Want to move on from clinical medicine?
Know you’re ready for a transition but not sure how to make it happen?
Today’s guest might have the inspiration you need. She happens to be one of the first students in my Industry Insider course years ago, and she’s got a thriving career as a quality physician in the medical device industry.
In this episode of The Career Rx we’ll discuss:
Looking for nonclinical careers from the private practice perspective
Advice about nonclinical resumes and nonclinical job searching
Dr. Shalev’s experience in real estate investing for passive income
This episode is an inspiring conversation with Dr. Ronnie Shalev, a post market surveillance (quality) physician, about her transition from emergency medicine to her medical device industry career… and her adventures in real estate investing. Listen as Dr. Shalev details her journey through the ups and downs of clinical medicine, mastering how she presented her transferable skills, and creating passive income for more financial freedom.
Special announcement: My course, Industry Insider, is now accredited for up to 12 CME credits. Learn how to land an exciting and impactful role as a physician in the world of pharma, biotech, or medical devices, AND how to do that even if you think you’re not qualified, don’t have any connections, or concerned about a pay cut… I’ve got you covered!
In this Episode:
[1:30] Dr. Shalev’s background and motivations for a change
[11:20] A successful transition from private practice with no research or publication experience
[23:40] It’s more than just ‘who you know’ (but knowing people helps!)
[32:00] An unlikely story about 7-11s, AutoZone, and real estate success
[36:20] The passive income strategy
Please note: the information and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the guest speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the host, nor any of the host’s affiliated entities.
Links and Resources:
Industry Insider – 12 CME hours – learn exactly how to land a rewarding nonclinical career without a new degree, connections on the inside, prior experience, or a pay cut
Check out her investing website: invest.shalwinproperties.com
Find her on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ronnieshalevmd
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TRANSCRIPT: Episode 99 – Real Estate Investing with Dr. Ronnie Shalev
Hey there, I’m Marjorie Stiegler and you’re listening to The Career Rx podcast, where we tackle the important things they don’t teach you in medical school. how to treat your career, the business, it really is, with strategies to accelerate the kind of success that you want, because you deserve a career you love, and a career that loves you back. Are you ready? Let’s get into it.
So welcome back everyone to another episode of the career prescription. I’m really thrilled today to have a special guest, Dr. Ronnie Shalev on my show, here to talk about all kinds of things career related, because Ronnie, will will get into the details of this, but you have had quite some some various and interesting career experiences as a clinical physician, as a non clinical physician, and even in things that are outside of medicine entirely. Welcome to the show.
Oh, my gosh, thank you so much for having me. I am so honored. I’m a huge fan. And I mean, Marjorie, you’ve, you’ve changed my life in so many ways. So I’m so excited to be here.
Oh, thank you for saying that. You know, for my listeners, I don’t know, if you come on over to the Industry Insider or to my course page, you’ll see right at the top, Ronnie’s glowing face. And because she is one of the first one of the first people in one of my earliest cohorts to have the full Industry Insider course.
And, and you’re so your story is such a great one of success. So it warms my heart to hear you say that. But I figured we may as well provide the context for how you and I know each other?
Yes, for sure.
So tell us I guess a little bit just so that my audience can get to get to know you and think about kind of where they are where you are. You are an emergency medicine physician by training. Is that right? Yeah, that’s right. Do you want to tell people a little bit about your clinical journey? Anything you want to say? Like, why did you choose that? What did you experience as you worked as a professional in emergency medicine? And then maybe what inspired you to look for something new?
Yeah, so I practiced emergency medicine for 16 years. I chose it because I loved the excitement, I loved the idea that I could have a critical patient. A lot of critical care, surgery, I mean, procedures, interaction with a lot of various fields within the hospital, and you’re really in the center of it all. So I really loved that when I chose my specialty.
I also loved the schedule, having no pager, being on when I was on and then off when I was off. I really, that really drew me in, I knew that I wanted to travel and, and have a lot of flexibility. And that field definitely provided it. What I didn’t take into account was, how intense it was, and how intense and how little resources you get in the emergency department compared to other specialties.
And the amount of stress that you basically are in a stressful situation, you know, 20 to 30 patients at shift. Yeah, they’re all different. Yeah. So really, the stress started getting to me and I started feeling burnout. Pretty early in my career, actually.
That’s really interesting to hear, because a lot of people when they think of Emergency Medicine, you know, physicians anyway, we don’t think of the TV show, right? Like, ER, we, we know that a lot of things that come into the ER, are not necessarily emergencies. And we also know that there are shifts, like you mentioned, right, you’re on when you’re on and you’re off when you’re off.
And so some people view it almost as a quote unquote, lifestyle specialty. But I find that hard to believe because of the stress level of the things that are emergencies. And then the things that aren’t like you better be darn sure they’re not right? Some kind of a, an, an atypical presentation of something that gets worse later. I bet that’s a heavy weight.
Absolutely. And that was one of the strongest like weights on my shoulders every day like these atypical presentations. And then wondering after the shift was, Wait, was that really just like a migraine or should I have seated them? You know, was it a subarachnoid you know, anything that you could have missed?
Because we see the scariest things and scary things do happen. So not everyone, you know, that is nothing is actually nothing. So it was very tricky, and it’s very time sensitive. And you don’t have a lot of time or resources and there’s a lot of liability. And a lot of it just kind of puts a lot of weight and pressure and it contributed to my to my burnout.
And you said you started to experience that kind of early in your career. Can you say a little bit more about that? We don’t need to dwell but I think a lot of people appreciate hearing about it. very widespread.
Right. I remember in my first year out of residency, having two pediatric deaths in one shift…
Wow.
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve recovered. That was like 16 years ago. I got out of that shift. And I said, I can’t do this forever.
Wow. Wow. That’s powerful. And I, I It’s kind of giving me chills, like, I can still feel that like, yeah, that that is a very heavy weight. Wow. But you did do it for 15 more years?
Yes. So I tried, I really tried to stay in it. Because I really do love practicing medicine, I love taking care of patients. And I really am proud when I can diagnose something bizarre and save someone’s life. It’s like a, you know, a, like a badge of honor that you know, I wear my chest.
So I did try for another 15 years, changing different settings, I went to a community practice, I went from a hybrid academic community, to just a community to private practice to PRN. And it just, it wasn’t, it wasn’t gonna keep me in there. I just knew that, even though it was changing the settings, it was the same problems that I didn’t like in each setting.
So I love that you said that, because I know this is not an intentional segue. But for a lot of people who come to me interested in changing their careers, that’s one of the sort of first questions that we need to attend to, right is, is the person just very unhappy in what they’re doing and they need to run away from it to something else that may be just filled with the same problems, right?
And even if it’s not a different practice environment, really to kind of understand what is something that you could use your skills out, that you will really enjoy doing. And so I think it’s, it’s just an important lesson, because you have been practicing in a lot of different settings.
The other thing I want to note is, I just want to be clear, like, I didn’t hear a lot of high powered academia or research in there. Am I right?
Yeah, I had zero. So that was one of the reasons that I was like, Oh, my God, I’m just now after doing all of those things. And now I’m a community doctor with no research, no academics, no, nothing published, since I was a president.
And now I want to switch out of the medical industry and go into pharma or medical device, and I was stuck because I haven’t created my I hadn’t filled my CV or my resume with anything. Yeah. The last 16 years, I was trying to maneuver and try to stay in the fields. Yeah. And so that was a big challenge.
I mean, that’s, it’s so interesting. And again, I hope my listeners are tuning into this because I, you’re embodying so many of the things that are the same challenges or concerns, you know, people will say, but I don’t have any experience and not even any research experience when they’re interested in medical device or pharma.
And so they think that disqualifies them, or they come from a specialty like yours, emergency medicine, mine anesthesiology, where there’s not really a whole lot of specific drug development actively for our specialties. So people think that disqualifies them as well, which of course it does not.
And then in listening to the way that you described, your work, and also the various settings, I hear so many transferable skills that people just don’t even begin to realize they have. So maybe we can use that as a segue to you know, when did you start to feel in earnest, like you wanted to make a change, and really started to take some action to pursue that?
I think it was around 2017. When I was like, Okay, what are my plans for the next 10 years? How am I going to make the leap? How am I going to make the jump? Where am I going, and that was when I started exploring the different options that physicians have. Whether it’s utilization management or consulting or med tech or, or something like health software, or I mean, there’s just so many places you can plug in and I didn’t want to go to a place that I would hate also.
Yes and you know I was the primary breadwinner at the time and I didn’t want to make a jump, uproot my family, change the life everything and then hate it and then being trapped in another job.
Yes. Also a huge concern, right? People are afraid they’re gonna hate the work and they’re afraid they’re going to not be able to pay their bills, right. They’re concerned about that compensation, which is a whole other I’m sure I think I’ve several episodes on that topic. But yeah, It’s really it’s and it’s a valid consideration, right?
I mean, you have, you have, now you have, you know, bills to pay, like maybe you have a mortgage, maybe you have kids, like maybe I’m talking about you and also like the listeners as a youth. Right, you have obligations. And when you think about transitioning out of clinical medicine, which is generally pretty well paid, no matter the specialty, you know, pretty well paid.
That’s a concern on a lot of people’s minds. So it sounds like you did a fair amount of exploring, because you already just rattled off a lot of different options. And many physicians don’t even get that far. Right.? They don’t, they kind of don’t know what’s available, or they haven’t looked at it. How did you go about looking into those various things?
Yeah, so I, the biggest thing that I did was I spoke to as many physicians that were doing other things, as I could just get an idea of what was possible. You know, and then I started saying, Okay, well, if they can do that, I mean, I figured I could do it also, but would I like it, could I stay in it for a while? Was this right for me?
And I started dabbling. So I did some consulting work to try out being a consultant. I did utilization management, you know, as a contractor, I became a chief medical officer of a health tech company that was just in the incubator, incubation phase, like at a in a health tech incubator.
And I started, you know, helping them as much as I can, whether wherever I told them like, you have me, where do you want to plug me in and I’ll do anything. And I basically worked for free for them.
Oh, yeah, I was gonna ask you, were you still working clinically at that time that you were doing the dabbling.
As I was dabbling, I was working for them 40 hours a week, but I was also working on the weekends and nights in the ER, wow. Double worked – in the hopes of jumping ship eventually.
Yeah. And I know that a lot of people listening will sit here and listen to that and say, Wait, you did utilization management consulting, and, you know, your chief medical officer, like, they would probably think to themselves, that that wouldn’t be possible for them or that they wouldn’t even begin to know where to look for that kind of opportunity. Can you give any advice there?
Yeah. Um, again, it was from networking, I learned about utilization management from the Facebook groups, people were doing it, they were looking for contractors, I signed up. And they trained me over a couple of hours. And then I started doing my cases by myself.
And then I said, “Oh, hey, I’m pretty good at this.” And it was a very small amount of money. It’s like $40 a case. And this is taking me 45 minutes. For $40. This isn’t going to work out. But I got that experience and I got to say on my resume, and I would do these cases here or there if I had a few minutes. Yeah. So I got to say I have two years of utilization management under my belt because I dabbled in it.
Yeah. That’s so forward thinking because now you not only have just an, you know, 15 years worth of really, really persuasive and important transferable skills in a variety of different clinical practice settings. But also now you’ve deliberately built out your resume to include even in tiny doses, little bits of things that show a comfort and a familiarity and a bit of a dedication to working in industry.
I think that’s really important. Then there’s two things that I know happen. One is I know you came in took Industry Insider with me. The other is you went and got certified. You’re board certified in medical affairs, right with the medical affairs professional society.
Yes. Can you people ask me about that all the time. And I often give your name, I don’t know if anybody ever reaches out to you. I have said in the past, and I’ll say again, I don’t know anything about that program, other than, you know, it would probably teach you a lot about what the day to day is and probably help you network within that, within, you know, this professional sort of microcosm, what was that experience like for you?
So the board certification for medical affairs is interesting, because there really isn’t any kind of coursework that prepares you for medical affairs. And taking that class opened my eyes to really what this industry is, but it really only scratches to the surface. It’s very, very superficial, but it gives me the foundational… it gave me the foundational knowledge to understand the big scope of okay, what is the point of everything and how does it work?
And, okay, I sort of understand this and the majority of the word, the information that in depth information you learn on the job. Absolutely. Yeah.
Did it open doors for me? I would say no. Okay. Not many people know what that is. And when they asked me about it, you know, no one, you know, I was, you know, tell them, they were like, wow, but it never gave me a job. And I don’t currently work in medical affairs, I currently work in quality.
So it didn’t help me get my job. And it didn’t help me gain credibility or really network with people. But it gave me a lot of knowledge about the medical industry, about pharma, about the regulations, things that we don’t learn at all.
Yeah. Do you think that helped you indirectly? Perhaps to just be more to be able to engage in a more informed way in interviews, or would you not recommend it? I’m just curious, obviously, talking anybody, but…
Yeah, I would recommend it. Because it does give you that knowledge. And, you know, people are like, it shows a sign of commitment. Yeah, they are interested in that. Yeah. And it gives a sense that you might know something about the medical industry.
That’s a really great point. I know, I’ve talked about that on other episodes, as well, that part of what you can show, when you’re when you don’t have experience, is be able to show that it’s not just a whim for you. Because if someone hires you, they will teach you on the job, like you just said, and invest quite a bit of time onboarding you.
And it’s a big bummer for those companies, if their physician, you know, bails after six months or a year because they don’t like it, because they didn’t really know what they were getting into.
And the other reason I asked you that question is I do work in medical affairs, and I don’t know anybody who has the board certification in medical affairs that you have. So I know for sure that I don’t think it would be a differentiator to get someone a job.
But without having taken it myself. I didn’t know, you know, what are the advantages? Or what do you learn? So tell us a little bit then about what did help you transition? I’m hoping, I hope Industry Insider was part of it. But in all honesty, right? So if that was something that taught you stuff, but now you’re working in quality touches tell us a little bit about how that really came to life. Like what were the catalysts were now you’re able to actually like get a job and, and fully transition?
I think the biggest thing, so I engaged so many people for help. And I was surprised at how generous people were with their time. Yeah. I called and I had conversations, and I asked for advice. And I had people review my resume and the resume went through 500 revisions and but really, the biggest change was definitely your course helped me change my mindset. Oh.
I went from, you know, how am I gonna get a job? What am I? I’m just an ER doctor, like, what do I know, to I mean, I still took notes from one of your lectures, you know, resource allocation, I’m good at this. And I’m good at that. And I mean, I have a sheet of paper that before every single networking call, I would walk through my notes and give myself that boost of confidence. Good.
And, and really talking to as many people I eventually became part of me like just talking like that and thinking it became my thinking. So it really did change me. And then when I finally met, it’s funny, I met my boss, you know, through my husband through a social event.
They had met and he was like, oh, yeah, I work for this company. And he’s like, “Oh, my wife is interested in this company, you guys should have coffee!” And we went and had coffee and then we he was he was very impressed because I had practice my confidence and how my transferable skills applied, and how I had all this experience and how I could do anything and how I was an adult learner and creative and, and dedicated and disciplined and all the things that I had been doing.
He was like, I don’t have a job right now. But I would want to hire you. I don’t have a job right now. And it took two and a half years later until he had a job. Wow. And then he called me and he was like, Okay, I have a job for you now.
That’s awesome. And were you actively applying in the meantime? At other?
Yes, I had gotten pretty far with another big company with Medtronic. And I had gone through like 15 interviews and a presentation and then another presentation. And then they went on a hiring freeze right before COVID.
Remarkable. Yeah, that’s something that, you know, I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t realize, I was on a call with a client just yesterday, who was asking about, you know, obviously, networking is so, so important. We focus on that in the course, a lot, not only how to network who did not work with, but like what to do in those conversations, right?
But she was asking me, you know, if, if she could expect that in networking, that someone would offer her a job. And I thought, no, it doesn’t really work that way, in the corporate world, they can’t just like make a job for you, even if they are in love with you. Like they can’t just make a job. And things happen all the time that that happened during the course of the interview process, right?
Where there’s either a hiring freeze, or some kind of HR related pause, that has nothing to do with the candidate whatsoever at all, or the hiring managers desire to have that candidate. It has only to do with, you know, some higher up, you know, moving of boxes, and positions, but it can feel really discouraging, people take it personally.
Yeah, I mean, I was just like, I don’t know what to do. This was like, in the middle of a pandemic, I was like, I cannot take one more day, working in the ER, wearing my P 100 respirator mask for 12 hours a day, I just, I couldn’t do it one more day.
And I was, I was just about to completely quit. And that’s when, you know, my current boss that I had been, we became, we became good friends. Yeah. And he’s like, okay, now I have a job. And you know, I was brought in into a directorship role.
That’s awesome. But not in medical affairs. Sure. So that’s really awesome. And for people who maybe are listening, but haven’t fully quite, you know, understood the what I think is most important about what you just shared, is not that your husband knew someone, because it’s always great if we have a neighbor or someone who knows someone.
But people always think that’s what you need, right is that you need to know someone and knowing people is great, and you can develop who you know, by developing your network. But if your husband had said, Oh, my wife’s really interested in joining the industry, and your coffee conversation had been underwhelming, it probably wouldn’t have had the same result. No one gave you this job because of your husband, right?
Absolutely. No, it was me prep, like talking to all these people becoming confident in my skills, being believing in myself, and then projecting it during that conversation. to pique his interest to continue a relationship with me, he, you know, he took a huge chance on me and I have delivered.
That’s fantastic. I totally feel that it’s so important. I, the person who hired me into my first role, I feel the same way about right, I had no no farm experience, no clinical trial experience whatsoever. I was an anesthesiologist coming into medical affairs in pulmonary medicine. So while you know, as part of my work, I’m pretty familiar with the lungs and pulmonary physiology and so forth.
It wasn’t a direct link, if I had, if I hadn’t been if, I hadn’t been having ongoing conversations with the person who was in a position to hire me. I’m sure I would have been immediately rejected by a computer based screener, right? And I think it helps probably tremendously for you as well, that you were able to not only identify your strengths, that would be interesting, but to communicate them in a way that shows that you understand industry, because you’ve because you’ve invested the time to talk to people to take the courses to immerse yourself in it so people know that you’re serious.
Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s really, I mean, I applied online to maybe 100 companies. My resume would just go into the abyss. I mean, that is the only way you should not apply to a job.
Absolutely never do that.
It never works and by the time a job is posted, they already have someone in mind, which I did. Understand, I’d be like, Why did they post it?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s sometimes true. Certainly. It’s faster and easier to to put someone into a role based on someone you already know, that works either at your company or another company that you already know. Right?
That it’s, it’s faster to get that person up to speed. But I think a lot of people within industry do value, you know, fresh perspective, fresh eyes, I think that’s really, really important too. But it has to be someone who, who kind of understands what they’re getting into and will like it and will thrive in that environment and want to stay.
So tell us just a quick little bit about, you know, what is it like, working in the role that you have? And, you know, what do you like best about it? What surprised you most? Just a little bit about your career today.
Yeah, um, I love it. I’m very surprised at how much I can impact strategy of a company, which is really cool. I have about 115 employees under me. So it’s very, it’s, it’s constantly changing. I have five or six different teams that do completely different things. And I get to engage in multiple functions within quality and work cross-functionally as well. And I mean, it’s just, it’s very interesting all the time. Yeah. What do I not like about, there’s a lot of corporate busy work that I don’t like.
Such as just different HR stuff. Yeah. So yeah, a lot of that stuff is hours and hours of your time. That I don’t like.
Sure. And that’s, that’s fair. I think everyone has some things in their job that they don’t especially love. For people who have not spent time in pharma or medical device, the idea of quality is a little bit elusive. I know I’ve done an episode, probably on pharmacovigilance. But can you speak for a minute or two about, like, you’ve got these different teams doing different things? What is the core purpose of that work?
So I had the post market surveillance team. So we are looking for so we are at the front line of signal detection, worldwide, to see what’s going on with our devices. So whether it’s something going on in Sweden, or in Australia, some patient went to the news in Canada, and now the Canadian regulatory body’s asking questions, we’re the team that pulls the data and analyzes it that says, is there an issue with our devices?
They’re not an issue, if there is an issue, we engage in manufacture? Is it a manufacturing issue? Is it a design issue? We’re the ones that detect it. We’re the ones that are communicating with all the regulatory bodies regarding it. And we’re the ones that are collecting the data and organizing it in a fashion that really creates the external perception of our product to the world.
That’s so important. Because, you know, in thinking about it, obviously, I mean, I think this is, with COVID. And people wondering about, you know, what kind of adverse reactions, there could be to a vaccine. Given the speed of those trials, I think this is kind of on people’s minds.
But basically, what you’re describing is a team of detectives, that if anything goes wrong for patients, in proximity to your devices that you go in there to figure out is this related or unrelated. And is there a signal a series and you know, like diving in there, and then really being the sharp edge of the stick in terms of ensuring that everything is as safe as possible for patients.
Yes. And that’s really what I love. I mean, we’re, we’re making sure that our products are quality products for the patient, which is huge.
Yeah. And sounds an awful lot like being a doctor to me. But just on a macro scale.
All right. Well, so before we wrap up, I wanted to spend a couple of minutes talking about something else that I understand. You’re into which I we did not prep for this episode. So I don’t know anything about this. But I want to ask you about the adventures in real estate investing that you’ve been doing and like what got you interested? What’s it like? Tell me about it.
Yeah. So I started investing in real estate in 2014. And, you know, there’s different ways that you can become a real estate investor. You can be an active investor, which is the typical you buy a house, you put a tenant in there, you’re collecting rent, and then there’s something called a passive investor.
Where someone else does it, and you put your money with them. And then you both collect the rewards. So I started passively investing in 2014. And not in single family homes, but in large commercial properties, like shopping centers and self storage and offices and retail centers and assisted living and mobile home parks.
And I started really loving it. And I learned how to be an active investor in large commercial properties, specifically apartments. Oh, wow.
So I’ve been focusing a lot of my time on helping physicians invest alongside me, passively, in apartments, and really acquiring multimillion dollar projects. And me and my husband do the hard work. And then and then the physicians go alongside of us and invest alongside of us. And we both split the profits.
Oh, that’s fantastic. Tell me if you can even remember because 2014 feels like a long time ago. Now. How did you even become aware of that? These are the kinds of questions people always have right is like, wow, that sounds so neat and interesting. But I could never do it. Because I would never know how. How did you become aware of it? And how did you get started?
Yeah, we had a friend that told us Yeah, I just invested money in all these 7-Elevens. 7-Eleven? Yeah, I put, you know, we buy the 7-Elevens that we buy the building, 7-Eleven rents the building, and they rent it for 30 years. It’s like a 30 year lease, there’s no maintenance, they pay for everything. But from then on, I get a piece of the 7-Elevens.
And he was a part of like 100 7-Elevens. And he was just getting money every month and doing nothing. And I was like, how do we get involved in that? Yeah. And that was our first deal, he led us into a deal with AutoZone.
And we put a small amount of money, we put $25,000, just to see. And then they purchased the building, they put an Autozone in there. And then they refinanced it like a month later. And they gave me back my money, but I still own the building even today. Oh, wow.
I get a little check every single quarter still from that deal. And really, that’s when I’ve learned like, oh, that’s what passive income is like, I didn’t have to work. I’m not taking care of patients, I’m still making that money, whether I’m on a beach or in the hospital or, you know, at my, my other job.
So that’s when I was like, okay, I like this passive income, how do I make more of it. And that’s when I started doing more of these deals. And really, I allocated a lot of my retirement funds. And I moved it all into real estate, because I really did feel like it was safer than the stock market. Oh, interesting.
So it didn’t have as many of the fluctuations, I was really tired of looking at my portfolio and seeing massive swings based on what was going on in the news. And it’s just like I couldn’t take it anymore. Yeah, so really real estate’s a lot more stable, it content, it doesn’t have that volatility, it just very steady Eddy goes up. And you really make a lot of money through real estate, you make it through tax benefits by saving on your taxes.
You make it from cash flow, you make it when the building itself goes up in value. But the tenants are also paying down your mortgage. So you’re creating equity. So there’s a lot of different ways that you make money in real estate and I become very passionate about it. Yeah.
And that was one of the reasons that I was able to step away from my ER job. Because, yes, the salary at the device company, the package is good. But you don’t get that money as a cash flow. Right. Yeah.
You get it later. And that was going to be a big challenge because we had, you know, medical school loans. We had health bills, we had credit cards, and that was gonna be an issue when I was going to take a different job, but real estate was able to bridge that gap.
Oh, that’s fantastic. That sounds so interesting. And so you learned enough in doing the passive income through your passive investing that now you’ve shifted if I heard you correctly into well, I guess both you’re still getting passive income, right? And now you’re doing some of the active management and having other physicians come in so that they can be investors with you, and they can enjoy the passive income part. Is that right?
Yes, that is right.
That’s very cool. If people are listening, and they want to know more about that, can you say a little bit about how you do it? Is this something where someone could reach out to you and learn just how to come on board and become an investor? Is this something you teach? Or just tell us a little bit about how you help other physicians get involved?
Yeah, so I find the deals, I put my own time, money, blood, sweat, and tears into it. And any physician, actually any professional that wants to come along and invest alongside me. We welcome them. That’s awesome.
The only caveat is they have to have a relationship with me. That’s an SEC guideline. So, you know, if they can develop a relationship with me with a phone call or some sort of conversation, then they have access to my deal.
That’s fantastic. And speaking of things like regulations and paperwork, what kind of can you I bet people find this very intimidating if they don’t understand it at first, what what kind of paperwork or other kind of processes, if any, does someone have to go through once they have a relationship with you in order to join you on this journey?
Yeah. So this is SEC regulated. Because we’re selling securities, we’re, it’s called a syndication where you’re selling pieces of these large commercial properties. And there are about 200 pages of legal documents that need to be read and signed before and understood. Read, signed, and understood.
That’s important.
But pretty much it’s very straightforward. Once you have created a relationship with me, I present a deal to you and I say, Hey, we’re doing this project, and maybe Dallas, Texas, and I describe the deal.
Sometimes most of the time we do a webinar, we do drone footage, we have promotional material about the property. The investor says yay or nay, I want to invest, they get the paperwork, they read it, they review it, they sign it, they wire their money, and then that’s it.
Oh, very cool. So it’s not like they’re just throwing money over a fence that you they’re they’re getting to evaluate the proposed specific investment, right and make a decision based on whether they think that is likely to be successful, it sounds like. Yes.
That’s really awesome. Wow, that’s so cool. Well, before we wrap this episode, Ronnie, is there anything else that we didn’t cover that you’d like to share with people because as you know, my audience is really mostly made up of physicians or clinicians who are looking to make some kind of a shift in their career.
And many of them just feel like they’re either not qualified, or they can’t do it, or they don’t know what to do. It just feels hopeless and unattainable. So if you can speak directly to those folks, do you have any advice, any words of wisdom?
I think that once you change your mindset, and you think you can do anything, I mean, you became a doctor. That’s not nothing. We went through, I mean, hell and back to become doctors, and then to go through training. And then even when you’re an attending or taking care of patients, I mean, we are amazing. And we do hard things.
And I think that we need to give ourselves credit. A lot of it is the mindset and deciding, like, I can do it, how am I going to do it? Not, can I do it? How can I do it? If anybody wants to reach out to me on LinkedIn, I’m happy to have conversations that people have been so generous with my with their time for my journey, that I always believe in paying it forward. And if anyone’s interested in the real estate portion, I have like a webinar that they can watch and see. It’s free.
I’ll put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes, a link to that. And then the webinar or is that something they can get just by communicating directly with you or do you have a separate website for that you’d like me to list?
Yeah, it’s invest.shalwinproperties.com.
Great. We’ll put that link as well in the show notes. Ronnie, it’s been such a pleasure to get to catch up with you. You are just a shining star and it’s just I am loving hearing all of these, all of these different kinds of successes and it just looks great on you. I know people are just listening to us but you and I are on Zoom and I can see everything you’ve done with your career. It just looks great on you. It’s wonderful to get to talk to you. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me
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