to thank you for being on Wealth Formula Podcast.

Ian: No, thanks for the invitation and thanks for all that you do and keep on keeping on my friend.

Buck: Got it. We’ll be right back.