98. The Advisor: Galen Nuttall, M.ed, CFP

[0:00] And so growing up I thought my dad was in construction for a while I thought he was a stockbroker of some sort because he would watch the markets all the time and so really when I became a financial advisor I thought if I can help people like my dad sleep better at night
because they’re doing the right thing and they know that they’re doing the right thing with their money then that’s going to impact their lives that’s going to impact their families
and eventually it’s going to it’s going to impact their practices.

[0:29] Paging dr. cook paging dr. cook dr. cook you’re wanted in the o.r. dr. cook.

[0:36] Music.

[0:59] Hello everyone and welcome to prescription for success.
I’m dr. Randy cook your host for the podcast which is a production of MD coaches.
Providing leadership and Executive coaching for Physicians by physicians to overcome burnout transition your career develop as a leader or whatever your goal might be.
Visit MD coaches on the web at my MD coaches.com because you’re not in this alone.

[1:29] My guest today has a really interesting story that arcs from his childhood as the son of a physician.

[1:36] Through an extensive International liberal arts education.

[1:41] And finally his current position as a certified financial advisor with a particular interest in physician.

[1:48] So let’s hear my conversation with Galen Nuttall.

[1:53] Music.

[1:59] Welcome everybody I’m really looking forward to my conversation today with Galen Nuttall.
Who is a certified financial planner up in Belleville Ontario I had the pleasure of being a guest on galen’s awesome podcast a clean bill of wealth several months ago.
And I’m looking forward with our conversation today so Galen thanks so much for joining us in welcome
thank you so much for having me and I’m very excited yeah we had an amazing conversation a couple months ago and happy to have another one.
Well I’m really glad to have you and really looking forward to.
Picking your brain a good bit because I think you have a really fascinating story I know that you are the son of a physician I wonder if.

[2:46] At some point your parents had in mind that you are destined to become a physician after all you’re named after one of the most famous positions of all time.

[2:55] Is there a is there a story there at all yeah tough to tough to keep up with the name Galen I guess the father of you know lots of core beliefs around the medicine that wasn’t defunct until.
Not too long ago yeah no I’d say so my dad’s a yeah he’s a now retired nephrologist and when I was growing up he had a private
practice a dialysis practice in Georgia actually when I was little.
And my mom was a nurse practitioner so certainly both in the medical field I wouldn’t say that either of them really push me or discourage me or encourage me any
in any way towards medicine so it really there really were you know letting me be free to choose my own path and I can’t remember I told you this or not but I did go pre-med for a little while I was studying I was getting my
my undergrad degree which is Bachelor of liberal arts and I thought I might make the switch to med school and so I did a summer at Johns Hopkins and
then I did a summer in New York City at Bellevue Hospital as part of an internship they have there for you know young folks that
I think they might be going into medicine and those two experiences were enough for me to start thinking that maybe medicine wasn’t the right fit for me I mean I knew I wanted to make a difference in the world but at this particular Hospital in New York and I think that’s part of just how it All Shook out was I I met enough
doctors that weren’t particularly happy.

[4:19] That I wondered whether it was going to be a good fit for me and to the sacrifice my gosh like once someone finally sat me down and walked me through you know
pre-med you know med school residency Fellowship like the whole shebang I said I’m not sure if I can if I can do this and the final thing that was the nail in the coffin was I was running marathons at the time and very
religiously getting at least 8 hours of sleep every night
and I did this internship and they showed me the cot that the on-call physician slept on and the residents slept on in this teeny little room and how they’d get an hour of sleep here there and I just thought I don’t know if I can do this.
Yeah I guess that’s a pretty good particularly at a place like Bellevue it’s a good place to see just how bad it can get yeah it was issued.
But but at that at the very onset of your end of undergraduate education where you giving it any.

[5:14] Serious thought or was it or were you truly where you should have been where we are all told that we should be and that is you know look around you’re not a kid anymore see what the landscape looks like and.
Pick something or were you leaning one way or the other
yeah for sure I mean I think that I was I was halfway through my undergrad and I was starting to really wonder what I was going to do with myself when I graduated with a bachelor of liberal arts degree because the path is not so clear and I started to kind of get concerned like well what am I going to do at the end of all this like there’s not a
you know there’s not jobs out there for philosophers so I wasn’t 100% sure what else can it do with myself
now looking back I was definitely in the right place and I’m very grateful that I stayed there because you know most most of my adult life has been in some form of Education
I became a teacher I have a master’s in education and I spend most of my client I’m educating my clients and so having spent
quite a bit of time studying the great books of philosophers and different thought leaders like you know young and people like that.
Ended up being really valuable for me in ways of I think explaining things in ways that make sense to people in an industry that can be very convoluted and confusing
so in the end I’m very grateful that I finished I went to school called st. John’s College in Annapolis Maryland It’s called The Great Book school where
the first semester you read things like Homer and Aristotle and then the last semester of the four years you’re reading things like Lincoln and.

[6:41] Mark Twain and stuff like that so it kind of takes you through history of different literature and philosophy and math and science so it ended up being a perfect fit in the end.

[6:51] You actually did what frankly I think all young people are encouraged to do.
If they’re thinking about medicine and that is to get a good liberal arts education but it sounds like what the liberal arts did for you,
was to Simply make you think that you would fit better someplace else am I on the right track
yeah definitely it was as I’m yeah it was a good it was a good thing for me to go and try to get those couple credits of pre-med at Johns Hopkins and it was good for me to go to Bellevue to really try it on because I think a lot of people
and my dad’s one of these people his his idea was all I’m going to be a doctor and that’s that.
And he wanted to be other things potentially along the way but there was a bit of pressure from his family to go for the you know become a physician and he’s a very good physician I think at the end of the day he’s I mean I interviewed him for my podcast and he says that he’s glad he.
He stuck it out but I am grateful that I went out there and tried a few thing you know I tried it on and it didn’t fit.
And exactly what you’re saying around that background and it’s interesting because at the time when I went to Bellevue.
You know a lot of the people I went with young people they were already their mind was set like they were going to become Physicians they were already getting all their credits you know they were like well on their way and a lot of them that was there that was their trajectory.

[8:11] And you know I really did see the lot of a maybe hadn’t looked outside of that trajectory for what might be a better fit for them personally and so I was pretty grateful to have been able to do that and to show you that you got to
liberal arts education during your undergraduate years is a little bit of an understatement you did a lot of things that I find fascinating now you spend some time at the New York Film Academy where you’re seriously considering being a.

[8:37] Filmmaker.
Yeah I was and it’s pretty interesting so my dad’s lived in New York for many years now we look I grew up in the South and then little by little my dad migrated up to New York and so I did the Bellevue Experience One Summer it’s a summer long program for kids that are interested in
becoming doctors so I did that and then they invited me to come back and coordinate the program because I had sort of tightened up some of their processes and kind of like.
Taken a bit of a leadership role inside of that program and they asked me to come back and Lead it.
And I was on the fence as to whether I was going to do that or Film School the summer program at New York Film Academy and I went to New York Film Academy in this is like nineteen ninety eight or nine like pre DVD and I went to them and I said can you just show me a sample film of something that somebody’s made here
and they took me off to a room they found a TV with a VHS and they popped it in and it was a short film like 89 minutes or something
and I was really fascinated by what this person had made so in that moment I said I’m not going to go back to Bellevue.
I’m going to make short films for a while and see if that’s what I end up doing.
And so I did that program which was a bit more than a summer where we at the time it was
we shot it on film a very expensive process my oh yeah it was the it was the last year that they used film.

[9:57] And The Last of a Dying Breed it was a very special kind of films even a did breathe yeah it’s gone now it was a very special film is very expensive so my final project was a 10-minute was 10 or 12 minutes long
and I think in Phil Malone I spent something like 1200 bucks because.
I can’t remember the cost I think every minute of film was like twenty dollars and like you’d mess up half the reals because you had to go get them developed and see if they turned out okay it was a lot of money back then it was a lot of money back then and I mean you could make you know you can make a ten minute video on a phone for
you know
zero dollars right now so it was but it was great it was I met a lot of really amazing people and it was a really fun creative summer and I really did plan on sticking with that.

[10:41] Industry and I had an offer to be director photographer documentary but I also made another decision which was to move to Venezuela at the time.
But it could have been a trajectory ended up on I guess hi I’m Rhonda Crow founder and CEO Forum di coaches
here on RX for Success we interview a lot of great medical professionals on how they grew their careers how they overcame challenges.
And how they handle day-to-day work.

[11:12] I really hope you’re getting a lot of great information but if you’re looking for an answer to a specific problem management or Administration challenge.
Or if you’re feeling just a bit burnt out like maybe you chose the wrong career.
Well then there’s a faster way to get the help you need now it’s not counseling it’s coaching.
RX for success is produced by MD coaches a team of Physicians who have been where you are I know you’re used to going it alone.
But you don’t have to get the support you need today visit us at my MD coaches.com to schedule your complimentary consultation.

[11:50] Again that’s my MD coaches.com because you’re not in this alone.

[11:58] We’ll get back to our interview in just a moment but right now I want to tell you a little bit about physician Outlook.

[12:05] If you haven’t discovered this remarkable magazine please do so very soon.

[12:10] It was created by physicians for Physicians to showcase the intersection between clinical and non-clinical interests whether it’s writing
painting cooking politics and dozens of other topics physician Outlook gives a physician perspective
it’s available online and in print it’s really unique among physician lifestyle magazines and like the prescription for Success podcast
physician Outlook amplifies the voice of any physician who has something to say it also engages patients who still believe in physician-led.
Team-based care and prescription for Success listeners can get 3 months free when you enter our promo code.
RX for success and select the monthly option at checkout that’s a really great deal on this stunning publication.

[13:02] And now let’s get back to today’s interview well speaking of moves another thing that I’m.

[13:11] Curious about I know that you spent some of your early life in the South and I’m wondering.
Which part of the South and I’ll tell you the reason that I’m asking the question is I’m a native Southerner and typically its.
Not a place where you find a great many intellectual.

[13:32] Mentors and models to follow so what what was it like for you growing up in the South and what part of the South did you grow up in
yeah good question so I was born in Georgia I was born in Rome Georgia it’s about an hour and change outside of Atlanta and I lived there for a bit or where I am right now yeah that’s right and and I know I’ve got family roots in the South and I’ve got family in Louisiana
family in Virginia so I grew up in Georgia moved around a bit ended up in North Carolina went to school in Maryland which I mean.
Up here in Canada we call that the South maybe but growing up my growing up we wouldn’t call Maryland the South but so Georgia and North Carolina mostly and Georgia was pretty young like we left George when I think I was 5 or 6 so,
most of my upbringing in the South was North Carolina LG memories it’s funny I’ve ended up in Belleville Ontario which is a town almost the same size as room Georgia.
I don’t know if Rome still only has one mall but it certainly only had one when I lived there and it has like all these old
beautiful brick buildings with a river running through the town and Belleville is the exact same way we’ve got a river running through the town these beautiful old brick buildings so it was really funny when we moved here after having lived in places like Caracas Venezuela which is like 7 million people
and New York City and Toronto.

[14:47] Moving here it did feel in a strange way like I was moving home in some respects because it’s a small town you know very similar qualities of everyone kind of knows everyone sort of thing much like Rome Georgia and
the question around the intellectuals I mean is a good question and I’d say that I was really fortunate in North Carolina to go to some really good schools I went to
really good high school called Durham Academy and I had I remember a math teacher there who.

[15:14] It was really great at noticing my interests outside of my inside of math and outside of math things like mythology so he really encouraged me to look at the work of Joseph Campbell you know he’s got kind of guy who’s had his
kind of ears attuned to what his students were interested in and his name is mr. Ebert haven’t talked to him forever but he was really key
and and me looking at the larger World outside of formal schooling I guess I’d say.
Yeah I think you were very fortunate to have made that shift to North Carolina the the deeper you go into the South as you’re probably aware education is unfortunately not as.
Sophisticated is what you can find elsewhere but clearly you found what worked for you and my next question is.
You spent a substantial amount of your life in South America and I’m very curious about what it was that led you to that decision and what you were doing there.

[16:09] Yeah so I after Film School in New York I was about 21 I think.
So I mean the the short version of it is when I finished high school I thought well I don’t know what I want to do with my life so I better go to college so I went to college and I said here I’m going to figure out what I want to do with my life
and I was finishing that up and I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life so I said well let me take a year off of trying to figure all this out.
And so I went on what’s called a year of service and it was related to My Religion the Baha’i faith.
Where you have an opportunity to go and serve and a Grassroots level
at any almost anywhere in the world I mean I thought about grease for a while because I really want to go to Greece I thought about Mexico and Venezuela just kind of came up on the list of places that were looking for people and I said let’s do it so the idea was to go for a year.

[16:58] Do something completely different
get out of whatever environment I was in to reset my thinking and the so yeah go for a year come back to New York maybe make movies maybe do something else who knows and so I moved there I think about a month after I turn 22 I barely spoke Spanish
and after I’d been there so I moved down there to work on Grassroots development and education and small very rural villages in Venezuela.
Like living in 10 roof shacks and having dogs sleep in my bed and give me fleas and all those good things and giving classes to kids under mango trees
and after I was there for about five or six months I started thinking maybe I don’t need to go back
so America was like maybe I could just stay here and keep doing something like this and so that year
ended up turning into 10 years partially because I met my wife down there my wife she’s originally Canadian for of a rainy and descent we met down there.

[17:53] We got married about four years after I got down there and then our son was born there and then we left I when he was just a few years old ended up in Canada so basically it was a year a year that turned into.
And that’s also where I started educating in a more formal setting got my teaching degree.
But it was a really I mean and then I traveled all over South America I think something like 12 different countries in Central and South America.
I’m going to have to tell you that.
As an interviewer I’m struggling to close the circle between.

[18:28] Third world educator to financial advisor so.
You want to see if you can help us make that leap well it’s just so cliche right now I always showed I was joke with people like how did you end up in Belle a certified financial planner in Belleville Ontario after all that.
Um I mean the short version is Venezuela started getting really dangerous
our son was born down there blond hair blue eyes people assumed we had money which we didn’t kidnapping is a real concern down there so once he was born we thought,
we wouldn’t have to live with ourselves if you got kidnapped I mean we just said this isn’t or just this isn’t.
This isn’t an option so we stuck it out for one more year so I could finish a couple years of school teaching that is to have enough years to kind of have a good you know for it to look good on my resume.
And then we left Venezuela not sure where we’d end up we just knew the school year ended and we left we said you know we’re not staying here
and so we moved up to Canada and I started looking for teaching jobs and couldn’t really find anything and my wife found a job she’s a chemical she’s a chemical engineer by profession and so she found a job in Belleville Ontario and that’s how we ended up here
and after a year or two I made a career change partially because my wife hated her job unfortunately and she,
you know basically would every every time I took her to work she’d start.

[19:49] Getting really quiet on the drive to work the closer we got the quieter she’d get and shoes sometimes start crying on the way to work and I said this has got to stop so I couldn’t find a teaching job but then my financial advisor said Gail and I think you’d make a good financial advisor.
And my initial reaction was there is no way on Earth I’m doing this you know I was wondering how you were going to close that Loop so it didn’t actually.

[20:14] Necessarily hatch in your brain by itself
no absolutely not because it’s a very different thing I’ve ever done I mean it’s Financial advising I mean the the way the path that I entered is basically a sales role
how are you come in it’s changed since then but the way that I came in was under a commission model where you if you didn’t sell something you you went broke but they did tell me that.

[20:35] The opportunity was there to make decent money and the town where I live there’s not a lot of great opportunities for a teacher that can’t find work and so I said let’s give it a shot and
you know initially I said I wasn’t interested in for a few reasons one was I didn’t want to be some sort of pushy salesman that was you know cause it’s not you know losing all sorts of friends and the other reason was I was terrified of managing other people’s money and wondering if I was going to get phone calls at 2:00 a.m. when the markets crash
and I spent months Grill like I was interviewing them as much as they were interviewing me because I was like this has to be a good fit if I’m going to go for it and then
the thing that happened that made me decide to go for it was this I felt initially like I was betraying my profession because
I had a teaching degree a Masters in Education and I only had a few years of teaching under my bell and here I was going to make this complete shift and I felt like I was really betraying
all this work I had done and I reached out I needed references
for the for the financial advisor job and the only people I knew were were people that had taught me my either my former principal who had hired me for the first time ever as a teacher and the director of my master’s program.
And I was really embarrassed to go to them and tell them like hey can I get a reference because I’m not going to be a teacher anymore and both of them said Gayle and I think you’re going to be really good at this.

[21:51] And I was kind of expecting them to talk me out of it you know like Galen come on don’t give up maybe you can find a teaching job but both of them came back and they’re really supportive that again I think you’re going to be really good at this and so that was part of what
thought made me think well maybe I’m going to be good at this or maybe I can do this so I think that’s the best I can close the loop on how I ended up as a as a financial planner clearly you
you inquired of the right people because you have been remarkably.
Successful and your record shows that and as you began to educate yourself.

[22:25] Were you in the beginning interested in directing your business toward.

[22:30] Physicians as clients or did that come later yeah it’s a really good question so when I started I was so confused about the what the whole thing was because I’ve never done anything like this before I mean I did start an educational program down in Venezuela.
Pretty much single-handedly so I did have an entrepreneurial creative
background and doing that which I didn’t realize how much was going to help me as a financial advisor because there’s no I don’t punch a clock you know I don’t
no one tells me what to do so to speak like I have to figure it out on my own especially in the early days and pretty early on
I started to think about how am I going to look different than every other financial advisor or financial planner
in Canada I think there’s something like 20,000 certified financial planners in Canada I think there’s 100,000 financial advisors and so I started to think like what’s going to make me any different than anyone else.
You know I was just wondering if you’re the only person that ever asked that question because you’re right though one looks now it’s like the other,
yeah right absolutely yeah there yeah because I started off as a financial advisor and then I got my certified front at least in Canada you can’t call yourself a financial planner until you get your certified financial planner designation and so there’s a lot of
financial advisors and you know like people at the bank and you know they have different.

[23:45] Titles and everything but certified financial planner I think there’s 20,000 in Canada and that’s a big number I mean like how do you say how do you set yourself apart and so I started looking at that and I decided there the
decision I made was I was going to get really good at corporate planning
people said to me hey gal Farmers make really good clients doctors make really good click people just kind of sad like you need to go find these people because they’re going to make good clients as okay well I’ll see what I can do
so someone in my extended family I kind of track someone down and I was like hey you’re a doctor like can I sit down and to show you what I do and they said yes and that was only a few months in.
And it was pretty funny because I barely knew what I was doing I took my director with me and we had our first meeting with them and I didn’t feel like it went so well like I didn’t I didn’t know what
I wasn’t really that trained at that moment I didn’t really know what to ask them I didn’t know the process to follow and so we walked out of there and then my director had been doing this for years that I’ve never sat in front of a doctor before.

[24:39] And I just kind of looked and I’m like well why didn’t you tell me that before like what why and then I also thought like well why not I was like you’ve been doing this for 10 years how come you’ve never sat in front of a doctor before like why wouldn’t you so.
I realized then I needed to forge my own path I was gonna have to figure this out on my own if the person who had hired me wasn’t necessarily ready to support me.
So I decided you’re really good at corporate planning because and I think like anything in the United States you can do the same thing you can have a corporation as a physician.
Not a lot of financial advisors understand the corporate planning the tax implications the different.
Instruments that are available so I decided to get really good at that so I just read everything I could get and there’s not a lot out there to be honest to learn how to do this so I did have to talk to a lot of advisors that were a bit ahead of me.
In this learning I had to read everything I could get my hands on so what I’ll say is I did take on a few physician clients early on.

[25:29] But I didn’t really you know do things like start,
podcast called clean bill of health specifically for Physicians you know do webinars every month specifically for Physicians until a few years ago partially because it just felt very difficult to say
I’m only going to work with these people because it feels like I’m.
Letting go of lots of opportunities and to be fair like I don’t bring on just Physicians as clients but the majority the majority of my time is working with Physicians that’s for sure and even I do have some.
Dr. clients aren’t Physicians like chiropractors and vets and people like that but it’s mostly Physicians and and the big
the big reason I’ll say is I mean the biggest reason is because my own dad I watched him struggle to get good advice when I was a kid and I didn’t I didn’t really fully understand what’s happening but the easiest way to sum it up is one day someone asked me what does your dad do it was in front of my dad.

[26:21] So here we are I think I was still in Georgia so my dad’s got a private practice in dialysis well-known nephrologist in town all that someone said what does your dad do and I said my dad’s in construction.
A my dad looks at me I was probably five years old.

[26:34] My dad looks at me and he’s like what are you talking about and I said well every day after school you take us to this old smelly building.
There’s dust everywhere there’s people with hard hats you’re telling people what to do people are showing you blueprints you know you’re in construction and.
What my dad was doing at the time was building and you know like an apartment building to get rental income and retirement like he was he was doing all that because as you well know doctors don’t have any sort of.
Of the vast majority don’t have any sort of pension safety net don’t have group benefits like they’re on the hook right and so growing up
I thought my dad was in construction for a while I thought he was a stockbroker of some sort because he would watch the markets all the time and so really when I became a financial advisor I thought if I can help people like my dad sleep better at night because they’re doing the right thing
and they know that they’re doing the right thing with their money then that’s going to impact their lives that’s going to impact their families and eventually it’s going to it’s going to impact their practices you know
as you well know being a coach of Physicians I mean Physicians who are
have more peace of mind their patients do better they run more efficient practices I mean there’s studies that have shown this that a happier doctor has happier you know better quality for their patients so that’s really what
had me sink my teeth into okay I’m gonna get really good at physician corporate planning in Canada because the ripple effect is just so great.

[28:00] That’s a fascinating story and I’m sure you discovered right away that there were.
A lot of Physicians who were in the process of making huge mistakes it’s funny to me I think.

[28:16] Certainly as a physician it is possible to accumulate enough currency and the bank.
But the wisdom to know what to do with that and how to keep it safe is painfully absent is that is that been your experience
yeah I mean definitely I think we might have talked about this on my podcast and when we talked together but I mean I think what’s there for me for Physicians is
I think everyone can fall into the Trap of the arrival fallacy like when this happens you know when I get to this point in my life everything is going to be taken care of or I’m going to be happy like that future
someday right and I think Physicians the the the trajectory they follow to get to where they are it’s even it’s very ripe for that right like okay once I finish you yeah once I finish med school then I’m going to become a resident and I’m going to match.
All right and I’m going to be set and then it’s like okay well as a resident like things aren’t set yet because I still need to find a long-term position somewhere once I find that I’m set.

[29:17] And then it’s like okay once I pay off my student loans I’m set now it’s you know once I pay off my mortgage I’m set so there’s so much in the life of a physician that’s things are going to be okay when.
Or I’ll be able to calm down you know I’ll be able to take it easy when and so I find that a big part of that is they keep their head down working really hard.

[29:39] And so I think it’s tough on that end of the of the I think someday I’m going to you know someday something’s going to change where I can be more peaceful or more you know have more peace of mind and then when it comes to the money side of things.

[29:52] As you well know a lot of physician start with a tremendous amount of debt
yes they make good money but nowadays yeah they do nowadays A lot of them have a lot of overhead depending on the specialty right
family physicians in Canada have quite a bit over head is offices staff you know and there
the lower one of the lower paid Specialties so it’s kind of a paradox of sorts or a catch-22 and then there’s the whole thing and I can really relate to this is like
Physicians are obviously intelligent people so I think there’s this element of like I should be able to figure this out on my own.

[30:23] Like I should be able to figure out finances I should be able to figure out investing taxes corporate planning the whole thing.
And I certainly felt this way before I became an advisor I read all sorts of books on investing like I was like I’m going to figure this out on my own I’m going to do it myself.
And it wasn’t until I became a financial advisor in this was my profession that I realized how much I didn’t know even though I was a voracious reader and consumer of information and Physicians are and I’m going to use this word because it’s true they’re targeted.
They are targeted it’s not hard to look up the address of a physician’s office in Canada they’re listed everywhere so they get
clients are always bringing email they get from other advisors you know hey here’s here’s what I offer give me a call
my dad still gets cold calls around Finance like invest in this you know someone called why and I’ve been retired three years yeah yeah my dad’s retired he still gets cold calls of people trying to sell him invest in Investments or yeah some sort of tax saving scheme right
so I feel the Physicians are in this this Paradox of or this yeah this this sort of Bermuda Triangle of very busy.

[31:28] Right very intelligent probably think they should be able to figure this out and highly targeted by people who may or may not have their best interest in mind
I think leads a lot of Physicians to try to figure it out on their own and some I think probably do but I’ll say the vast majority don’t.
And this is based on evidence I put a survey in a Physician Group in Canada.
And I said how confident are you that you’re using your corporation to its fullest extent and 82 percent of Physicians who answered over a hundred answered they said that they were either not at all confident or only somewhat confident that they were using it efficiently.
And then I asked the question where are you with financial planning have you got it all figured out or are you totally confused and don’t know where to start.
And fifty-two percent said they were either totally confused and didn’t know where to start or they wished they knew who to trust to guide them.

[32:22] And I think that a lot of Physicians see other Physicians like very prominent on social media prominent in different areas.
That our financial like giving Financial advice to other Physicians like there’s a couple on the stage there’s a couple in Canada and I think a lot of Physicians think oh that guy figured it out and they are as a guy because all the ones most the ones I’ve seen are all the ones I’ve seen are guys that guys figured it out so can I or I can
I can take their course and I can figure it out and what I’ll say is that some will and some won’t and I’ll say the majority in
you know in the survey I did and the Physicians I see but like meet with behind closed doors is they’re not going to figure it out on their own because they either don’t have the time or the interest yeah I was curious if they’re War if there.
Seem to be some commonality among Physicians who are inclined to seek out advice but from what your.

[33:13] Saying it sounds to me that at least half of them really don’t know which questions
to ask would you agree with that I would yeah definitely because I think that a lot of financial planning right now is being boiled down to.
Probably a two simplistic form.
Where it’s kind of like you should only work with advisors who work in this way like very popular especially in the states like you should only work with an advisor who’s a fee-only advisor which
I don’t necessarily agree with I can do feel only work but I don’t necessarily think it’s the best way to go and the other one is like what are the fees on the Investments like so most of the conversation has boiled down to working to get the lowest fee.
Type of investing which I don’t think is the best measure of quality where I stand in my career and with the firm I work with is the value of Our advice is well worth whatever fee that our clients pay for it.
And if anyone doesn’t see the value in the fee then they shouldn’t work with us but.
A lot of people do and so when it comes to just what you said which is a good point like do they know which questions to ask I would say no and no fault of their own because if you pick up.

[34:19] Any given book or magazine or listen to a podcast that’s most of what it’s going to talk about
you know I have great respect for these Physicians that have taken time to really figure out the ins and outs of financial planning for Physicians and then turned around to teach their colleagues
but what I will say is that a lot of times I think Physicians think oh I need to figure it all out on my own still like I’m not going to engage a professional there’s a lot of that
yeah like I’m going to figure it all out and I meet Physicians or like last week I met a physician who all his Investments have been sitting in cash for five years because he’s been waiting to figure it all out.

[34:51] And
I’m like you know what your money could have done for you in the last 5 years like while you were trying to figure it all out and like yes you would have you would have paid me some sort of a fee
but my gosh like you’d be way better off like I’ve met people who’ve been sitting in cash for eight years waiting to figure it out since our more since 08 I met some of the other day they’ve been sitting they sold all their investments in 08 09 which is probably a bad idea to begin with
and they’ve been sitting in Cash ever since and I’m like oh my gosh like because and and here’s what I’ll say is I empathize.
Because before I became an advisor I didn’t know who to trust either.
Like I empathize with them because before I became an advisor I couldn’t tell who was giving me good advice for bad advice like I the advisor I worked with before I became when I barely worked with the guy because I didn’t trust him and I was so skeptical.
So I really empathize with this because it’s really hard to tell like there’s not this real solid litmus test of.
Is this good or bad advice because there’s so many nuances to our
like there’s a lot of nuances to how you go about things and there’s a lot of conflicting opinions of should you do this should you do that so it is tough like I really I really do say like I mean I get why people kind of sit around and say I’m not sure what I should do
because it’s tough to know it’s a big decision right this person’s going to manage my money this person is going to be like you know my co-captain on the ship towards retirement you know this is a big deal
so I definitely feel for people who are in that limbo.

[36:14] I think that’s a really significant stumbling block because we all know that.
You can’t necessarily trust everybody you see ya regardless of what credentials they may flash at you it goes Physicians as well as it goes for Physicians as well as it does for
financial advisors and so you just kind of get hung in that indecisive territory it’s very difficult.
To make that decision along those same lines or at least maybe in a parallel sense I understand it’s my own by I believe that I have either seen in your writing or heard in some of the podcast that you appeared on that you are
an enthusiastic supporter of personal and professional coaching which of course from where we sit at MD coaches makes us very happy and I’d like for you to.
Talk about that little bit and what you think people can can gain from personal coaching
oh absolutely yeah so my podcast clean bill of health I started out really talking about finances I talk to I think one of my first interviews was a lawyer to talk about corporate structures and these are good interviews to I talk to an accountant.
About corporate planning and then I asked my dad.
And I don’t think I’d ever asked him this before I’ve been an advisor for I don’t know seven six seven years at this point and I said Dad what’s the biggest thing I can do for my clients like what do you think and he said introduce him to a good coach.

[37:36] And it kind of shocked me because you know,
I was wondering whether he was going to say you know who knows what he might have said like oh you know try try to save him or taxes or try to do this try to do any sentence resume a good coach and the reason he told me that was because he said in his own life.
When I was little.
He had faced a point in his life and his words that he was living a life of quiet desperation where he had the house he had the car he had the practice he had everything that he was supposed to have but he still felt like there was something missing.
And it wasn’t until he got coaching and that it was a while ago like this is before coaching was really I mean we’re way back is way back yeah it was it was something called rational emotive therapy and I don’t remember the guy who did it I think his name was
KZ or something like that
and he helped her my dad on pack like all sorts of you know I mean in the coaching terminology like all sorts of things he was holding onto or stories he’d made up about him and the world and really helped him see through this and lived a better life after that experience and so yeah we’re talking a while back like way before
I mean now you can find a coach everywhere.
This was yeah so he said that to me and I thought my gosh so I changed the trajectory of my podcast almost instantly and I said I’m gonna go find physician coaches people who coach Physicians and I had no clue there were so many.

[38:50] But I started and I don’t think I’m going to run out for a long long time
because I interviewed one who interview who introduced me to another who introduced me to another and like the ball just kind of kept rolling and then I held a wellness Summit about 6 months ago.
I set the goal to have
I think I think I set the goal of 50 Physicians attend a wellness Summit put on by me and three other Physicians one who’s a specialist and burnout one who’s a specialist in charting efficiency and one’s a specialist in weight loss all physicians in Canada all happen to be female physicians in Canada and we had over 100 Physicians attend and stay the entire
time so really proud of that that was really incredible.
And so yeah so the reason I’m so big on coaching is because I and my wife have experienced the benefits of it so about how many years ago now a 5 or 6 years ago I went,
undertook my first coaching experience which was going to a program that was really all about looking at what are those factors in my life that I’m not aware of.
That are limiting me.

[39:50] In some ways are making me think certain things about people that may not be true and really having me look at what relationships in my life were not working
and that coaching experience totally changed the way that I do things in my life and the types of conversations I have and what I think is possible.
And so how this ties into my practice is that you know a lot of what I do
is most of what I do is retirement planning for Physicians so if I’m sitting inside of someone who is two years into practice and we are talking about retirement planning we are doing things right now they are going to benefit from for if they live to their 90’s they’re going to benefit from for 60 years.
And they’re gonna have to wait a while to see the benefits of some of it.

[40:32] You know like they might have to wait decades before the decisions that they’re making today really pan out you know like when they go to retire and they’ve got enough money and they’ve done it in the right way and so I really started to look at what can I be doing to help my clients live good lives.

[40:47] Rather than wait in a wait until this retirement when oh now I’m going to enjoy my life are now like you know that whole arrival fallacy
and so really what I thought was what better way than to start introducing everyone to as many quality physician coaches as I can find and the main way I do that is with my podcasts I’ll I do other you know the wellness event was another big one
so yeah so that’s really a big part of my you know it’s really looking at the whole physician you know how can I support them and care for them in every Arena of their life especially if I’m not
you know I am I am in a coaching program right now I’m being trained to be a coach but I’m still going to enlist the support of physician coaches that have experience with Physicians I’m not going to take it all on myself.
Well I think it probably goes without saying that we had MD coaches are delighted to highlight other coaches other individuals that have the same mindset that we do and I think you certainly have articulated it.
Very well there is a great deal to be gained from coaching and we appreciate you sharing your experience with it
I have really enjoyed this conversation Galen and I suspect I could probably take it on for hours and hours but as we have discussed before we can only hold the listeners for a finite period of time so it’s right
I think I want to do now is get out of the way and.

[42:04] Turn the program over to you for just a few minutes so I will close my Mike and Galen Nuttall is going to share his personal prescriptions for success
yeah so my personal prescriptions are for Success are one when I was praying for this podcast I was thinking about what have been really.
Amazing resources at my life in the last couple years and one is the books of a man called Steven pressfield who wrote the war on Art the artists way.
And do the work they’re very short books very easy to read and very fascinating books that I think are very good sort of Launchpad into coaching.
Because they have a very as books go they have a very unique way of having people look at having me look at the things in my life that aren’t working and how they might work differently
and the next one is surrounding
coaches you know not everyone calls themself a coach but when I talk to Physicians they usually have an accountant they usually have a lawyer sometimes they have a financial planner like me and their life and we’re all coaches in our own way and so I really do encourage Physicians to look at.
What would it be like to work with a coach who’s there as a third party looking at my life.
And giving me Insight that I may not be able to find on my own there’s a saying you can’t do brain surgery on yourself and I think that’s true of a lot of the problems we face in life.

[43:19] The problems I’ve faced in life that I have not been able to see my way through them unless I Enlisted the support of another person impartial look at someone who’s looking at my at my situation
and I think that’s it for me for prescriptions for success.

[43:36] Well we appreciate you sharing that wisdom with us and we really appreciate you being on the podcast with us today Galen before we go I want to give you one last opportunity to
tell people where they can find you whether it be websites or podcast or whatever you’re going to share and upcoming conferences or
whatever might be on your mind that you’d like to tell us about please go ahead.
Absolutely so thank you so much so yeah so the number one place to find me is on my website Galen helps Doc’s.com so my first name is Galen GA Ellie n
and then help stocks.com and that’s a website where you can find exactly the type of work I do for Physicians what it looks like to engage my services you can click a link there to book a half hour.
Free no strings attached Discovery called to see if you’re a good fit for the work that we do and then clean bill of wealth is my podcast all you have to do is Google
clean bill of health podcast and you’ll find it on Spotify iTunes
everywhere and then the last thing I’ll say is we do have a conference coming up in Canada it is in-person and virtual and it’s all about finances for Physicians so it’s being put on by a good friend of mine dr. Kevin Milo.

[44:45] Who is big into the physician empowerment space in Canada and it’s a three-day conference it’s the Friday Saturday Sunday so I think it’s three third fourth fifth of June.
And the best way I actually have a discount code for people so the best thing you can do is
you know go find me on my website send me an email and if you want any more information around that let me know and I can send you a discount code for that conference which should be amazing it’s a lineup of all physician speakers.
Talking about physician finances in Canada it’s going to be amazing and yeah so Galen helps Doc’s.com the best place to find me.

[45:18] Excellent and I want to make sure that I emphasize one last thing I would like for our listeners to know that you are available your services are available not only in the Canon Canada but in the US as well I’m all right,
that’s right alrighty will Galen once again thank you so much for being our guest today it has been.
Quite a pleasure and I’m really grateful that you decided to spend some time with us on prescription for success.
No thank you so much this has been amazing the time has flown by and it’s been a lot of fun.

[45:50] Thank you so much for joining us today as always we really appreciate a review from you and a five star rating helps us a lot.
These ratings give our show much more visibility and they help us reach many more listeners and if you’d like access to exclusive content
head on over to our patreon page where you can see membership only material including a personal rapid fire q and a session with our guests and more
never want to miss a future episode visit our website at RX for success.
Cam to subscribe and while you’re there you can offer your very own personal prescription for Success on.

[46:30] As always very special thanks to Ryan Jones who created and performs our theme music for the show.
And remember be sure and fill your prescription for success with mine next episode.

[46:43] Music.