Are you a medical professional looking to secure your financial future? Ever wondered how to make your money work for you?
In this episode, Dr. Joseph Ryan, Smolarz, a full-time Otolaryngologist and founder of STOR, shares his journey from being financially unaware to becoming a successful real estate investor.
Dr. Ryan discusses the importance of financial literacy for medical professionals and how investing in self-storage facilities has provided him with financial security and peace of mind. He emphasizes the significance of understanding depreciation, leveraging partnerships, and starting small to build a robust investment portfolio.
Tune in to learn how you can navigate the world of investing and make work optional.
Key Takeaways:
03:42- Dr. Ryan Smolarz Background
Full-time Otolaryngologist turned investor after realizing he was financially unaware. Enrolled in an MBA program to gain financial knowledge.
08:42- Focus on Stable Asset Classes
Investing in self-storage facilities as a hedge against economic downturns and a way to achieve financial freedom.
12:15- Strategies for Medical Professionals
Leveraging depreciation and forming partnerships to minimize risk and maximize returns.
17:39- The Challenge for Medical Professionals
Overcoming the fear of investing and understanding the long-term benefits of real estate investments.
20:40- The Medicine and Money Show
Educating medical professionals on investing fundamentals and building trust with ethical sponsors.
Are you ready to take control of your financial future but don't know where to start?
Contact Dr. Ryan Smolarz today to learn how you can leverage real estate investing to make your money work for you instead of being at the mercy of shifts in your medical career.
Connect with Dr. Ryan@:
Website: https://storpartners.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-ryan-smolarz-4803a81/
Connect with Corwyn@:
Contact Number: 843-619-3005
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exitstrategiesradioshow/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxoSuynJd5c4qQ_eDXLJaZA
Shoutout to our Sponsor: EXIT Realty Lowcountry Group
Do you want something more? More Meaningful Moments opportunities, deeper relationships and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you say YES, a career and real estate could be the opportunity you're looking for guiding people to one of the most important decisions they ever made, the purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative.
EXIT Realty has a revolutionary compensation model training and technology that provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call EXIT Realty Lowcountry group today at 843-619-3005 that is 843-619-3005 or visit https://exitlowcountry.com/joinexit and make your Exit today.
Key Takeaways:
CORWYN:
Do you want something more? More meaningful moments, opportunities, deeper relationships, and memorable experiences? Do you want to make a difference? If you said yes to any of that, a career in real estate could be the opportunity you’re looking for. Guiding people through one of the most important decisions they ever made. The purchase or sale of their home can be both rewarding and lucrative. Exit Realty’s revolutionary compensation model, training, and technology provides you with the tools you need to start and build your successful real estate career. Call Exit Realty Lowcountry Group today at 843-619-3005, that’s 843-619-3005 or visit join.exitlowcountry.com and make your exit today.
Good morning. Good morning and great morning to you guys. Welcome to another fabulous episode of Exit Strategy Radio Show. Hey, I am your host. Yep, that is me. Corwyn J Melette, broker and owner of Exit Realty Lowcountry group in beautiful North Charleston, South Carolina. So guys, if this is your first time, listen to this show, maybe you’re passing through on 95 or going out on 26 and maybe on 17, trying to get close to the coast so you can get the most. Guys, I appreciate you guys catching us on this station today. I appreciate you listening. And most importantly, I am hopeful and prayerful that you will get a lot out of this exercise on today. Our mission here at this show is very simple. That is to empower our community through financial literacy and real estate education. Guys, we’re legacy building. That is what we do. So I’m super excited. First and foremost, for you to listen from the coast, quote unquote auto at a monkey’s corner from those you listen from around the world. Look, I’m so humble always to know that the audience is out there tuning in and getting used out of this show. But today, look here, I’m giving you time right now go get your pen and paper, you might want to just turn the tape recorder. Better yet mark this episode. So you can go find it and listen to put it on repeat. Because we got a show for you today. This show is for everybody. But if you are in a medical profession, if you are a doctor, nurse, otherwise somewhere moving to maneuver Iran at hospital, I need y’all to listen closely today. Because we have with us none other than Ryan Smolarz. He is the founder of Store. Now he’s a fellow podcaster has his own show. He’s the host of the Medicine and Money Show. Look at who knew those two things together, let’s see was in the wrong way. But he’s telling you how to make some money. I love it. I love it. His podcast focuses on helping doctors and others in the health care profession to navigate the world of investing. Ryan, thank you so much for being on the show with us today. How you doing my man?
RYAN:
I am doing so good. It’s unbelievable. And that was some introduction. And I very much appreciate it. And I am so happy to be here. This is going to be awesome.
CORWYN:
So look just so you know I do travel there for a small fee are introduced to state. So Ryan, tell our listeners who you are, what you do?
RYAN:
Well, I’m a man of few hats. During the day, I’m still a full time surgeon, ear, nose and throat. I’m an Otolaryngologist, we treat people we take care of their booger needs from A to Z. We do a lot of allergy, a lot of tonsils and a lot of surgery for this and that. But over the course of probably since 2017, I’ve turned a corner of my life where I was in a place. Let me tell you just a little background story. In 2016, I woke up one day, and I realized that I didn’t know even how to get into my bank account. Like I didn’t even know really where our bank account was. I knew that my brother in law took care of all that my wife and all the CPA meetings, they were just like, Okay, you go and sit the corner, and you keep taking care of all the boogers and we’ll take care of this. That’s how it worked. And I woke up one day and I said, I don’t know when I’m going to be able to retire. I don’t know if I have enough money to take a vacation. I don’t know any of these things. So I went to my wife and I said hey, listen, I need the bank account password and the address of like where to find it. And she says something wrong. I said No, there’s nothing wrong. I think it’s just time for me to get a grasp here of what our situation is because I had no idea. And all things in my life, I take them to the extreme, a little bit like some of us do. And the next month, I was in Masters of Business Administration school, the MBA program in Miami. So I went through that. And I remember sitting there, well, the first day, it was very clear, I was like, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this. And this is intimidating. Like, there were CEOs sitting behind me and these big corporations. This is like, more an international like big to do program. And I didn’t know about day four, I realized I remember the time and date that I was looking at it at the screen, and this professor was giving this really cool speech. And I said, You know what, this is what I’ve been missing in my life. I said, I have been a consumer my entire life, all those marketing and commercials and stuff. They’re looking at me, right? They’re trying to talk to me, and the people on the other side, they’re trying to figure out problems on how to make money to solve people’s problems. And my headspace was filled with if I see a couple more patients than I can get whatever this thing is, it’s different for everybody a watch a car, a boat, whatever that thing is, that day, my headspace change to how can I solve a problem that a lot of people have, and moving into that entrepreneur mindset, and being an investor. And I can’t tell you how sort of life changing that was, it took a while to move everything and transition my life over to that headspace, man, but once I did, it was so powerful. We talk about all the apps in our life, the fitness, the fun, all of those sorts of things, especially in the doctor world, we tend to leave out the financial health part. And it’s my sort of belief, regardless of how much your W2 brings you that if your expenses are too high, and you’re still living month to month on a paycheck, and something catastrophic happens. And you don’t have the means to meet those requirements, that’s going to weigh on you whether it’s conscious or subconscious. And to be able to get a grasp of that and to have even to make our tagline is make work optional in our investing purposes. And I think it’s wholeheartedly, I believe that can help you, it’s not going to be the only thing, your relationships and all those things have to be in order. But that is a big piece of the puzzle that I think a lot of people miss.
CORWYN:
So you have a focus on and thank you for sharing that, Ryan, because I’m entertaining this, I have this thing that I say when I’m talking to real estate agents, because this is true across the board, no matter what your profession is, well, at least most people in most professions, we say it that way. Whatever it is that you’re doing you plan to do until you that and you don’t think about well, what about the time between? I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m too tired to do this anymore. And you die. That gap right? There is what you were concerned about. That’s what caused you to act and do something different when you got that ultimate concern about the gap. So that is profound. Now you’re helping other people with their gap. I love it. I love it. So tell our listeners tell us, what is it that you focus on? Like, what is your direction in investing? What do you focus on?
RYAN:
Yeah, so I have some speculative investments in my life. But my focus is good returns as a hedge for some of these other things that I do in my life. At its core, we’d look for the or I at the time, it was just me looking for a very stable asset class. Interesting, provide a little color here. I was listening to a podcast, I was halfway through my MBA program, and the guy can’t and there was a gentleman on the podcast, he said, Listen, we all live really complicated lives. And you can tell how complicated your life is by the amount of keys that you have. And I looked down in my front seat, you couldn’t see the seat. It was all keys. So I knew that my life was super duper complicated. And for me to enter into an asset class that was complicated is not what I wanted to do. And so I started thinking the next it had to be divine intervention because the next podcast that I listened to was in storage. And the guy goes, Listen, this is commercial real estate and there’s a lot to it. But let’s look at it from the 30,000 foot view. It’s a concrete slab in a metal box that people put pink flamingos in. Alright, so So let’s say what it is. And so that resonated with me so much. I mean, I knew it was going to be complicated. And I knew that there were going to be hurdles. But at the same time, why pick the lowest hanging fruit, right. And so I didn’t know it at the time. But during recessions in disasters, we don’t think we’re in storage, we’re in the death, destruction and economic disaster business, because that’s when people need storage, right when bad things happen in their life. And so when a recession happens, people need storage. So it’s actually a very good hedge, especially if you’re in the markets on Wall Street and buying stocks and bonds and that sort of thing. When that goes down a lot, we’re still up there hanging on, and people are still wanting to put their stuff somewhere. So I went through that path. And each time I was checking boxes. And so at the end of that, I said, You know what, this is where my focus needs to be. And so we started buying facilities and trying to learn how the business and as you do you go find the best people in the world to coach you. That’s what I did. And when we came to the end of the trial run, we kept buying facilities, and they kept turning out pretty good and pretty good. And we said, You know what, we need to spread this message and start moving this thing forward and scaling it to the point where we can bring other people in to see how awesome this asset class is this type of investing how we’re moving toward financial freedom, and taking really ownership of that part of our life.
CORWYN:
So Ryan, you focused again, working with medical professional saw the doctors like yourself, they almost fell off my chair when you said boogers, man. Think about all this pile on this stuff, right? But you focus on other doctors and other medical professionals. So give me this because I mean, we know the real estate investing, I mean, while it should be about cash flow, there’s other benefits, tax savings, all those kinds of things that can be achieved by owning investment property. So is that a strategy that you also leverage with the clients or the folks that you work with?
RYAN:
Absolutely. So our client base in its core is super conservative, don’t like risk have a very low risk tolerance just off the bat. And so when we talk about these things, especially for people who aren’t familiar with investing as much, we go through this process, and we talked to them about depreciation, and how if you’re a passive investor on the limited partner side, as in, you’re providing the capital and somebody else is dealing with the day to day that, to use that depreciation, you have to have some passive income. And most of the people that we talk with, they say, you know, what, I’m a W2 employee of a hospital or W2 have their own practice where they have an S corp structure, I don’t have any passive income. And I say, Listen, at the end of this deal, the depreciation does not go away, you’re gonna have capital gains on the amount of capital that you’re given on top of what you provided to us to help by this facility, you are going to get rewarded for that depreciation, the losses on your K1, which is just a piece of paper that you get from your CPA to file with the IRS. And I said, the beauty of it, the absolute beauty of it is, yeah, you have to do that the first time. But then the next time you get to write off on the previous deal, right? And then do a third one, and now you’re writing off on the second, the first. And so, yes, is there a little bit of a hurdle and a little bit of a outlook type of scenario that you should have? Absolutely. Is everybody’s tax situation different? Absolutely. But you need a good CPA, you need a good tax attorney. So run it by them, have us talk with them to see where our head is and trying to provide you with what we call this making money while you sleep kind of thing. Because everybody, everybody, at some point in their life, if their income goes up, their expenses go up, right? It’s just sort of a law of nature to be able to expedite that gap or decrease or increase the gap time. In my mind. The only way to do that is with some sort of investing whether you’re starting your own business where you can leverage that and have an outlook to buy other businesses or start other businesses or some way to do what’s called inventory where your services are put on the shelf and you don’t have to be there they can be distributed while you’re not there. As a doctor, there is no inventory. You go room, you get paid, you go room, you get paid, you don’t go to the room, there ain’t no pay
CORWYN:.
So Ryan, I could literally think of and I know it to be true in our industry. That common example yesterday, or a few months ago I’ve heard is the system repeatedly by someone in my arena and my circle my sphere, that less than 2% of real estate agents, even though we sell move the product, so to speak, less than 2% of us invest in real estate. So I can imagine, but if you even know a statistic, how many medical professionals invest in real estate, I mean,
RYAN:
It’s a very small amount, it is so small, what I tend to see is people who have grasped this concept early in their career, they are closet real estate moguls, right. And yeah, and for whatever reason, they don’t advertise it. But every once in a while, every once in a while, you’ll sit down and start talking, and you’ll start talking about debt and equity and all these kind of complicated things. And they match you and start teaching you. And that’s an awesome situation to be in. But it is certainly not the norm. And it is for some people, it is so hard to grasp that I have to take risk, put the capital out in the hopes that it’s going to come back to me with more, right? That concept is just so scary to a person that has a very low risk tolerance. And even in the lowest risk categories, intimate you just, you’re almost there, you got the capital, you have the job to support dollar cost averaging into different investments. It’s a mindset thing, just open your mind, start small, get with people you trust, listen, it’s never going to be easy, I would imagine that you would tell me the same thing, there’s gonna be bumps in the road, things are gonna go sideways, there’s no doubt, I’m not selling you the bridge or whatever, it’s going to be hard things are going to be difficult. But at the same time you went to medical school, you learn the concepts at some level, because you pat, you went to residency and you stayed up late at night, taking care of people, you understand that things are not always handed to you on a silver platter. I mean, that concept was easy for them to grasp. But once you do it, you get a little taste of it. And then maybe you have a deal go sideways or something like that. And it’s tough. You just gotta keep going, man, keep going.
CORWYN:
One of the things that you know that I have as a takeaway thus far, when the conversation is one district that consists you got to start somewhere, you got to quote unquote, get in the game, people want to be a winner, but then they don’t want to get in a game. That is that. Imagine that. But it’s interesting that we’ve been having this conversation, again, because people are so used to obviously mean doctors. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I’m not one even though my nickname was Dr. Sachs. I’m not one, there’s a lot of money paid to doctors, specialists and such. And that becomes the crutch, because you get accustomed to that. But what happens when you leverage because then you always bound to keep think back, man, if I don’t know if you’re an Avengers fan, but you think back about the string, making tons of money has a car accident, and I can use his hands effectively without them shaking. So his revenue phone immediately went from this to this. Yeah. And what happened, I grant I don’t know, maybe an Avengers, maybe ask some real estate, I have no idea. But the storyline that we saw, saw that breakdown in that chain. So this is a way in a means for people, if you will, in the healthcare profession to avoid so let me ask you this. How often do you engage in and I’m gonna come around, I want to make sure we get your contact information website where people can sign up to get more information or otherwise schedule a conference call with you. But how often do you crowd fund a deal? Meaning how do you pull your investors together and say, Hey, maybe you don’t have the wherewithal or maybe you don’t want to have the risk alone? We’ll put two or three of you together to have the same appetite. But the same risk tolerance or risk meter. Something along that vein. So how often do you guys do stuff like that?
RYAN:
Yeah, so the way I would approach that it would depend on how well the people who were trying to do this knew each other, but one way to do that would be to have them start their own LLC as partners tax as partnership. And then they two or three of them put in enough for the minimum. That’s certainly one way to do it. If we had a conversation with an investor that said, Hey, listen, I have a very low risk tolerance. I want to get in small I want to fall I’ll deal and learn with you guys. But the minimum is the problem. I can’t imagine that the partners wouldn’t come together and be like, Okay, this is a one off. We really want this person to build rapport build trust, we want to get to know them, because they have capital, and they have the right mindset, and they have all the things, they just need a little push, it would be hard for me to believe that I couldn’t use a little charisma, as they say, to make that
happen.
CORWYN:
Okay, that’s good. So let’s get in the medicine and money podcast. Let’s talk about that. Where did the concept come from? And what is the content that you guys seek to deliver to the audience?
RYAN:
Yeah, so it’s a lot like this, we’re talking about really how to be it sounds pretty crazy to say, but how to be a good limited partner. How to do that due diligence, came on the very first podcast, and I said, Listen, if you’re going into a limited partner deal, and you don’t know, the folks, I said, what I would do, when I go into a limited partner deal, I’m looking for good sponsors are going to fight for my capital, they’re going to be ethical, they’re going to do the right thing, all these sorts of and it all boils down to relationship, I want them to respect me enough to do the right thing. I said, what I would do is I would go get a P.I, and I would do a little research on him. Because I’m looking for a 30 year relationship here 40 years, whatever that life is of that. I said, I wouldn’t have any problem with somebody digging in a little bit to make sure that over the course of my lifetime, there hasn’t been times where something happened. And I didn’t do that didn’t do the right thing. So the only thing that I ask is that if you do find something, then please ask me about it. And let me at least have the opportunity to talk about. That trust, I can’t tell you how important that is. And it’s about trust, it’s about education, he educates the market dominates the market, it’s about bringing people in and seeing if they fit with our culture, if this resonates with them, storage may not resonate with them, they might like multifamily, they may like Office, but we may need to talk about that. Maybe that’s the case, unless it’s their own office. There’s a little bit of nuance there. Right?
They may like the stock market, they may be okay with the ups and downs. But in the end, the breaking it down. And it also helps us as a team break down to the fundamentals. I love teaching people the fundamentals, because I know that if I don’t have them grasp myself, that all this other stuff, the nuances of the day to day, it’s gonna go to pot, because that’s in pretty much anything if you’re a football player, or you’re a tennis player, whatever, if you forget about the fundamentals. I mean, Michael Jordan was notorious for just passing the simple pass back and forth at the beginning of the game when he was warming up. And people would say, you’re the best basketball player of all time. What are you doing? He’s, if I can’t do the fundamentals, you think I’m gonna be able to jump from half court and dunk the ball and do all this crazy stuff? He said? Absolutely not. And so I believe in that wholeheartedly.
CORWYN:
So Ryan, where can our listeners get in contact with you? So where can they find you? Your show? website, give it all to us?
RYAN:
Yeah. So on our YouTube channel, the medicine and money show , you can start listening to the content, see if it resonates with you, if you want to jump right in and have a call with my team, we are at www.storpartners.com That’s storpartners.com, If it’s okay with you, I’d like to send you a telephone address or a number. And people can actually text me, I have lots of threads going with different doctors are asking me questions and or a scope note at the same time teaching me stuff and just helping guide them a little bit to the next step maybe or to what the things to like, if there’s a concept that they’re trying to learn about, hey, this is a good resource, or whatever the case may be. But on that website, storpartners.com There’s a link, just click it, sign up for a Calendly link, and we can have a conversation and we can talk face to face. Those are probably the two ways to get involved. Awesome.
CORWYN:
Ryan, we’ve had a great show. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to answer this question. But I call this sometimes I’ll refer to it as one might drop question. But it’s all is that hindsight question that we all get, which is a fun new way back yonder when what I know now, what would I have done differently back then?
RYAN:
Yeah, I mean, I would have started earlier. I mean, it’s time in the markets, right? You’re compounding your money, you make some returns and then that gets invested in that gets invested instead of $2. In 17, I mean, I was born in 1976. So if I would have started investing in 1990, the whole game would have changed. And that’s exactly where we’d be. That’s why I’m so wholeheartedly when I talk to people. That’s my thing. Get Started, do something. Don’t go and blow your capital on a risky investment or some speculatory thing. But start putting small amounts of capital in the markets and you’re never going to learn as much as when you have that capital on the line, right?
CORWYN:
Look, you’re gonna give me heart palpitations.
RYAN:
Good thing I’m in the doctor’s office I can take care of.
CORWYN:
Yeah, exactly. You ain’t gotta be all boogers. So lucky. That’s some good. So Ryan, oh, my god. Thank you so much. Absolutely, sir. This is a thank you for the insight. And most importantly, thank you for the leveling because sometimes people forget that. professionals, doctors, lawyers, I mean, even our legislators, and they’re real people. And they have the same issues and the same challenges that we all do. But the celebration may look different, if that makes any sense. So I’m thanking you for sharing what you shared with us today. And being on the show.
RYAN:
Absolutely. And thank you for having me. This has been great and awesome. And I hope the conversations continue.
CORWYN:
Good deal. I’ll look forward to it. So for our listeners, God’s lucky y’all got some word today, y’all got some good stuff. If you’ve got one to hold on one of them, nurse practitioners, if you’ve got one of them, RNs, if you’ve got one LPNs if you’ve got a doctor, in your family, you’ve got somebody else, anybody else who go into the hospital and work. Whoever it is, I need you to put them on to the money, the medicine and money show. I need you to put them on it. I need you to get them plugged in, because we got to expand their mind so that we can have a better and different outcome. So again, Ryan, thank you so much, again for sharing your insight on our show today. I really appreciate it.
RYAN:
Absolutely. I had chills when you said that you hit the nail on the head.
CORWYN:
Awesome. Appreciate it. So far. Listen, one more time. Y’all know how I do y’all know how I feel. Y’all know what I say? Y’all know I always put into it and things together. And I give it to you this way, which is I love you. I love you. I love you. And we’re gonna see you guys out there in those streets.
