https://youtu.be/M371JBcQBNE

Show Notes:

Speaker 1: (00:00)
Hey innovators. Welcome to the simplified integration podcast. Episode number 29, how I paid off all of my student debt in less than a year, Leonardo de Vinci once said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. And I agree you see the problem with the way that most consulting groups approach medical integration is anything but simple. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It's expensive, it's complicated. And quite frankly, it's exhausting enough is enough. There are far too many amazing integrated clinics that are struggling. I'm on a mission to change that when I've come to find from over five years, working with integrative practices is that simplicity really is the secret deal saying of less is more, is true through a streamlined approach. I was able to create multiple successful seven figure integrated clinics. And now I'm going to show you how you can do the same. Join me as I share with you the secrets to successful medical integration and practice growth. Join me on a journey to greater sophistication through innovation. I'm dr. Andrew Wells and welcome to the simplified integration podcast.

Speaker 1: (01:10)
Hey doc, welcome back. So I want to give you a little bit of insight into the way my brain works. Uh, I'm not very money, uh, oriented, like I'm not a money motivated person. Um, but I don't one thing that motivates me is not having debt. I'm very much like a security person when it comes to finances. Like I, I like to have cushions and security. And one thing that has always bothered me since I was a young guy, was not having a lot of debt. So I've always everything that I've ever purchased has been with cash. So every car purchased purchased with cash. Didn't take out a loan. I don't buy furniture on loan. I don't, you know, I, I always pay my credit cards off every single month. And so I've never bought anything on credit except for three things. I bought a house, uh, my chiropractic exec education.

Speaker 1: (01:56)
And I also took a small loan from my father to start up my chiropractic business. Those are the only three things I've ever taken loans out on. So when we, um, let me back up a little bit. When I, before enrolling in chiropractic school, I had a really lucrative, lucrative sales job. I was really successful and I was, I wasn't married. I lived by myself. I actually lived in my friend's basement. I paid him 500 bucks in rent and the company I worked for paid for all of my expenses, including food. So for a few years, I was able to save up a ton of money. I was scrolling it away in a bank account because I knew at some point I wanted to go back to school to get a master's degree. And at the time I just didn't know what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1: (02:38)
And so when I figured out I wanted to be a chiropractor, I enrolled in chiropractic school and for a majority of my chiropractic student profession, I paid my living expenses and my tuition and my books. I just paid cash for all that stuff until I ran out of money. So that big nest egg that I had saved up for my education was gone at some point. And I think it was like the last year or two or a year and a half. I had to take out a student loan in order to pay for, um, for living expenses and for, for tuition at Palmer. And so when I graduated, I had roughly $80,000 in debt. And I know for some of you that may or may not seem like a whole lot, especially if you, if you married somebody who was also in chiropractic school, some I know I've talked to docs who had like four or $500,000 in student loan debt, which is insane.

Speaker 1: (03:24)
Um, but so I had a measly $80,000, but to me that was a ton of money. And I've always had this like anxiety and fear like this, um, insecurity about having these, these massive financial, uh, obligations. And so I've always tried to pay things off as quick as possible. And when I graduated school, my wife and I, you know, we started our chiropractic business from the ground up where we pumped a lot of money into the business. And fortunately we did really well. We were never in the red every month we profited, um, we were successful. We were insanely successful. And I remember every month our student loan payment would come in and the bank would alert me and say, Hey, Andrew, your student loan payment is coming out tomorrow. It was like, I think it was like $996 every single month. And I looked at my total student loan debt, which was roughly, I think it was like 80,000 or 83,000 bucks, something like that.

Speaker 1: (04:19)
And I'm like, man, I'm going to be making thousand dollar payments for the next like seven or eight years. And that freaked me out. And I never liked, I never liked making those payments, right. Those are not fun payments to make. But for me it was like the thought of having to pay us every month for eight years. And I wanted to figure out a way to wipe that slate clean. And so I had some options, maybe I work harder in my chiropractic business. Maybe my wife separates from the chiropractic business and does something else does her own has her own career. And at the time we were considering integrating our office and one of the big motivators for integration was it would allow us to increase our revenue and we could start paying some stuff off and make more money. And so we made the plunge in, into integration.

Speaker 1: (05:00)
And for the first six months, it was really rough. We were providing a lot of services. We were losing money, money was flying out the door. And then finally, we, you know, things started to click. We got our, um, uh, credentialing with Medicare and private insurance and we started getting insurance checks in. And one of the things that made it really successful was that we had a very loyal and very large patient base when we integrated. So a lot of the patients that were our former and current chiropractic patients, we put through this medical model. So we were able to start billing their Medicare insurance and private, private insurance. And so now, you know, we took patients that were worth maybe two, $3,000 on their chiropractic side. And now we're able to offer all these medical services, which increased our patient caseload or P P patient case value by thousands of dollars. And so all of a sudden, I remember it was a, it was like late summer, early fall. Um, we just started getting like bombarded with insurance checks for all the services we had provided for the, you know, the first six months. And so we had months where we were doing multiple hundred thousand, multiple six figure months. And so all of a sudden we, we had all this money coming in and I just started paying off debt left and right.

Speaker 2: (06:08)
And I remember the day, um,

Speaker 1: (06:10)
I was sitting with my wife and I was on my phone and I got this, this alert from my bank saying, Hey, your student loan check is, or your student loan payment is coming out tomorrow. This is just a reminder. I remember looking at my bank account, looking at the bills that I had. And I looked at my wife and I said, you know what? I think I'm just going to pay off all of our student debt. We had enough money to do it. We had enough money set aside, not only to pay off our debt, but also to, you know, we had a safety cushion, so cash for living expenses and business expenses and things like that. So my wife looked at me and she goes, are you sure you want to do that? And I said, yeah, I just want, I want this, I want this gone.

Speaker 1: (06:44)
So I remember on my app, I had three different student loan accounts that I remember hitting pay balance, paid balance, pay balance on my phone. And just like that 70 at the time I had 70, roughly $70,000 in student, uh, student debt, uh, still left and just like that it was gone. And I remember like this huge wave of calm came over me all like all my financial stress and worries. Like there was a huge weight lifted off my shoulder and it felt really good. Now. I'm like, I love extreme sports. I'm like a, an adrenaline junkie and the feeling of paying off my student debt rivals like the best adrenaline rush I've ever gotten in my life. It felt so good. And it was one of those moments where like the sky was blue or, and you could hear the birds singing and everything was like everything lined up just right.

Speaker 2: (07:34)
And so that, that was like a,

Speaker 1: (07:36)
A very memorable moment in my life because it took a huge weight off my shoulders, took away a financial burden off my family. And I was really happy for that. And I'm telling the story because medical integration was a vehicle that allowed us to do that. And I'm not saying that medical integration is easy and it's always rewarding. In fact, it's really hard and it took us a lot of growth and a lot of like blood, sweat, and tears, like my wife and I had some rough moments with integration. However, when we were able to pay off our student debt, like the 70, some thousand bucks in one day, like after the first year of integration, it was all worth it. And I never have to worry about another student loan payment again, until my kids maybe get older. And, uh, but that was, um, you know, it was a really rewarding day.

Speaker 1: (08:22)
So I wanted to share that story with you because it can be very rewarding to do things like integration or to offer a services in your practice that are financially rewarding. And it also helps the patient. And, uh, so I just want to share that story with you. So if you're listening to this and you have still a mountain of student loan debt, or you have, maybe you have a massive amount of credit card debt or other, some other type of debt, I would highly encourage you to look at integration as a vehicle, to, to, uh, financial freedom for you and for your family. And again, like this is not, integration is not right for everybody is right for a certain type of doctor with the right strategy and the right motivations going into it. But again, it can be a very powerful financial strategy to help give you financial freedom.

Speaker 1: (09:04)
So I hope you found this beneficial. I appreciate you listening to the simplified integration podcast. If you have any questions or you just want to shoot me an email, you can reach me@infoatintegrationsecrets.com that's info@simplifiedintegration.com. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you could live a debt free life and can pay off your bills just like I did. And if you have any questions on how to do that, I'm happy to help you walk you through that process. So have a wonderful day. God bless talk to you soon. Bye bye. Hey innovators. Thanks for listening to the simplified integration podcast fact that you're listening tells me that you're like me, someone who loves simplicity and the truth is those who embrace simplicity are some of the greatest innovators. So hope you got a ton of value from what we covered on today's episode. Be sure to subscribe and share with other docs that you feel could benefit from greater sophistication through simplification and innovation. If you've got specific questions that you'd like answered on this podcast, or you've got specific topics that you'd like me to discuss, just shoot me an email at info@simplifiedintegration.com that's info@simplifiedintegration.com.