Doc G is the voice of the Earn & Invest podcast and has multiple streams of passive income. He shares his tips and tricks for acquiring many income streams and how he got it all started.
How Doc G Makes Money
For a lot of his young adult life, Doc had a regular job. He didn’t see it as a Just Over Broke job because he dreamed of being a doctor when he was a little boy. All of his life, he was dedicated to the idea of being a doctor.
From a child’s eye, being a doctor seemed like everything he wanted to do. However, when he became a physician, he realized there were some parts of the position he didn’t particularly like. He says that is when the job became the Just Over Broke job.
Back in 2014, medicine burned him out, and he was writing a medical blog. Some guy called him and told him about a book he wrote about medicine and finances. He asked Doc to review the book within his blog.
The book was The Whitecoat Investor by Jim Dolly, and Doc read it in three hours. He said everything just clicked for him when he read the book. Doc said he discovered that he was already financially independent and had enough money saved to be comfortable in his life.
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But Doc says it gave him the vocabulary for a lot of things he already knew about. He grew up in a financially savvy home, and the book helped him put words to what his finances meant.
Because his identity was being a physician, it took Doc a few years to move away from the job. He says he had all of the pieces in place but was not emotionally ready to take the jump. Eventually, however, he did.
Dustin, now a real estate investor, worked for two extra years at his job. He was so nervous about leaving the job he had built and grown with for 15-20 years. Something clicked for him.
Dustin realized that even with his salary of $75,000, he was losing money by staying there. His other businesses were making him more money, and if he had the time to focus on them, he would be much better off.
Docs Streams of Income
When he first started, Doc’s income came from his physician’s salary. He tried to maximize his ability to do that specific job. Doc built a large practice and built-in efficiencies to do a great job but still see enough patients while building other income streams.
He says what you want to do first is work on your main gig like he did. Eventually, he built it out to include some other streams of revenue.
Doc’s “Lazy” Income Streams
The income streams Doc didn’t have to try too hard at had to do with his job. He was trained in internal medicine, so it was easy to do medical and legal consulting work. In the malpractice system, you need other doctors to act as experts both on the plaintiff’s and the defendant’s side about what happened.
This was a natural transition for him because he was already an expert at practicing medicine. One of the first income streams he added was doing medical-legal work.
Then a local nursing home was looking for a medical director. They asked him to come work for them, and they would send him patients who added to his bottom line and increased revenue for his practice. They also paid him administrative fees to sit in on meetings and other things like that.
He started building the lazy side hustles. Doc calls them lazy because he didn’t have to seek out new skills to accomplish them. He already had them. By practicing general internal medicine, he was serving a fair amount of older people who were in the process of dealing with chronic disease and hospice.
It seemed natural for him to help with that because many of his patients were going through that, and he didn’t need to acquire any more skills.
Doc’s “Active” Streams of Income
Doc started the medical blog. People asked him to write for their medical sites, and he was a paid blogger. He comes from a family who is very active in real estate as well. Even his wife’s parents owned a few buildings. His parents owned up to 15 units when he was younger.
So he and his wife fairly quickly got into it as well. The first property they purchased was a condo in downtown Chicago. They lived in the suburbs of Chicago, so they bought the condo to use on the weekends.
It was a 1,000 square foot, one-bedroom, high-rise condo. They renovated it into a two-bedroom by converting the dining room into another bedroom. Doc and his wife used it for six months before deciding they didn’t use it often enough.
A realtor friend said they knew someone who was getting divorced and needed a place to rent. They ended up renting to the guy for two years. It was so easy to do that when the guy left, they rented it again, and it has been rented for the last ten years.
They bought the second condo right about when the downturn in the economy occurred. They had a lot of luck with the condo because there was not much to take care of. It was small and in a building that employed its repair person.
Real Estate Downturn Made It Possible To Invest More
The downturn led to the purchase of a foreclosed condo in a great area that they knew they could rent it quickly. They bought the condo for half of what it would have been a couple of years before and had to do minimal renovations. Doc and his wife rented that one, then they ended up with four properties from which they receive passive income.
Lastly, he receives some income from his podcast and his blogging. Altogether, there are multiple streams of income, but also he had invested heavily in his 401k and a taxable account.
Doc considers his dividends as income because every three months, he receives a check for those dividends. If Doc doesn’t need that money at the time, he will turn around and reinvest it.
He says that if he ever decides he wants to work less, or not at all, he has his passive income streams of real estate and the dividends to cover him.
Dustin thinks that it is important to have multiple streams of income for diversity and in case of a recession or if something happens to another income stream.
Doc G’s Real Estate Business
The initial reason Doc and his wife bought the condo in Chicago was for them to stay in the city if they wanted to instead of driving back to the suburbs. There was a pool on the top of the high-rise and was in the middle of beautiful downtown.
He said they quickly realized that the idea of a pied-a-terre, or a little place in the city, was more fun than the actual reality.
When Dustin started investing, he thought about buying places in Hawaii or near ski slopes so he and his family could visit when it wasn’t being rented out.
But as he got older, he changed his thought process. He decided he would go to those places and spend the money to stay somewhere else. Dustin thought it would just be easier to do it that way. With his current properties, he doesn’t visit or even sees them, for that matter.
They are just there to make him money. Since there are so many places to visit globally, Dustin never really thought he would want to go back to the same place more than once. He wants to see all of the countries someday.
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Doc G and his wife have always looked at real estate. They are the kind of people who go to 100 showings a year and maybe buy one property. Doc says that his wife is the one who always had her eye on the market, so when the housing bubble burst, there were a lot of foreclosures available.
They thought that since there were that many foreclosures, it was a good time to buy. He also feels that buying real estate has a lot to do with confidence. Doc believes that when people buy their first investment property, they second guess and wonder how it will work for them.
He says it is all about mindset, and once you go through the process once, the following properties are a lot easier to obtain.
When Doc and his wife went through the process the first time and made the property into a rental, they realized it would be easy to reproduce. He mentions that some people say not to invest in condos, but the market in Chicago at the time was very cost-effective for them to do so.
With the HOAs and assessments, you lose a little bit of money, but the upkeep and maintenance are low enough that you can still make a reasonable profit. Being at the place in their lives that they were and how they had their financial securities in order, Doc considered the investments as a means to diversify.
In addition to that, they purchased their properties in cash and did not leverage other money.
Subsequent Properties for Doc
Doc says that it was a decision based on the fact that he already had cash-in flow from his job and his securities in place. He said it made sense for him to have even less of a return but guaranteed cash flow as a diversification plan. They ended up with two properties and treated the second property like the first.
Doc said they wanted a lake house, so they bought a big house on Lake Michigan. They did renovations on the property and realized they didn’t want to use it anymore, so they rented it out. They had a tenant there for three years, and when the tenants decided to move out, they put the house up for sale.
Since they had purchased the home in foreclosure and had only put $30,000-$40,000 into renovations, they would get a good return from the house’s sale.
Doc says they put the house on the market for sale by the owner and sold it to a neighbor, who also didn’t use a realtor. The fees were very low, and they ended up making about a 70% profit on the property.
They took the money from the three years of rent and the house’s sale, did a 1031 exchange, and bought two more condos.
Like the investors that told Doc not to invest in condos, Dustin doesn’t like to buy them. He shies away from them and focuses more on single-family homes.
However, he does say that there may be certain instances that investing in condos would work out for other people. As long as you have a piece of real estate that can make you money and is attached to the ground, it makes sense.
Although Dustin likes using leverage and private money to purchase properties, he also likes the properties he has purchased for cash. All of the money just goes into his pockets and not to a loan.
Doc’s Choice Not To Utilize Leverage
For Doc and his wife, the choice not to use leverage was a well-thought-out process, and leverage was just not significant to them. Doc says that they knew they could get the return out of the properties they needed and didn’t need the leverage.
He also says that the choice was diversification and a tax play. They used the cash flow as a sort of dividend without going back into stocks that they were already involved in. Doc said it fulfilled all their needs without having to leverage.
Doc says he can use money and leverage to make money, or he can do the little bit of his job that he likes. He goes between the two but chooses to do it this way because of the better return.
Doc says that this is a benefit of having a highly specialized skill. He continues to work as a hospice doctor, making more money doing that than anything. While that is his greatest income, he uses the real estate portfolio as diversification.
It provides instant, easy cash flow, has a good tax flow, and minimizes paper investments.
Leveraging Not Forseen In Doc’s Future
In the future, Doc doesn’t think he will use leverage for real estate because he doesn’t need to. He looks at real estate and financial independence in two ways. First, he frontloaded the sacrifice.
He built his skill and practice early, so now in his 40s, he can let the money work for him. So he uses real estate differently than how a person in their 20s would use it to build wealth and become financially independent. Instead, they are creating assets that provide cash flow to pay for their living.
Doc would look at leverage more if he didn’t go about real estate the way he did. He thinks that both ways are valid ways to use real estate and that it just has to do more with where you are in your life.
If you are in your 20s and are not interested in becoming a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, Doc thinks that real estate is the best way to make a living. He believes you can go from being crushed by a job to financially independent in a short time. You can do that by being savvy, working hard, and studying the real estate markets.
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Dustin loves that there are many different ways and many reasons to invest in real estate. Some people may not be comfortable with the risk of leveraging money to invest.
When Dustin first started investing in real estate, he made $40,000 a year and had a couple of kids. He and his family saved every penny to put towards properties, and they utilized leverage a lot.
He can now use it or not since he has built the business into what it is today. At this time, he only has about three mortgages left, and everything else is paid.
Docs Transition From A Practice To Consulting
Doc was deeply interested in being a doctor. However, he had an eye for efficiency. He believes that your brain should be working on how you can make it better when you work, learn more, and make more money doing it.
He started working for an established business before he practiced alone because he didn’t know how to run a practice. Doc looked at it as needing to work for someone to figure it out for himself. He worked with five other doctors and was a part of a more extensive hospital system.
At one time, the other doctors told him it was a great place to work but never to expect a bonus because it was impossible. Doc believed he was there to learn even though he had it in his mind that he would eventually start his practice. Within a year or two, he made a bonus, and within five years, he had doubled his salary.
Dustin and Doc agree that when someone tells you that you can’t do something, it means that they can’t. Whether you can or not remains up to you.
Doc took the time he had there to learn and understand how to run a medical practice. He focused on what made and didn’t make money and made and didn’t make a good doctor.
It became apparent around five years that if he saw double the number of patients that his partner saw, he could make more money independently. If he were able to generate $100,000 from the additional patients, he would only keep half. However, starting his practice, he would be able to keep far more.
Doc’s Journey to Independence
Doc worked for someone else and then for himself for several years. While on his own, he realized he was losing a lot of money by having an actual building with employees, supplies, and operating costs. The other problem he had was the change in medical politics. Doc notes that the change in insurance companies and Medicare’s control on his time was frustrating.
Even though his income climbed through the years, something told him that it couldn’t last forever. The most significant liabilities were the office costs and employees, so Doc says he got rid of all of that and began doing house visits.
He would charge them a premium for the non-insurance coverage of him being in their home.
Converting Patients To His Practice
At the time of transition, Doc’s practice had 2,000 patients. He chose to write a letter to each of them explaining the option of whether they wanted to stay with him or remain with the doctor he shared the practice with.
Doc ended up leaving with 100 patients, and he says that number was significant. He didn’t want too many patients as he would be traveling to their homes. Doc charged them $1800 each, and at the time, he was also seeing patients in the nursing home.
In addition to that, he had become a medical director for nursing homes and receiving a stipend for that work. He said he could balance the two populations because of the time allowed to him by seeing patients in their homes.
Doc says that when he was worried about insurance companies, he could diversify his income streams because now he wasn’t just receiving income from them. He kept on building and changing his business model to get better and make it more efficient.
Doc went from working for someone else, working for himself with a ton of overhead, to finally working for himself without the overhead. Doc says he was then earning four to five times what an average doctor would be making. Doing this allowed him to save a lot of money and invest in real estate.
Minimizing Patient Load
Doc was exhausted from working at all hours and every day, even though he was making a lot of money. He realized it was no way to live long term, so he figured out his finances and started making changes to the home practice.
It was hard for him to get late-night phone calls and have to visit someone early the next morning. He got rid of the home practice, which was great, but he was still receiving numerous nursing home calls.
Eventually, he got rid of that job as well. He was left with being a medical director of a hospice clinic who needed more physician time. Doc was working mostly by attending meetings and being on some phone calls. There were no nights or weekends or any on-call hours.
That change was made about two years ago, but Doc’s net worth continues to grow even with a significantly smaller salary than before. He is still collecting dividends, and cash flow from his real estate, but also his salary affords him a comfortable lifestyle to things he wants to do.
Dustin says that Doc has worked hard during this whole time. He says that as you work hard and iterate, or change and adapt, you can take on opportunities that come to you and let go of things that burden you.
Working hard and building up the side businesses has given Doc the ability to grow and do what he wants to do.
Dustin says this is far different from what life looks like when your job dictates what you do. He says you can make your life look the way you want it to. Dustin thinks that now where he and Doc are in their lives, they can now say no to the opportunities that come to them if they want to.
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The Future for Doc’s Income
Doc feels that you should continuously be looking to get rid of friction in your life. You want to look for the source of problems and how to remove them. At this point in Doc’s life that he is more focused on asset preservation and diversification.
He is not so much interested in building the assets. Doc says the beauty of front-loading the sacrifice is that compounding begins when you start the savings process in your 20s and 30s. Assuming that nothing happens that wipes us out; he believes he has diversified his skill set and assets enough that he hopes to work on risk modification and enjoy life.
How Podcasting Fits Into Doc’s Life
Doc says not many people can make a living off being a podcaster, but he enjoys doing it, and it brings a lot of happiness to his life. Now in life, he wants to spend time with his family, do what he enjoys doing, going on family vacations, grow and learn, and not worry about money. The end goal is to worry less about money, Doc thinks.
Dustin commends the hard work that Doc G has put into his businesses for the delayed gratification of it all. Dustin feels that he did the same. Front loading the sacrifice, and having the foresight to work towards something for later is important.
He sacrificed a lot during the time that he was building his real estate business. Every penny they earned went into the investing business. Now because he had the delayed gratification mindset, he believes it came to fruition sooner.
Dustin said that quitting his job at 37 was the best day of his life.
With just a job, you can’t pass the job on to your kids. Dustin says that with real estate, you can pass that down, so he is currently working on asset preservation. Not only the property or the funds, but most importantly, the knowledge can be passed down.
Dustin’s oldest son asked how much money he and his siblings all had collectively saved. He wasn’t sure why he was asking him this but found that his kids wanted to pool their money and buy their rental property.
Dustin and his wife have their kids save 50% of their money, so each kid has a savings account. What makes Dustin proud is that they realized he was making so much more money with real estate than what they earned in their savings account.
Dustin also likes podcasting with Successfully Unemployed. He says he doesn’t make money from it, but it makes him happy to do it. He says it is a passion he has to show people the many ways you can quit your job and be successfully unemployed.
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What Doc G Does To Give Back
Doc says that he volunteers for his daughter’s school. Unfortunately, while his daughter attended public school, she was bullied a lot. Doc and his wife decided to send her to an excellent private school in their area.
The school was connected to a teaching university, and when that left, the school had some issues with its endowment. The school has incredible teachers and a fantastic curriculum, so Doc wanted to help them out.
He volunteers to help the school build a podcast to help market their program. They put together a podcast about the school’s progressive education and what their school has to offer.
Doc loves giving back to the place that has done a lot for his daughter. They had watched their daughter go from a happy, excited kindergartener to an unhappy third grader.
Eventually, they realized that she was just in a school that did not fit her. Doc said when they moved her to the private school, she came alive again within months. That made him want to give to the school, not only by volunteering but also by giving financially.
In addition to that, they give financially to other charities like Doctors Without Borders, the ACLU, and others.
Doc’s Advice to His Younger Self
Doc would tell himself to stop rushing around so much. Especially when he was younger, Doc made a lot of decisions because they were quick. For example, when he was attending medical school at North Western, he could have obtained his MBA from the connected business school, Kellogg.
His wife urged him to consider the option because she knew he has an interest in business, and it would benefit him in the long-run. Doc feels that he was in such a rush to finish medical school that he never took her suggestion seriously.
Even though he believes his career and where he is now is great, it was a missed opportunity to acquire more helpful information. Doc realizes now that it is OK to slow down. He doesn’t think it is about deferring your dreams, but slowing down and developing more dreams along with them.
Dustin knows a quote about youth being wasted on the young. When you’re young, you don’t realize what you have. Dustin feels like he was much like Doc in that he was always rushing as well.
Dustin jokes that he should always listen to his wife’s suggestions to do or not do something and that he takes her advice to heart in life now.
One Tool That Doc Uses
Doc says that his tool will be a little bit different from others but thinks it is just as important. He uses his blog as a tool. It is his accountability journal. He believes every smart move he has made in life comes after he has written about it in his blog.
Journaling is a tool he uses often and feels like it is essential. Doc feels he makes better decisions when he sits down and thinks about things while journaling.
Dustin agrees that when successful people share what works for them, it helps others take note. He also feels that when he is writing, he can see where he messed up or could have done something different, so he uses it as a documentation tool.
The Non-Fiction Book Doc Recommends
The book that changed Doc’s life was The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley. Reading it clarified so much about finances 
for him. Another great book he would recommend is The White Coat Investor by James Dahle. He believes those two books radically changed his finances.
Doc’s Advice To Start Side Hustles
Doc is really into the idea of lazy side hustles or lazy, passive income. Before you jump into something you haven’t done before or aren’t good at, he says to look into skills you already have.
He used the skills he had as a physician to develop the side hustles that didn’t require any new learning. They were easy for him in that sense. Doc says to look at your current skills first but doesn’t think you should not develop new skills going forward.
If income is your goal, look at the skills you have first when looking for side hustles.
Where To Find Doc G
The easiest way to find Doc is to go to earnandinvest.com. He also has a Facebook group named Earn & Invest. People in the Facebook community talk about finances, a little bit about politics. News stories, and more. There is a lot of involvement and interaction within the group on various posts, so it is very beneficial.