Physician Financial Planning with Physician Wealth Services' Ryan Inman

Helping the medical community become more confident with finances.

Ryan Inman is the President and Financial Planner of Physician Wealth Services and Host & Creator of Financial Residency.

Financial Residency is made up of hundreds of attendings, residents, and their spouses (800+ to be more exact!) who just about had it with their financial challenges. They exist to arm you with financial knowledge so that you can protect and grow your assets. Being a part of the Financial Residency community brings you up to speed on your financial literacy to confidently take control of your household finances.

Learn more about how Financial Residency can help the medical community navigate the financial waters by listening to this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur above and don’t forget to subscribe on  Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – Spotify –Google Play –Castbox – TuneIn – RSS.

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0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.

And with us right now, we've got Ryan Inman. Ryan, you are the President and Financial Planner with Physician Wealth Services, and you're a podcast host and the creator of financialresidency.com. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us, Josh. Thanks for having me. It's gonna be super fun. Full disclosure to you and I are friends and

0:54
business together. We do business together. We're friends. So yes, disclosure, I'm a planner. So I like disclosures.

0:56
So Kevin, you know what we really want to talk about in this show is like how You ultimately got to a platform like Amazon, why you did that. And we're gonna talk about kind of the difference between creating a show for YouTube and then possibly working with one of the streaming platforms. And, you know, the good news, I think for creatives is there are more methods of distribution than ever before. And there are more platforms that are say a little bit more curated than a YouTube which of course is accessible to pretty much anyone and I mean, unless you're you're pretty evil person, you get kicked off because you're, you know, you're putting something out there that shouldn't be out there. Anyone could use Amazon or anyone can use YouTube

1:01
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Alright, so, Ryan, listen, I'm just going to start off this conversation by the for the person who's listening to us. If I were to advise somebody on how to grow a business successfully today, and like, you know, identifying the niche, you know, you're really leveraging content. Ryan, the branding and everything. Ryan, it's what you're doing. textbook. Absolutely. textbook, what Josh Elledge would recommend, so I'm just gonna start So the one thing I want, the person is listening, our friend that's listening in on our conversation. I want you to pull up two websites, you go to financialresidency.com for sure. Go check that out because that's all of Ryan's content and all of that content. Ryan, is then financially supported by your business at physicianwealthservices.com. So we're going to get into how those two work together and what you spend your day doing in order to have grown your practice to the level that you have. And we're talking about like your audience, all that which I just think is absolutely brilliant. But obviously, this is something that you came into. And so I understand so your wife is a physician, right?

2:24
Yeah, she's a pediatric Pulmonologist and works at the US Navy here in San Diego.

2:29
Oh, nice. Nice. And so how did you were you a CPA while she was in medical school, or how did— give me the timeline.

2:37
So we actually met freshman year of college when she didn't want to go to medical school, and then did the whole long distance thing. She lives— She lived in KU, lived in Kansas, she went to KU. It's where she was born and raised. So that's where she went to med school. We did the whole long distance thing. And then I was working for another CFP, small shop in Orange County, and then she ended up coming out for residency. Traveling for fellowship. So I've been working in the industry since 2008. And then essentially started my own practice at the end of 2015. Launching officially in February of 2016, with physicianal services.

3:16
well, that was kind of gutsy going on your own what what precipitated that?

3:21
So I, it's funny when I actually told my parents and family like, “Hey, I'm going to launch this business.” All of them were, “Oh, it's about time.” I was—

3:31
it's in your blood then.

3:32
It is. I was the first one to graduate college actually, on both sides of the family, yet my family's extremely successful in their own niches and what they do, most of them are in real estate. So they were very excited that I was actually going to branch out and, you know, end up you know, starting my own my own firm, if you will, but my wife finished training in 2017. So I launched essentially a year before she finished training.

3:59
Yeah. And so what was your business plan at the beginning? Like, how are you going to grow this thing?

4:06
Yeah, so everyone in our industry kind of has a model that they follow. It's an assets under management model, it's start a business working for another small business and then kind of take some clients and, and go off on your own or just become a partner in that practice. And I did none of those things. And so I had multiple people that were, you know, people I thought were mentors and, you know, great people that have been doing this a long time say, hey, this isn't gonna work. And so I'm but I'm, like one of those hold my beer type person, like, let me go do this. So I just said, Look, I'm sick of working with people that have million dollar plus accounts, you know, they're pre-retirees and retirees. It's just, I've done that work long enough. I'm just not excited doesn't thrill me enough. It's not what I want my ideal life to look like. So I decided that I was going to work with people that are in a similar situation than ourselves. So we were going to work with young physician, and basically everyone we work with is just finished training or they're about 10 years out, which means for the normal person, they're like, between 30 and 40 years old. And so they're starting families, they're starting to accumulate, you know, their wealth, they usually have a ton of student debt or average clients got about 300,000 of student debt, which is a lot, which they make good incomes, but they've got to figure out there's a real balancing act in there. And it's very, very unique to physicians. And so we're teaching cash flow on budgeting, we're going more in depth than what a typical planner would do. And it's not just about assets, because I've, I've literally advised on like, three times the amount of debt that I actually managed in terms of money, because that's the life stage they're in but it's what I love and enjoy.

5:47
So Ryan, talk to me about the difference in let's say that you're a certified financial planner, and you just serve the general population and yet, you know, you put us sure you you know, you built yourself a shed and he put your name out front And speaking of tongue in cheek, because that's actually what you said, Well, yeah, you actually your office is you built a separate building in your backyard and it did Oh, it's it's a little bit bigger. It's a big shed.

6:12
But culling the building at first but yeah, it's basically a shed in the backyard but it's 10 feet by 12 feet by 10 feet tall and Scott, double and you know, thick drywall and full electrical and Scott built it to be kind of like a podcast studio. Not only do we work remotely with all of our physicians all across the nation, but my firm is remote. So all of the people that work with me, other planners and team members, they're all virtual as well. Ah,

6:39
what a life!

6:40
—then to this, but Well, it sounds awesome except for it's hard to turn off. So I thought physically removing me out of the house would help which it does, but most nights I venture back out and end up working later.

6:53
And you have kiddos as well as that right or?,

6:56
I have a five— and that's not my artwork behind me. I've got a five and a three year old boy and girl so that, you know I do all the pickups and drop offs and stuff. So part of designing my own firm and going out was, was really driven with them. My job I was working out before I was commuting seven miles, but it was an hour to an hour and 20 minute drive here in San Diego, even though it's seven miles, so I just said, “Look, I want to do this. This is what I want to work with. And I want to prioritize the kids,” and been able to kind of build that that life.

7:29
Yeah. So Ryan, I started asking a different question, then I got distracted but the original question is, imagine if you're a certified financial planner, and you're serving a very general audience. You're like, “I just work with anybody,” as opposed to “I. work. with. physicians.” How does that impact your business?

7:52
It's tough because you have to, you have to really sit down and think do I want a marketing niche or a true niche. A marketing niche would be “Hey, I work with physicians.” But if a small business owner or an engineer or CPA said, Hey, I'd like to work with you as a client. Would I say yes. And if it's a true niche, you would say no, I say no to dentists, and vow, like we're just MDS and deos, that in, maybe you're married to an engineer, or CPA or dentist, and that's totally fine. But we literally just work with physicians. That is our specialty. And I don't work with physicians that are in retirement, that is not for me. I don't— I don't like that type of planning. I really love the type of planning that we're doing now. So I would say to the person that's maybe listening, that's an advisor for everyone is how can you be the best at everything? How could you really know what's going on with every client in every different type of industry? The answer is you can't and so you can give really good advice, but you can't give the best advice. So in my opinion, I think everyone should have a true niche and not a marketing niche where you might say, Hey, I work with a bunch of doctors and attorneys and dentists or whatever. And then they get there. And it's really only 30% of your book, really 100% or, you know, give or take, I've got two family members that are not doctors. You know, it's my mom and my brother that work with us. So, technically, I'm not a true 100% firm. But everyone else pretty much is a physician or married to one.

9:26
So how do physicians respond to that?

9:28
I think that they're used to that because with a physician, you would go to say, let's say your pediatrician, and they're going to say, “Hey, your kiddos sick, they've got x, y, z, but I'm not the specialist in this. I'm going to refer you out to the cardiologists to run these tests, or the endocrinologist to run those tests.” They don't handle just everything. So any, like even if you said, I'm going to kind of work with a certain population, you're still not going to be the expert in it, whereas the true niche allows you to be that specialist. And most physicians, at least in my case, they appreciate and they understand the value that this is all we do. And so all of our process, our procedures, all of our deliverables, I don't— a normal financial planner will probably build a 40 or 50 page financial plan for someone that details everything else out, which is awesome. Usually, it's information overload, but you know, it's awesome. That's what people will get ours are delivered in a way that the physicians when they go meet with you, Josh, and they then walk out and they've got to write a note on your workup and what happened in your whole console. They do it in what's called a soap note. And that's, that's how their acronym works. That's how we build our financial plan. So it's in a way that they even understand because they're doing it all day every day. And we can only do that because we're a true niched firm, because that's all we work with and you couldn't possibly do that. And know all the details if you were just marketing to someone or just a financial planner for everyone.

10:57
Is it good for business to be niched?

11:00
Yeah, because then we get the exact referrals that we want, I don't have referrals of, “Hey, can you take care of my, you know, my mother's best friend who you know, is retired and has this” like, I can refer that out. And I'm happy to do that. But everyone that we get referred to, is the exact clientele that we want. And that's been amazing for us.

11:21
It has to be really feel really good. If I'm a physician, and I'm sitting down with you and you're speaking my language like you get me like, and I know that, you know, for example, one of the one thing recently that we needed was that we wanted an overhaul of not an overhaul, we just we wanted to, we wanted to do our sales pipeline, our CRM, which we use our pipe drive for that. And so there are plenty of people that you know, well, I do sales coaching and yeah, you know, I know about blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I want the best in the world at pipe drive. Like I you know, it turns Like setting up automations. And that sort of like, I want to max this thing out. And so I paid a lot of money. But I, you know, easily like five times as much as I could have paid somebody else. But I got someone that's like, I know everything there is to know about this platform. And I'm so I'm going to help you set up all these shortcuts and help you leverage your time I think about that. So, so let's say he was an extra $400 that we invested in that. And I think about the time that we will save and maybe the additional closed sales that will get over the next six to 12 months. It's a no brainer. And so similarly,

12:40
you— What's that again? Instead, along with potential mistakes that you're avoiding, that could have happened with someone that wasn't as familiar with it? Damn, f a little bit.

12:49
Yeah, yeah. So, So talk to me now about the the relationship between financialresidency.com when did that launch Did that come second after physicianwealthservices? And and how did the two work together?

13:05
Yeah, I came about 18 months after. So I was trying to figure out how I should market and what I should do. And I researched and looked at a lot of different things. And because a lot of our friends are physicians, and they were asking questions, I just pulled them pulled like there's like, 60 of them. And I just said, How do you get your financial information? Like, just tell me, right, and what is it that you want to learn? And I took basically, all their feedback. And the majority of them wanted something that they could do on the go, and it was basically they want to listen to podcasts. And I thought that was really unique and interesting, and there wasn't really much in the space there. So I created the podcast about 18 months after I launched the business. And we're a little over two years in like it was I started October of 2017. And we're next month in— in February, going to hit half a million downloads which is to me crazy nice considering that it's a very specific podcast it. Yeah, it's kinda niche-y. So it's not a general personal finance podcast where I'm competing with, you know, amazing shows like stacking Benjamins or, you know, NPR type stuff, that's not the clientele. And what ends up happening is because I, I truly believe in giving everything you know away and helping people as much as you can, that the people that will listen to the podcast and go, “This is great ideas and I would love to implement this but I know myself and I just won't do it. I need help.” And then they come to us. So there's really no sales pitch. Like I don't run ads, really on the on the podcast, it's just the best of information is I can actually give you sometimes I'll bring in a guest to talk about something that they might be an authority on that I know a little bit about, but I'm not the perfect expert in that. And so they can, you know, kind of broaden that you know, thought process out but usually what ends up happening is the people who aren't the DIY's that listen to this, they go, “Hmm, I'd like to, you know, really work with someone” and usually we're one of the advisors that they're going to interview at that point.

15:13
So the name of the podcast and so someone can search for right now it's just called financial residency, right? Yep.

15:19
Financial residency. And I love your— How did you find like the especially like, the style that you have now with the the comic, the comic book art? I'm such a nerd like not only am I a money nerd, but I'm like super Marvel and comic nerd. So I actually hired, I found him on Upwork. His name's john, he does amazing work. And I'm pretty sure if anyone wants to hire him, he would love that. But he essentially is a comic book artist. And I just say, here's what I'm looking for. Can you do this and we've just, you know, built up a good rapport and a good working relationship. And so he does all of the custom images for all our blogs and their podcasts and all of that stuff. He's Amazing and some kind of nerding out on that as well. And the redesign that is taking place right now is featuring a lot of his work and really appreciative that I've found him and he's so talented.

16:11
Yeah. Now, how do people go from financial residency to me? What's their? What's their What do you have a call to action? How are you promoting financial wealth? Or do you really need to? or physician wealth? I mean, how do you how do you

16:24
make that connection? Very subtle because I, again, I don't want this to be a huge sales pitch because I want to be it's meant to be. I want to broaden the net and make sure I can help as many physicians as I possibly can. Yeah, but at the bottom of the page, it says, essentially, “hey, if you're looking to do this, and you needs some help. We might be a good fit. Click here to learn more.” Yeah, like it's at the bottom of in the footer above everything. And then in the upper right, in our redesigned it'll just say “Work with us.” But that's really it. There's no push everything else is there for them to understand, consume. Try to help them out, the majority of people that hit that page are probably going to be DIY type of people. And I'm totally fine with that if I can help educate them and make sure that they're not doing, you know, really dumb things with their money, then I'm extremely happy. And the emails I get every week with how we've helped someone figure something out is worth it to me. Hmm.

17:20
So, you know, here's the thing, one thing, I mean, obviously, we don't want to, you know, we want to make it fairly easy for people to kind of connect the dots. But, you know, I don't think we need to bludgeon people over the head. And I think if we treat our audiences like they're pretty smart, like, you know, in this podcast,

17:43
like some of the most brilliant people on the planet, right, that

17:48
figure out who you are, right?

17:52
They put two-and-two together is the way I look at it.

17:53
Yeah, if they if they like you, they can track you down. They can find out more information about you and they'll— They'll find out. Exactly, you know, they're all they know is that I really like and trust this guy. And, and certainly, I'm getting the point now where I definitely have a need. And Ryan, well, where else would they go? They already have a relationship with you. So of course, you're going to be the one that they did they go to first.

18:24
Well think about the podcast medium, right? We're in someone's ears, right? You put earbuds or headphones on, you're in their ears. There's nowhere else that that is actually going to occur a blog post, they're skimming or Insta, or Facebook, they just skim, right? They don't actually read but in a podcast, you can actually get to know the person. So a lot of the prospective clients that reach out to us. Usually they're like, “Well, I know so much about you. Why don't you just ask me questions?” Because they know and it's sometimes they're like, kind of weirded out like, “Hey, I know about the house and how's the water heater situation?” And I'm like, “Oh it was horrible.” Right? So I've already got some rapport with them because they tell stories and go through and give real examples of things that we've done right and things that we've done wrong or wish we've done better. So they're learning with us as well.

19:11
All right, Ryan Inman, you are the President, Financial Planner with Physician Wealth Services at physicianwealthservices.com. And you are the Creator and Podcast Host at financialresidency.com. Please go check out what Ryan does. And if all of your physician friends, make sure that they're subscribed to his podcast and they know about Ryan as well. Ryan, thank you so much. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

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