Welcome to White Coat Black Sheep, where science gets curious and dogma gets
uncomfortable. I'm your host, Dr. Savelli.
Today, we talk physiology, evidence, and real-world medicine, and everything in
between. Plus, the questions you're not supposed to ask but probably should.
If you care about health and think there's a better way, welcome to the show.
Thanks for joining me today, Dr. J.
Thanks for having me. How are you guys doing?
Such an honor. I love having you on.
How are you?
Doing good. I've been in the thick of it today.
Running here, running there, slightly sweaty, trying to make it look good.
Well, you look great.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You too. I appreciate your time.
No problem.
I'm going to read a little bit about you to the listeners.
Sure.
I enjoyed doing a little background on you.
Okay. So Car Wash Doc is what we go by, right?
Yeah.
All right. So internal medicine physician and former frontline doctor.
Typically, in your past, you worked pretty much 100 hours per week.
Is that-
That's very true
... on point. Experiencing significant burnout. Understandable.
Entrepreneur, moved into acquisition and improving underperforming car washes.
An advocate for subscription-based business models, business ownership, tax
strategy, and replacing earned medical income with scalable income. Love that.
Husband, father, and help people reclaim their time, energy,
and give more presence at home. That's amazing.
Thank you.
Is all that true? Did I do a good job?
Yeah, I try to actually live by those principles.
I was a hospitalist for Kaiser for
eight years. I've been out of training for eight years, and I recently just left
because I had to really choose between medicine, entrepreneurship, and
lifestyle. And at that point, the easier choice was just to leave
medicine. And it kind of wasn't the initial intent was to never leave medicine,
it's just something that my side hustle became my main hustle and ultimately
granted me a different set of freedoms, but also came with a different set of
chains and shackles that are different from what, say, a physician has.
Yeah.
Business ownership is a whole animal.
I am working to get better at it, but I don't think I would define myself as
nailing it just yet. I'm still in the troubleshooting stages.
I don't think anyone ever nails it. That's the honest truth.
If you're not improving constantly and doing better than the next day, there's
no nailing it.
Yeah. It's constant energy forward, right?
Yeah. Just one step in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, and then
just try and improve upon yourself the next day until you're officially out and you
put someone else in charge and you walk away.
And I'm hoping to get to that point in five, 10 years.
But right now, I'm still in the thick of it. Every day is just different.
New challenges, new stuff. You always go like, "WTF today?" Right? I don't know.
Yeah.
It's so real. I value that you shared that.
Some people just keep it in, and there's this curtain that you can never look
behind. For me, I'm the first doctor in my family, business
owner. That's kind of different than, I would say, most of my family.
So yeah, looking behind the curtain is super important to me and just really
showing that to other people who maybe want to close maybe a income gap
or just change their life, change their family dynamic.
Yeah. It's important to self-reflect on what you're doing though, right?
The big question is why are you doing this? Why do I wake up at 3:00 a.m.
to go answer pages, or why am I doing this? Why do I go work at the car washes?
Yeah.
So if you don't self-reflect, you kind of lose that purpose, and I had to do that a
lot in the last couple of years to just figure out-
Yeah
... what my life goals were. They would always just constantly be redefined every
year. Kids, family, marriage, things like that, business ownership, what I
wanted to do with my academic medical career versus entrepreneurship career.
There's always a constant change.
Yeah.
You look very young.
Thank you.
And I hope you take that as a compliment.
May I ask what is your age? I'm 42. I'll share first.
Sure.
I'm 42.
I'm 40. I just turned 40.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay. When did you start as a doctor?
So you graduated residency when?
In 2017.
Okay, that's a little bit of time ago.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So I finished and I trained up in the Inland Empire, close to San Bernardino, or I
trained at Arrowhead Medical Regional Center as a hospitalist.
This was more-
Okay
... internal medicine, but heavily focused hospital-based medicine.
I loved it, enjoyed it.
Mm-hmm.
It was fun. I don't know if you ever watched the TV show "Scrubs,"
but I felt like I lived that.
Yes.
And it was just awesome. And I was kind of tired of LA
and the Inland Empire, so when I went to go look for jobs as I wanted to be a
hospitalist, I took the first offer I got in San Diego, and I just booked it down
here for, again, with the intention of lifestyle, and that's what I wanted to do.
So I ended up in San Diego at Kaiser for a while.
Yeah. Was that overall a positive or negative?
It feels like it was a negative experience to launch you into the next, but I don't
want to make conclusions.
No, I don't look at a lot of things in life as negatives.
I always try to find the positive in things. There's always setbacks.
But I guess the important thing is to keep yourself up and keep moving forward.
So I never thought of it that way.
Love it.
It's like, okay, well, hey, I'm going to San Diego. Hey, I'm doing this.
I'm buying car washes, or, hey, I developed a house.
Spent more money than I wanted to, made a bad investment. Oh, s**t. Oh, well.
Learned something from it, at least.
Yeah. I share that same-- I call that resiliency.
A lot of people can't just bounce back if there's a bad deal.
That sends some people into a spiral.
Oh, yeah. 100%.
So
I love that you just took that as it's a learning touchpoint. Noted.
Yeah.
And then you kept on going.
Yeah. Again, we're both very young.
I hope to live to be 100 with the use of AI or something, but I have plenty
of time ahead of me to still make mistakes, and I'm still going to learn.
And if I fall, I can always pick myself back up.
Yeah.
I think one of the things that's really powerful that I've come to just
realize is the most dangerous person in the room is the one that's willing to start
over and not be afraid to, because they're willing to give up everything to go back
and grind it out again. And they may do it better the second time.
Yeah. And that's how it is.
I love that. I always thought the most dangerous person in the room is the one who
has nothing to lose, but I love your version of the most dangerous person.
Yeah, it's the same thing. Not that they have nothing to lose, they have everything
to lose, but they're willing to start over again.
Yeah. Everything. Yes. Willing to.
Had to, and then willing to, and then it's like,
yeah, the bounce back.
You say bounce back, I just think about patients that come back to the ER.
Discharge, bounce back.
You're still in the medical mindset.
All over, yeah.
You are a doctor.
Oh my gosh. So 2017, you started your journey.
Now here we are almost 10 years later.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
So I graduated residency in 2023.
I had a long gap between medical school and
getting into residency. Caribbean grad And
yeah, I struggled. I would say I had a lot of life in between
the space of starting as a pre-med person and then arriving where I am right now,
and worked a lot of different random jobs, tried to quit several times.
Like, "I don't want to be a doctor."
Yeah.
Because it's hard, right?
Yeah. It's definitely hard, and you should be proud of yourself-
Yeah
... because you still made it through the thick of it and done what you've done.
Not many people can go through that.
Everyone's got their own struggles, their own life story.
You don't know what battles people are facing.
Yeah.
That's what I think when I see a patient in the ER, I don't know what they've gone
through. I'm only here to help them now and help them get-
Yeah
... through this hospital stay. And that's kind of how you look at things and just
hearing your story too-
Mm-hmm
... like, I had a gap year. I didn't get in the first time.
I'm an osteopath, but big whoop, I'm still a doctor.
You're still a doctor today.
Yeah.
That's a huge accomplishment in itself.
The problem now is I can't burn myself out.
Because it's almost like making up for lost time.
Yeah.
And then there's this pressure that is behind a lot of what I do.
Yeah. Yes. I empathize with that. I've talked to a lot, I
say, recent grads that feel the same way. Like, "Hey, I'm such and such age.
I finished, I have this much in debt. I feel like I need to buy a house.
I need to get married. I need to drive a nice car.
I need to go on multiple trips because my friends have been living their life and
I've been stuck in school, and I'm trying to figure it out." You know?
Yeah.
Yeah. I felt that way, too.
Yeah, and so fast-forward to now where I'm in the
wellness space.
Mm-hmm.
I've built several wellness, I would say centers, and not all of them have
worked out. So, it's interesting to be unwell in a wellness
industry. So, really, it's forced me to just look at habits and
the industry impact, really.
Yeah.
There's a lot of industry culture situations that we're kind of up against as well.
Yeah, everything you do-
Like a workaholic
... you said you've worked on some things that haven't worked out.
Well, you've learned something from that, right?
And then you're in the-
It's tremendous learning
... you're a business owner now, so you're juggling doctor plus business owner, and
I had that same experience, and then it's like throwing into two different-- I felt
like I was compartmentalized into Car Wash Doc and Dr. J. That's who I was.
Yeah.
And then I found a way to eventually kind of blend it, but I couldn't hold it
together because the lifestyle balance, just being
well. I'm probably in the best shape and best mental health I've ever been now
since I left-
That's so great
... Kaiser six months ago, and it was kind of a necessary change that had to
happen.
Mm-hmm.
I'm still a per diem doc, but don't ask me how many shifts I've done this year.
I haven't done very many. But I would love to sometimes go back-
That's liberating
... but it's like I'm so busy, and you just got to prioritize.
Priorities are a huge thing in life now, too.
Yeah.
And then as different scenarios come up, that hierarchy of priorities, it's
okay to shift.
Yeah, 100%.
So, right.
Constantly-
Not anchoring into that fixed point
... every six months, my priorities change. I know my top priorities.
In the intro, you mentioned father, husband, those are my two top.
Everything else under that is just constant shifting.
Like this month I'm prioritizing this.
Next six months, I'm going to prioritize that. So they're always shifting.
That's a really good thing that you just said.
And when it comes to family and relationships, and
really the thing that is your core, right? You have to have that foundation.
I've
been tested in that area, and I realize the level of importance it is to me.
Because you can make a lot of money, and then it's for nothing.
Yeah.
And then you're also just locked into work, and it just is kind of
meaningless. But having a reason that is bigger than you, while you're doing your
calling, while you're earning an income, while you're deepening your relationships,
to me, that's nailing it.
Yeah. I want to say it took me a time to figure out.
I just didn't understand what I was doing, and then at the end of the day, I kind
of lived-
Yeah
... my life by, what are my kids going to be proud of?
Are my kids going to be proud of my actions going forward?
They're going to remember whether I was there for back to school night yesterday
versus- ... I working a night shift. And so as you start to prioritize that.
Yeah.
My wife has been my rock. She's kind of supported me through this crazy journey.
She holds down the fort at the house. She's also in the medical field.
She's a nurse anesthetist who's a YouTube content creator as well.
So we've got kind of these different-
That's awesome
... side hustles that we do, and
what turned out to be side hustles for us are now our main hustles.
And again, our focus is our kids, each other, being husband and wife first,
reconnecting. Because at the end of the day, I don't want to be 80 years old with,
say, $100 million, but alone.
Yeah, and we see that. There's a lot of doctors who end up like that.
Yeah.
It's really sad to me. I don't want to be that, and I
think I want to be proof, and you're proof that it doesn't have to look like that.
That's not your only pathway, to be 100 and still working-
Yeah
... shifts instead of with your family.
One thing I've taken away, too, in the last couple years is you are not defined by
your degree. That's just one part of you.
No.
Yeah. I'm Dr. J, but I'm also the Car Wash Doc. I'm also a husband.
It's like a blend. You're not just a doctor.
Yeah.
Don't define your life by, "I'm doctor, and that's all I can do," and you're just
going to stick in that lane. You got to do more.
You're so right.
And it's almost like the universe will break you if that is what you're anchored
to.
Yeah, 100%. Change is one of those things that is the
only constant in life.
You think it's backwards. It's an oxymoron, right?
But change is constantly happening.
Yeah.
There's entropy. You cannot be just one person. You cannot just be a physician.
You've got to be other things in your life, otherwise you're not going to really
live a holistic, wholesome life.
I really resonate with that. I have a mug that says, "I am change."
Yeah.
And I always talk in my personal relationships, I don't know if on the podcast, if
I've said it before, but being able to, I would say, ready yourself and
prepare and then embrace change, that's a whole thing.
It's an experience, and it makes your body feel unsettled.
Mm-hmm.
So you really are allowing... I don't know what to call it.
It's a mindset to accept the change as we're going to go into this.
I know it's going to feel off or destabilizing, but I have my core that
I'm relying on to stabilize me.
Yeah.
For when I left Kaiser six months-- or I left in December of 2025.
But the decision, just to make that decision, it took me seven months, and I had
so much anxiety thinking about it, and like, "I'm going to do this."
That's the prep phase. I'm just kidding.
Like, "This change is coming, and I don't know what to think.
How am I going to balance life?
Am I going to have too much free time, or am I going to have no free time?"
Mm-hmm.
"Go back and work." There's so many questions. I lost so much sleep.
Now I sleep a lot better at night now, but going from night shift-
Yes
... I don't have to work night shifts anymore, so it's been a good change.
That is amazing. Yeah, so that prepping your mind and body
for how it's going to feel. But then also while you're in that transition or you're
thinking about the possible transition, you are already anxious.
Yeah.
And some people choose to stay there rather than just plowing forward-
Yeah
... into that unknown space for the chance that this might go away, and you might
feel better, which you did. Which I do.
Yeah. It's crazy to think about the amount of anxiety and stress that I had,
because I'm not a very stressful guy, or I don't have anxiety.
But until I made these-
Mm-hmm
... really big decisions that were like, "I'm giving up the safety, security of a
steady job." I gave up my pension. I gave it all up. I gave up my health insurance.
Yeah.
I don't even know what I'm going to do for health insurance when I leave Kaiser.
What if my kids get sick? And blah, blah, blah.
You start to think of the negatives, but then at the same time, you look at like,
"Okay, well, I'm doing it for these reasons.
I'm doing this to improve my life." This is a change that I actually kind of
wanted, and now God is giving it to me or whatever, and it's like, "Okay, well,
time to embrace it. Let's figure it out."
Yeah. And they say be careful what you ask for, but I'm just like, "Oh, some things
you just can't know."
Mm-hmm.
You can't possibly predict how it's going to impact you, and you just feel called
to step into that-
Yeah
... next thing, whatever it is.
Exactly.
Yeah. And I just pray to be brave. I think that's what I ask for a lot.
Well, I think you're doing a great job so far.
Thank you.
Because all of this is scary. It's scary to go onto a podcast.
It's scary to have opinions or to feel courageous enough to apply what
we've learned in med school or in business, like I have what it takes to make this
work.
Mm-hmm.
So it's trusting a lot. Yeah.
Just going deeper into that, just some stories.
When I was telling people at the hospital, like, "Hey, I bought a car wash." And
they're like, "What the heck are you doing?" And just the looks, and they were
like, "Are you sure that's a good idea?" I was like, "I think so.
I ran the numbers. I did them doing it with a partner and figuring it out." And
eventually came to like, "I'm leaving." They're like, "Are you sure?
You're going to leave? Oh my God, why would you do that?" And not that they were
putting doubt in my head, but it was just like you see the shift of these people or
these other physicians, colleagues of mine,
they were just one track mind, "I'm going to work here till I'm 65," or whatever.
And it's like, "Okay. That's for you.
That's great."
Yeah.
I don't know. I feel like there was this different calling, this different thing
that kind of happened, and I'm just going to-
Mm-hmm
... get off the freeway and take these side roads.
I love that. Yeah, it's liberating, and it's interesting.
I have learned for myself, at least, to not freely share my
dreams, my vision, those things that I'm building or actively working
on. I would rather talk about it after because people do put seeds of
doubt, and that's not-
Mm
... I would say fruitful for me. It doesn't bring out the better outcome.
To me, it gives me anxiety, so I just lock it down.
It's funny because I take the opposite approach.
I tell everyone-
Yeah
... what I'm doing because it holds me accountable that I'm going to go out there
and do it.
Yeah.
But guess what? Even if I fail, at least I know I'm 10 steps ahead on the next
thing.
Yeah.
Or I've gained or I've grown some way.
If I tell people, like, "Hey, I'm going to
buy $100 million in car washes."
Yeah.
If I had said that three years ago, you bet yourself I would've had it by now.
Even if I failed, oh, well, I have $80 million.
Mm-hmm.
I have $70 million in car washes. But it's not like-
Yeah
... I'm still better than what I was when I had said that the first time.
I love it. Yeah. The accountability thing, I think I understand
you. That definitely plays a role.
And maybe there are some people that I apply that principle to in my tight circle.
But with colleagues and stuff, it is challenging because you are different.
You're an entrepreneur. Doctors don't classically think to build things outside of
medicine, and so I love that you really took the side road.
Yeah.
That's where-
Yeah, sort of like, "Oh, that looks interesting.
The beach is that way."
Yeah.
But we're trained very conservatively.
We're in a very conservative profession.
Yeah.
So everything we've done is very conservative.
And I wouldn't say I've always been a risk-taker, but I've always kind of held that
middle ground, and I try to steel man my own arguments or I try to have
these pros and cons in my head. And so it's like you're conservative.
Well, the conservative route is I'm going to work at this job, and I'm going to
stay here for however long till I get my pension or whatever, whether you're a
nurse-
Mm-hmm
... a nurse practitioner, an engineer, a lawyer, or whatever.
Or I can go try this new thing because guess what?
If it does fail, I can probably still get a job back where I was.
Maybe I have to start over again.
Yes.
It's not the biggest deal in the world.
Yeah.
I
really love that. It's like you can do these
side streets. You can diverge. You can pause medicine, or you can do both.
Now that I'm here at this point and I've tried a bunch of different things, I think
I'm going to try the SBA loan route next.
Oh, yeah.
So SBA, 250 is the minimum that you can take out.
Mm-hmm.
So I'm like, "Well, we can easily spend 250 on something."
Well, that's how I got started in my first car wash deals.
Oh, amazing.
I have over 30 million in SBA loans.
Oh, that is so good. I'm proud of you.
And the government's handing out these freebies.
I don't want to say they're freebies. They come with strings attached.
But again, at the end of the day, my worst case was my base case, which was I was
going to go work at Kaiser till I was 65, maybe a little bit longer because I had
some loans to pay back. But that was my worst
case.
Yeah.
So I looked at it as like, "Okay, I'm going to sign the personal guarantee for this
SBA loan to start this side hustle," and eventually just was like, "Hey, this is
kind of like a cheat code. If you know how to navigate the system and figure it
out, you can take that and scale rather rapidly." And that's what I did over the
last three years. So in three years-
That's the right way
... I have 21 car washes in three years that are probably-
Good job
... the value of is probably 60 million,
and I've put down-
That is-
... six million to buy them. So-
I'm so excited for you. People can't do that, and they're too scared to do that.
And I don't know who or how you found out about SBA loans, but you did, right?
And that is-
Yeah
... that's a game changer.
It's like one of those things, just being curious and learning, and you see all
these people online, they're like, "Hey, it's easy to make money doing this," or
flip real estate or sell these things or drop shipping.
Yeah.
There's some truth to a lot of this stuff.
You see I'm probably not one of the guys that's like, "Here, let me count cash with
the car wash," and you just watch my videos.
Yeah.
But I'm watching those same videos three years ago, and I was like, "How the heck
do these people do it? And how do I figure it out?" And you have access to AI and
Google, and you can literally figure out stuff if you're just curious enough and
just keep digging at it. And that's what happened to me. I kept digging at it.
Yeah. And it's paid off.
Yeah. It wasn't easy. You pay your tuition doing it.
Again, I've made some mistakes here and there, but it's like, "Hey, oh, well, I'll
do better on the next one." I wouldn't say I've lost money-money, but could I have
made more efficient use of the capital I deployed or done something differently and
had a stronger return? Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Did I get
scammed by a vendor or did I lose some money on a deal or something? Yeah.
It happens.
Yeah.
And that's just business in a sense, and you've got to take those risks-
Yeah
... and build that into your safety cushion, your game plan, your execution, and
you just know that you've got to roll with those punches too. They come.
There was days I'd walk into Kaiser as a hospitalist and get punched in the face
with every patient pretty much, figuratively It's no different than business.
I walk in, I get-
Yeah
... punched in the face sometimes with things that happen.
I'm like, "Oh my God." Like, okay, well, roll with the punches.
Yeah. You guys are rough. Not you, Jay, but I'm talking to the listeners.
It's hard to be a doctor. It's customer service.
It's-
Yep
... the expectation of some vision of a doctor that I didn't create, but here we
are plugged into this system. Failed expectations, that's
always being managed.
Yeah.
So, it's tough.
It's a different world, going from-
Yeah
... customer service and, say, healthcare.
Because you're trying to provide patient satisfaction.
Mm-hmm.
But sometimes patients don't want to hear what you have to say because it's-
Mm-mm
... the truth. You're trying to give them truth and help them, but it
was different. In medical care, it felt like I was always crossing
a bridge that led to nowhere-
Yeah
... in medicine. I would see a patient, greet them at the ER, and then I would just
bridge them over to the pay discharge door a couple of days later.
And it was like, "Okay, and I guess I'll see you on the return trip back.
You're going to come back because I can't help you." It was always like a Band-Aid,
the bridges were just Band-Aids.
Mm-hmm.
And being, I guess, an entrepreneur
and having control of my own businesses now, it's no longer a Band-Aid, it's no
longer a bridge.
We're actually fixing things and making them-
Yeah
... better.
Yeah.
Imagine trying to do that in a hospital system, and you're like, "Hey, I'm Dr.
Spell here, and I got an idea." "Oh, well, get in line with the administrators and
figure this out, and blah, blah, blah, and go to this meeting," and-
I can't
... you can't change a thing.
No. Yep.
It was the most frustrating thing about medicine probably for me.
Mm-hmm.
And so, having business control and being like, "Hey, we're going to do it this
way, and if it doesn't work, we'll just pivot back."
Yes.
We can do that.
I love it. Yeah. Those barriers, on one hand, there's people who are really good
at navigating it, and they're built for it. They're meant for it.
They can handle going through the red tape and, outpatient wise,
prior authorizations and-
Mm-hmm
... med refills and the forms.
That shuts me down. I feel it.
Yeah.
It's like a defeat feeling. So that, to me, is just, I guess, a signal to my
body that I need to shift. I can't be the one for this.
There's a lot of people who can, and I just am not it.
So-
Yeah
... yeah.
And that's very true. The burnout, that's part of the burnout with medical care
and-
Yeah
... physicians and nurses is going through that red tape over and over again.
Mm-hmm.
And it's like, okay, if I have to do it every once in a while, it's fine.
But if I've got to deal with it with every insurance, every, say, hospital
discharge, DME that I've got to order, or prescriptions that can't get filled-
Yeah
... and I'm like, "I can't do-
So much
... this for every single patient." It does not-
Yeah.
It sucks. It's like, when did I become a paper pusher rather than someone who's
more critical thinking and trying to help a patient?
Yeah.
And then again, part of my burnout, too, was just I would see sometimes the same
rotating patients come through, and it's like, there's got to be a better way.
Wellness, I feel like that's more of a recent shift in-
Mm-hmm
... the last generation or two. But the baby boomers that I'm seeing, they didn't
have the wellness conversation. So it's like, no.
No way.
It's like, "Dr. J, how do I fix this?" "Oh, sorry, sir, you're 10 years a little
too late."
Unfortunately.
Yeah. Unfortunately, you're 10 years too late because you should've been working on
your health, your weight, your sleep, all these things.
And I feel like it's more of a bigger focus now, which I'm more, I guess, bullish
on the younger generation of people.
Mm-hmm.
They're more health conscious. But-
Yeah
... the older generation, it's hard to take care of them because you get to a point
where there's no return from this, and now it's just a management type of disease
where you've got to manage this thing.
And if you don't manage it well, I'm going to see you back in the ER pretty damn
soon.
Absolutely. It's not rewarding for either side, for the doctor, for the
patient. It's just a failed cycle. Something has to change.
Yeah. And unfortunately, some of those things you can't change.
Yeah.
Sometimes you have to say-
I'm one of those patients.
Yeah. And then some things, it's like the insurance red tape or whatever you want
to call it, just getting the appropriate care delivered to the patient so they can
change or can improve the outcomes. And it was the most frustrating thing.
It's probably the biggest relief that I've had leaving medicine-
Yeah
... and not having to deal with that anymore.
Well, it's an inspiration, and I hope it makes other people brave as they're
dealing with burnout and watching their health decline.
I noticed, okay, doctors and lawyers, they're probably the worst.
We're the worst with doing our health checks,
labs, screenings. We're the doctors.
Yeah. We're the worst patients.
We're the worst patients.
We're the worst patients. Yeah.
I feel like I'm really creating something centered around taking care
of our colleagues, because to get any of us to leave the clinic to go give
blood, are you serious? That is mission impossible.
Yeah.
When?
Yeah. You got 10 patients waiting already.
You're already behind in the day, and you've got to-
Yeah
... call a couple insurance companies back about a pre-op, and it's like, dude,
there's no time in the day. You feel the constant rush.
Yeah.
How many times have you skipped lunch?
All the time.
All the time. You don't really take lunch.
I hardly drink water because you've seen me trying to catch up. I had to work out.
But it's just, yeah. It's hard to do everything and take care of yourself and take
care of people around you in the way that you know it should be done.
Yeah. And I should throw a disclaimer out there.
Running a business also is not the easiest either.
You still skip lunch, you still lose sleep over things.
But at least it's a little different that at the end of the day, running a
business hinges on your, I guess, dedication and work ethic.
Mm-hmm.
But you can still take that pause and carve out that time because it's
done on your time versus you try to say, "Hey, I need a wellness break for two
hours in the middle of a clinic day." You're doing that on patients' time, and
you're-
Yeah
... on someone else's paid time. So you can't really do that, and that was one of
the things-
Can you imagine admin looking at you if
you say-
Yeah
... "I'm going to be on two-hour wellness," blink, blink.
I think they would be speechless.
Probably. I just don't see a world where we can get back to...
Imagine telling admin, "Hey, instead of seeing 22 patients in a day, I'm going to
just see 16 and spend more time with them and take a nice break and go get-
Yeah
... lunch."
Good luck with that.
It's not a system built. Yeah.
Yeah.
Unless you own the practice yourself and you built it that you can sustain
yourself, yeah, do what you want. But until you've earned that right, which again,
I tell a lot of people, even businesses aren't passive.
Other investments, for the most part, aren't passive.
Yeah.
You have to earn that right to do that.
That's so true.
I feel like I've kind of
gotten a grip or gotten to that point where I've earned it, and I've been doing car
washes for three years. And I'm still not at that point, because when I'm
actively on site, I'm working 16-hour days and I'm skipping lunch still, and I
barely go take a potty break.
Yeah.
That's how it is. But eventually, hopefully in five years, I've earned it, that
we're like, "Hey, I'm going to go work one hour a day and be done."
Yeah. That's ideal. And then when it comes to that
structure of outsourcing, so you put plugging in the right people,
I feel like it is a whole separate category for me to learn
with choosing how to vet the right people, how to screen the right-
Oh, yeah
... people so that they're trustworthy, they are truly reflecting you, they're
extensions of you, and they're not misrepresenting your company or your brand.
That's hard.
Oh, yeah. Definitely. It's probably more so important for you because you're
dealing with patients.
Mm-hmm.
Like for us, it's our employees on site that represent us, and our me is the
manager or the owner, and it's like you want to find those good people who you
trust. I have to trust employees with cash.
I can imagine you have to trust employees with sensitive information and talking to
patients and conveying and-
Well, I'm cash-based outpatient. So, yes.
We-
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, it's a lot of that stuff. It's hard to find good people.
Not saying that there aren't any out there-
Mm-hmm
... but you've got to find the right fit for you.
Yes.
And for us, it's been not a struggle, but it sucks when
a good employee needs to move on. And we're happy to see them move on-
Yeah. That's good
... go do a different job. You're happy for them, but at the same time, it sucks
because it's like now I've got to find someone that was just as good as them-
Yeah
... and hire them.
Yeah.
It's easy to let go of the bad employees-
Yeah
... but then if you don't have the payroll for it to
hire well-
Mm-hmm
... you're going to suffer, your business is going to suffer.
Well, okay-
You know?
... so on that point, just paying well is not enough.
Like-
Yeah, sometimes, yeah.
Yeah. And so I had to learn that because you start somebody out, and you
feel like, "Okay, I'm going to invest into my people." And you give them
market or above market rate perks-
Yeah
... support,
but it does not guarantee it's going to work.
Mm-hmm.
It's a really-
Yeah,
it's one of those things, we're quick to hire, but we're also quick to fire.
And it's not like we are hiring people to just firing them-
Yeah
... we're trying to find a good fit that works with us, that works with our
schedule. We're flexible. We try to
support our employees on site. We're a mostly Phoenix-based.
It's 110 degrees out there. We have water-
Oh, shoot
... delivered to sites. We make sure we have AC there.
We make sure we have
cold refrigerators at work.
Yeah.
Things like that. We get them fans.
We want them to have a safe work environment, but at the same time, if you can't
handle it or you don't want to or if this is just-- I'm not saying this is going to
be your career.
Yeah.
We're
lower-end labor, but if you need something else or you're just not the right fit,
we'll let you go. For you, you're probably looking for skilled MAs-
Yes
... skilled nurses.
Yes.
And you're trying to hire from a different pool of people-
Yes
... and it's difficult. You've got to find people who also care, that have the same
message as you.
Mm-hmm.
It's a lot more difficult.
Yeah. And there's also a gap that exists, and I'm working to close it, but there's
a gap between what people believe that they know, what they think that they're good
at, and what they're actually good at.
That perceived value of what you bring to the table is not always it.
And so without crushing somebody, giving feedback in a proper
way,
that is hard. It's hard.
I can imagine.
My feedback's probably a lot different than yours, but you've got to find people
that
aren't so ego-driven or narcissistic in a sense-
Yes
... because then if you go in there and you say, "Hey,
Mrs. So-and-so, didn't like the way you talked to him." Like, "What are you talking
about? I'm the kindest person." Like, "No, you kind of-"
Yeah.
"Becky, you got an attitude."
Yeah.
Like, "You've got to tone it down a little bit."
Yes.
And that happens.
Yeah.
And that's difficult. Really difficult.
Definitely. Or getting the name close but wrong.
That actually, I was told by a patient today, "Yeah, when your reception called,
she messed up my name, and I told her, and she didn't correct it."
If you're told, "My name is
Valerie," and the other person just skips over it, that is perceived as rude.
That's not good.
Oh, yeah. It's like you keep calling them Veronica, and it's like, "No, I told you
my name is Valerie, not Veronica."
You're like, "I can't pronounce it."
Yeah.
It's not fair.
And it's like, well,
am I just another number you're calling?
Or are you really-
Feels like it
... does this office really care about who I am as a patient, right?
Yep.
Yeah. It's a huge deal.
Yeah. Well, I love what you said, that you are in the best shape of your life right
now. Tell me more about that.
Yeah. Well, so when I was working at
Kaiser at the same time doing my side hustle, I was working night shifts
Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I was like a weekendist.
And then I would take off and go work the car washes,
and I would physically be on site pretty much Monday through Thursday, and maybe
sometimes even drive back on a Friday or fly back on a Friday, and I would go to
work. And I was killing myself. I was literally working 100 hours a week because
at that point, the car wash income hadn't surpassed my
physician income. But I saw that, hey, if I grinded it out for a couple of
years, this could be something a lot bigger.
Mm-hmm.
And so I did that for two to three years.
And in the beginning, it wasn't straight night shifts.
I was rounding-
Mm-hmm
... was working seven days straight. The seventh day was a 24-hour shift.
And then I would have a week off-
Oh my God
... but my week off, I was still working.
I'm still juggling being a dad, a husband, all these things, activities, trying
to still be social. I had no time. What's the first thing that goes?
The gym, right? You're eating fast food because it's fast, right?
You're not eating healthy anymore.
So, that was one of the biggest struggles to just manage.
And it was hard. Even with the times I didn't travel to the car washes and was off
from my night shifts, I didn't have the motivation or energy to even go to the gym.
Yeah.
Because I felt like, oh, I'd only go for one day, two days, and then I'd be gone
for two weeks or I wouldn't be able to-- It's like you-
You give into it
... you lose that routine and then...
Yep.
Yeah. So when I left, it's like, okay, well, I made a conscious decision, if I'm
going to leave Kaiser, I'm going to make it so that I can still be healthy
and well at the age of 80 because I want to play with my grandkids.
How do I do that? I've got to start working out now.
I've got to build my bone density. I've got to make sure I'm strong-
Yeah
... healthy, get my physical checkups now.
Yes.
Go get my blood drawn now.
Good job.
So, things like that. Yeah. And it's been a huge transformation because now, okay,
yeah, I still travel maybe 10... Now I probably travel now 10, 12 days a month.
But I make it a point that if I am home, I will go to the gym for at least an
hour a day.
Good.
And if it's the first thing I do at 6:30 in the morning, that's what I'm going to
do. And then me and my wife cook more now at home because I'm home, and it's like
you're not making a meal for one because your significant other's gone and my two
little ones don't eat that much. But now we can meal prep better, and we can afford
more organic, healthy food options-
Yeah
... and things like that. So, then you just start really caring about your health
more. You're like, "Oh, I'm going to do a little bit of red light therapy."
Yes.
"I'm going to do saunas and-"
I love that.
Yeah. "I'm going to do saunas and cold plunges." So, it's like you start to add
these things, and I'm like, okay, well, I've built a routine around it.
I know if I'm going to travel for at least 10 days a month, that means the other 20
days I can for sure hit the gym.
Perfect.
I can for sure do these things.
Yep.
And so I've made that a priority now, and it's shifted higher than, say, working
per diem shifts at the hospital because I come home, and I'm burnt out.
I'd rather focus on my health than go work an eight-hour swing shift or midnight
shift at the hospital.
Mm-hmm.
So, yeah, I'm losing income, but I feel like I'm gaining wealth in other areas of
life. They always talk about the five pillars of wealth, but I've always
neglected the health one-
Same
... for a long time.
Same. And I'm-
So-
Yeah, I didn't like myself like that
... like I said, no-- Yeah. I feel better. I wake up better. I feel more rested.
Yeah.
I have more energy.
I feel like I can do a lot more.
I'm trying to not be the patient where I'm telling them, "Sorry,
sir, it's 10 years too late." I'm trying to practice what I preach as when I did as
a doctor. I don't want my younger self telling my older self, "Hey, you should've
been working on this in your 40s." I kind of wish I started in my 30s, but hey,
there's no wrong-- Any time to start is a good time to start, right?
Absolutely. That's the message. Really, even if you're in your 50s, 60s, 70s,
you can have a body transformation physically, and then the labs will show us that
the inside is also adjusting So it's pretty profound.
And there's chronic disease. And so if that's unmanaged for-
Mm-hmm
... quite a long time, there are some things that are irreversible, but you can
still reduce its impact.
Yeah. But like you said, the chronic disease just doesn't show up one day and it
becomes chronic.
Mm-hmm.
It's been brewing for so many years because of neglect.
Yeah.
Maybe your BMI is like 40, maybe your stress management is
eating chocolate sweets or something-
Yeah
... and you're just stuffing your face full of Hot Cheetos or something.
Yeah.
That's stuff that builds up. And heart disease and stress management,
all these things, they didn't start yesterday, they started years ago.
You're exactly right.
And they don't show up until maybe a doctor diagnoses them.
But again, that's just when the diagnosis hit.
Mm-hmm.
But again, they've been probably brewing for a long time.
Yeah. So, it's interesting because you're not in a new space without stress.
The stress is still there. Both pathways are hard.
Both of them made you react differently, though.
You changed your behavior when you changed your environment, and you're better for
it. So there's some level of,
I wouldn't say full balance is achievable.
I always strive for it, but I think you're a lot closer doing
exactly what you're doing.
Yeah. I would agree.
I would agree. Nothing's ever perfect.
It's not real.
Nothing's ever perfect. Even to be perfect is not a real thing.
Mm-hmm.
But as you transition, you have more, say,
freedom financially or with your time. You get to make those conscious choices.
Yes.
A fresh grad doctor probably doesn't have those choices in the beginning because
they're, again, trying to figure out life and their lifestyle-
That was tough, right?
... their work-
Post-grad
... schedule.
To just jump in.
Yeah.
Now you can make decisions. You're like, "Wait, what?"
Yeah. I was like, "I finally have money.
Am I flying to Vegas to go party this weekend, or am I going to pick up extra
shifts? Because I'm still in credit card debt from residency."
I was a little bit of both.
"I don't know what I'm going to do." Yeah, I was a little bit of both.
Yeah.
And
so now that you have more time, or I should say, I am fortunate
enough to have that time and be able to make those decisions.
The stress hasn't gone away. It's changed. It's morphed.
Yeah.
I've found new ways to cope with it, deal with it,
handle it a lot better.
Mm-hmm.
And I think it's just one of those things you just grow into, and I don't know,
maybe I've matured a lot more since my 30s.
You are 40 now. It kicks in at a different level.
I know, right?
I've got some grays coming in.
Yes.
I don't know. It's one of those things, hey, again, I'm trying to
just live a fulfilling life with interesting stories that my kids are going to be
proud of, of who I am and what I do, even when I'm not there.
It's like that integrity component, and
again, at the end of the day something happens, oh well.
And I guess one of the other big things about medicine is I'm not stressing over
the decisions that impact someone's life anymore.
Mm-hmm.
The decisions that I stress over are like, "Do I go fix this machine?
Do I go do this? What do I do with this employee?" It's not like a life or death
sort of thing. Not every decision in medicine's life or death, but that decision
weighs on you more heavily.
Yeah.
And I feel like that stress load has kind of lifted.
Yeah.
I don't go home at night and wonder, "Hey, did I order the right meds for this
patient?" Or, "Hey, I wonder if that patient-"
Yeah
... "is okay anymore." I'm kind of removed from that.
Yeah. That is beautiful. I can see how that would be liberating.
Yeah.
Yeah. It is liberating. And still, it's funny because some of my friends will ask,
"Are you going to come back and work as a doctor?" I'm like, "Yeah, I kind of would
love to go still use that skillset." But I find it crazy that I still use the same
skillsets as a doctor in business.
The empathy part, the critical thinking-
Ooh, you're right
... being a diagnostician. You still use it all in business.
Yes.
It's just I'm just using it in a different form.
Yes. That's a great point. I guess I am, too, in a sense.
Yeah.
It's people. We're managing people.
The clients are people, the employees are people, and that's the skill that we were
given.
That's actually probably the biggest skill a physician has is their empathy and
their ability to connect-
Yeah
... develop rapport, walk in their shoes-
Yes
... understand, relate, communicate important things-
Mm-hmm
... analyze data, and come up with a diagnosis and a treatment
plan.
Mm-hmm.
You can replace all those words for a business
whatever word.
Mm-hmm.
But you have what I call, it's like you have an MBA
without knowing it.
Mm-hmm.
You have the skillset. You're obviously smart.
You went to med school, you graduated, you finished residency, you retained a lot
of knowledge, you passed your boards.
Yeah.
So you are capable. And I tell that to a lot of physicians, too.
You are way more capable than just being a doctor.
Again, don't stick in that one lane.
You can do a lot more things-
Love that
... if you just put your mind to it.
Yeah.
Again, I don't blame them. You've worked so hard, you've spent
four years in college, four years in med school, say four years residency, and it's
like 12 years have gone by.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe you want to check out for a year or two, but if you want to check out till
you're 65, I can't help you. That's just who you are as a person.
Yeah.
And so again, and it's not a wrong choice.
You've just got to be able to live with that risk that you're taking.
Exactly. I don't know if you can hear that phone ringing. I'm sorry.
I don't know where it's ringing from.
No, it's fine. I don't hear anything.
I would fix it, but I don't know how to do it. I'm not touching anything.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, that's powerful, because people are scared.
They're scared to take the jump. They're scared to change their lives because it's
the devil that you know.
Yeah.
The fear of change is real. Change
itself is scary. It doesn't feel natural,
but plowing forward anyway, it's worth it, taking the leap.
Yeah. Even just doing a new hobby, it's scary to people.
Yeah.
Meeting new people now. I'm 40, and I have social anxiety.
I wouldn't call it social anxiety-
Never know
... it's like meeting new people, it feels tough, joining a new friend circle,
going to go play pickleball with you.
That's a highly social sport.
Playing with someone like you're doing it for the first time.
Yeah. You're exactly right.
And so you put yourself in a situation-
Yeah
... you've got to do it. You're not going to know, and you'll never know until you
try. And again, if you fail, at least you learn something or learn something about
yourself and you grew as a person.
Absolutely. Yeah. That's part of it. Last question for you.
I know you have a lot to do.
Sure.
Have you done any of these specialty labs to see what your biological age is, and
what do you think about that?
I haven't. I've been curious about that.
You see a lot of stuff about these peptides and all these other things.
I think it's actually a really fascinating space because now you have AI doing
drug discovery. You can analyze data and huge pools of data, and
it's something that I'm optimistic on the future of healthcare in that
sense because all these new things are going to come out.
My one thing is I just hope the data is different, but I hope people don't become
dependent on the drugs.
Yeah.
It still takes hard work. It still takes going to the gym-
Yes
... eating right, practicing mental stability and all those things because a pill
can't fix all those things. But maybe a pill can help supplement, like these new
GLP-1s have come out and stuff like that. I am curious to do it.
I haven't done it myself. I've been telling my wife maybe next year we'll go to
Turkey and just do a full body medical certification and something.
We have it here. You don't need to go to Turkey. I'll send you a kit.
Well, I was thinking of... Yeah, send me one. It'd be interesting.
I would like to just try it because it's nice to have your basic
metabolic panel.
Mm-hmm.
You got your cholesterol panel, your A1C, but that's all we track.
Yeah.
There's probably a lot more. There's inflammation markers that we can-
Enzymes
... Yeah, there's so much more that we haven't discovered.
Telomeres.
Yeah, and-
And it's like, why aren't we doing this?
Well, we're not doing this for every patient-
Mm-hmm
... because it costs money, and it's expensive.
Insurance companies-
Yeah
... aren't going to pay for it yet. Maybe they will in the future if they start to
hone in more on-
Mm-hmm
... wellness. And I can see that being a huge industry, and it's already exploding
and it's growing. Like I said, I feel like the younger population is going to be a
lot more healthier than,
say, the baby boomers and Gen X that are kind of getting up there now.
But I would like to explore that and probably do a couple of tests just to kind of
see, because again, I do it now, maybe do it again when I'm 45 and then do it when
I'm 50, and it'd be fun to say, "Hey, I'm 40, but
my metabolic or my body's biological age is 30."
Well, that is what I say.
I'm like, "Ah, woo!"
So you know what? Okay. So I do it-
Yeah
... every three months. Fun fact, I'll just freely share, and when I graduated from
residency, that was the first time that I started it, and I read some article, and
I saw it was published by Harvard, and I want to say it was True
Diagnostic Health is the brand that I used.
And I was
so stressed. I was in the worst, I would say, health of my life. Excuse me.
And
I was 55. It breaks it down into organ system. 55.
Oh, wow.
55. And I'm like,
it's math. It tells you how it arrives at all of these conclusions about your age,
and it's pooled off of several thousands of different people.
It is a database, right? So that's what it's pooling from and doing some
calculation.
Yeah.
And it's predictive. It has probability language.
So-
Yeah
... now that we're here, I'm 39.
How do you-
And I'm happy with that.
Yeah.
We're just working on it. But-
You're working on trying to bring it down near my year
... yeah. I want to be 55 again.
Not to the actual age, but yeah.
No.
You don't want to be there.
I was just like, "We have to change everything."
You don't want to be there.
And I did, and so my behaviors changed as a result of that data.
So for me, that feedback is very helpful.
And even for the food changes that I've made, I do the microbiome testing, and I do
the microbiome support with-
Mm-hmm
... Biome. I know there's a lot of brands out there, but I found I kind of like
their style of the information and their price point.
Yeah. Again, I'm so optimistic on the future of medicine.
I would say I'm pessimistic on the old school-
Me too. It's so bad
... stuff that we have learned.
I feel like it's outdated, and when the times are changing so fast and so
rapidly, medicine stays on this linear progression of change while the world
is now becoming exponential, and medicine-
It's not
... is not keeping up. So that's why you see all these supplements and all these
new testing that's all off the shelf, kind of not covered.
I wish it was covered because I think people should get it.
Yeah.
You should
know. Go and-
Yeah
... get your test done, and see what you are and track it, because that could be,
again, it's predictive of maybe you'll have a heart attack when you're 50-
Yes
... or hey, you're in good shape. Maybe you got to work on your bone density
because-
It'll tell you
... you're going to get a hip fracture.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Things like that. It's so cool. I really wish I had the knack more-
Mm-hmm
... so for that.
I considered pursuing medical type of businesses because I was
leaving-
Mm-hmm
... Kaiser, and you have kind of a non-compete when you work for a big HMO.
So I was like, "Oh yeah, maybe I'll start doing these other things." I just haven't
had the time to really be like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to go explore such and such and
do my own med spa or wellness clinic, medical clinic."
Hey, at least you're having fun-
And I'm happy
... and you're making a lot of money doing it, so I love that for you.
Your health has benefited. Your family-
Thank you
... has benefited from this change.
So I hope it's an inspiration to other people listening because it's hard to do
what you've done. It is near impossible to do what you've done. It's brave.
Thank you. I hope to inspire or hope we are inspiring-
Yeah
... other physicians. Again, you're just not a doctor.
Yeah.
You can do a lot more, and you shouldn't just define yourself by a single paycheck
that you're getting every two weeks. Yeah, you have the doctor title, great.
Yeah.
Go do something cool now. Go-
... conquer whatever world that you-- Go climb whatever mountain you want to climb.
Yeah.
It doesn't have to make money, but do something that helps you, benefits you, helps
you with your mental stress.
Again, we are way more capable as physicians of doing more things than we ever were
able to-
Yes
... in the years before. So again, that's the one message I could leave people.
Just go out and-
Go for it. Yes
... go at it. Just go after it.
I love it.
Yeah. The worst thing that's ever going to happen is you're still-
Yeah
... a doctor at the end of the day. You're not going to lose your license-
Crazy
... unless you do something sketchy.
Yeah, don't be sketchy.
Don't. Yeah.
Don't be sketchy. Yeah, but again, go for it. Do it.
You might as well because again, you're not going to get that chance-
Right
... when you're 70. At that point, you're playing life-
Yes
... safer. You don't want to take those risks.
I love that.
But take it now.
I couldn't agree more. Well, thank you so much, Dr. J.
I appreciate your time, your energy, sharing your experience, your life.
Let's do this again sometime. And I'm going to send you a kit.
Yeah, no problem.
We'll see your actual biological age.
I appreciate it. Thank you. It's been great hanging out and talking to you. Yeah.
If it's higher than 40, don't post it.
Maybe when you're done and yours to share, I would love to see the results either
way.
Awesome. No, thank you for having me.
It's been fun, and I hope we-
Definitely
... can do it again soon.
All right. Talk to you later. Bye.
All right. Take care. Bye-bye.
