Podcast Episode 2 |  Life as a Health Care Entrepreneur

With Dr. Angela Fusaro, Co-founder of Physician 360

About the Prosperous Doc® Podcast

The Prosperous Doc® podcast by Spaugh Dameron Tenny highlights real-life stories from doctors and dentist to encourage and inspire listeners through discussions of professional successes and failures in addition to personal stories and financial wellness advice.

Shane Tenny, CFP® is our podcast host and Partner at SDT. He has lectured numerous times for hospitals and physician groups and, most importantly, helped hundreds of clients develop strategies to navigate through turbulent times toward their financial goals.

Join the Prosperous Doc® Community

Join our inclusive Facebook group! Connect with your fellow podcast subscribers. If you are an MD, DO, DMD, or DDS, this group is for you.

 

Invite your friends and colleagues in medicine to engage in the conversation. We encourage you to share about your progress, news about the medical or dental field, podcasts, blogs, upcoming events or helpful tips for personal, professional, or financial wellness so we can inspire and encourage each other.

Contact the Prosperous Doc® Podcast

Have a specific topic you’d like us to cover on a future episode? Or do you know of a physician, dentist, or leader in medicine who would be an interesting guest on the podcast?

Share your ideas with us!

Intro: 00:00 From Spaugh Dameron Tenny, it's White Coat Wellness, a show for doctors who are ready to improve their financial wellness. We know you work hard to help your patients, but you can't be at your best if you don't have your own finances in order. In White Coat Wellness, we highlight real life stories from physicians and dentists to educate, encourage, and inspire you to personal, professional, and financial wellness. Now, from Spaugh Dameron Tenny, please welcome your host, Shane Tenny.

Shane Tenny: 00:31 Welcome. It's great to have you join us today for another real life story with a physician entrepreneur. Today I'm excited to share the mic with Dr. Angela Fusaro from Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Fusaro specializes in emergency medicine, but has a really interesting story including a journey from Guatemala through Indonesia. She has an MBA and last year was honored by Emory University as one of their 40 under 40. I'll let her tell you more of her story and the role that financial wellness has played in her journey. Angela, thanks so much for being with us today.

Dr. Fusaro: 01:03 Thank you for having me. Really excited to be here today.

Shane Tenny: 01:06 Yeah, I'm excited to have you. I think we're going to have a conversation just from what I know of you. So why don't you just kick us off? Tell us a little bit about yourself and the staggered journey that you've had into medicine.

Dr. Fusaro: 01:20 Absolutely. I am from Danbury, Connecticut, which is a city that probably no one has heard of and famous only for having the world's largest dairy store, and I think a federal penitentiary that Martha Stewart almost spent some time in. When I graduated high school, I was really interested in getting quite far away, and I drew this 500 mile radius around my house and Emory University was one of the places that fell outside of that boundary. And so, I ended up there for undergrad.

Dr. Fusaro: 01:53 And I had been a neuroscience and behavioral biology major, so I had always had medical school and the concept of becoming a physician on my radar. But as I approached graduation, I didn't feel that I was quite ready. And so, I did I guess the only logical thing that any 22 year old with no plan does, and my friend and I ... We packed up her Pathfinder and we drove it to California and we found jobs. My first job there was as a high school physics and chemistry teacher, which for those of you who remember the movie Dangerous Minds with Michelle Pfeiffer, that was my life for a couple years. Really trying to instill basic science principles in students in a very underserved area, so that had a lot of highs and lows.

Dr. Fusaro: 02:41 But the concept of going to medical school always came back to me, and I knew that if I was going to do it I wanted to at least spend some time doing philanthropic work, as you referenced, and I wanted it to be abroad. So I ended up in Guatemala and Honduras for some time there. I worked for an organization called Paramedics For Children, and their whole mission is to essentially develop pre-hospital care in third world countries and in developing countries, and so I did that. And filled out my med school application from the chicken buses of Central America. For those of you who've been on said danger vehicles, that was an interesting experience.

Dr. Fusaro: 03:21 And when I came back from being in Central America, I had got into medical school and I deferred even one more year. And at that point, of course my parents were like, "She's never going to do this. It's been too long. We're losing momentum." I think for me it was just ... I think some physicians, they feel a destiny to practicing medicine and they've always known, and maybe they have people in their family who were medical. But for me that wasn't necessarily the case, and so I think I stood at that crossroads for a long time before I realized that the worst decision I could make was no decision at all and that that was a dream that I probably couldn't put to rest until I tried it. And so, I took the leap.

Dr. Fusaro: 04:02 And as you said before, I went to medical school. My chosen specialty was emergency medicine, which I completed at Carolina's Medical Center, which is now Atrium Health. And that brings us up to the present day ish.

Shane Tenny: 04:19 And so, through the years of teaching high school and traveling to South America, yours wasn't just a straight line into being a physician. You had to, it sounds like, just explore and kick the tires with some other things first and then ended up going to medical school and deciding on emergency medicine. And so, I guess pick up the story a little bit there. What was that like getting your first contract? Starting in emergency medicine? And then talk a little bit about that.

Dr. Fusaro: 04:47 Sure. Looking back, emergency medicine is the specialty that makes the most sense. I can't say that I went to medical school knowing that, but I did feel a deep sense pretty early on in my medical education journey that I was going to practice more than just clinical medicine. And I think once I had that realization, emergency medicine was the specialty that made the most sense. Not only does it give you this great exposure to ... It's the gateway into the healthcare system, so it gives you a great exposure to humanity in general and to the challenges that providers face, that patients face, etc. But it's just the skills that you use in emergency medicine are also ... Again, I didn't know this at the time, but they're the skills that I use now every day. It's all about making consequential decisions with incomplete information and that is my every day as an entrepreneur.

Dr. Fusaro: 05:38 And so, I would say back then ... When I was choosing emergency medicine, I didn't know how the dots would connect, but that is how I think the story has come together. Back then, as I alluded to when I felt that there would be this other part of my career, it was probably ... It was a little unfortunate that I didn't know many others who had blended together clinical medicine with these other elements, with innovation or with policy or leadership. And I think had I had maybe more exposure to those things, perhaps the journey would have looked a little bit different. But I think that was, like I said ... I just had an early sense that there would be other elements to this and I was lucky enough that I was able to incorporate them as [inaudible 00:06:25].

Shane Tenny: 06:27 Was it in medical school or residency that you started realizing the entrepreneurs streak that lives within you? Or was that not until you started in practice?

Dr. Fusaro: 06:38 I would say the streak that I realized at that point was it was more of an organized medicine or policy perspective. If you had asked me in medical school, what would you end up doing? I probably would've thought I would've been a policy analyst. But it was because the things that drove me, that got me the most excited, it was about fixing the problem but at a higher level. It wasn't one on one, direct patient. It was, "How do we fix it as a society? How do we fix it as an organization?"

Dr. Fusaro: 07:02 But I feel like innovation and policy are two prongs of the same fork. Policy is more about, what do we fix? What is the problem, and why do we fix it? The innovation part is more at a granular level, how do we fix it? What is the solution? And so, I think ... I pivoted a little bit, but I think I can see that connection between the two, and I think the reason that the pivot happened was because as I started my clinical practice, you're just in it everyday. You're at that granular level and you're seeing all of these things that should be improved, and you're hearing your colleagues and your peers complain about these things that frustrate them, and you hear ... I feel that doctors don't get great exposure or training in how to translate that into something marketable, and so that was my entire motivation. I was like, "We are subject matter experts. We should be the best positioned to affect the system, but we're not getting the proper guidance." And so, that's what motivated me to go back to the MBA and take things in that direction.

Shane Tenny: 08:06 Yep. And so, in there you decided ... I guess you came to the conclusion at some point, or maybe in talking with your husband Jeff, just that, okay, I'm going to do something different. And for you, that step was, "Let's go get a business degree while I'm practicing medicine. Let's layer in a little bit more information, education, to decide what the next step is." Was that the path?

Dr. Fusaro: 08:31 Yeah. At my business school graduation, someone had the audacity to ask me if I was going to get my JD, and I almost like ... I just scoffed at them. I was like, "I'm tired of being a lifelong learner." No more.

Dr. Fusaro: 08:41 Yeah. I mean, that was ... At the time, I think, again, I thought that the form it would take was probably in academia. My primary mission again was, "I want to go get the tools that one would need to help other doctors translate their clinical insight." And again, I thought initially that might play out like building an incubator or an accelerator within the world of academia targeted at doctors. But yes, that was the conversation. And I said to Jeff, I said, "I don't know exactly what this will look like in practical terms quite yet, and I don't know how it'll impact our financial and personal lives quite yet, but I think this is a step I have to take." Because, again, clinical medicine was one necessary step on my road, but I knew it wasn't the end goal.

Shane Tenny: 09:26 And what did you and he see as being the major risks with doing something outside of the clear path of working 12, 14, 15 shifts a month?

Dr. Fusaro: 09:41 I mean, the obvious most tangible ones would be we both had student debt from medical school, so we were obviously carrying that burden. And although I feel like we'd been pretty savvy about managing that and coming up with a plan early on how to deal with our student debt, that was definitely a factor. We were both about to enter the phase of our life where you really have the most earning potential, so it's taking that risk at that particular moment. It's not like I was 22 and I was like, "I don't have any obligations." And so, that was definitely a factor as far as the timing within my life that this decision was occurring.

Dr. Fusaro: 10:19 I think obviously too I would be remiss to say that we had each other, which at least brought some degree of stability. If I had been doing it completely on my own, it still would've been possible, but emotionally and psychologically it would've been definitely more scary. And I think the other thing too ... And this is, I think, one of the biggest challenges for physicians is that medical school and that journey, it's really long, but it's pretty linear. And when you finish it, you have a very clear formulaic understanding of what your earning potential is and exactly what you can expect and it's easy to plan around it. So then to say, "All right, I'm going to get off that conveyor belt and I'm going to get onto one that has absolutely no guarantees," that was very difficult. And so, we had to really say to ourselves, "Okay, this could be a home run or it could be a strike out. So if it ends up being a strike out, what do we need to do in order to prepare for that?" And then, anything beyond that is gravy.

Shane Tenny: 11:15 Yeah. And I guess, what were the factors that gave you the courage to say, "All right. Let's do this?"

Dr. Fusaro: 11:22 Well, we have been working with your firm since the beginning of residency, so I will say I felt like we were pretty well positioned from a savings perspective to do that. We also, just by our personalities, are not ... We're not extravagant people, so I felt like we had lived below our means, and, again, had build some decent reserve there. And I think also there just comes a point where I realized ... I don't want to say even if it didn't make financial sense, but despite it being financially scary, I was not going to be fulfilled if I didn't try. And so, when you look at all the different buckets that weigh into the formula of making a decision, that one was rated pretty heavy. And so, I think the courage just came from a place of intuitively believing that I had more to offer and that this was the way that was supposed to play out.

Shane Tenny: 12:18 And so, you finish your MBA and what happened next?

Dr. Fusaro: 12:24 So I finished the MBA, and as I alluded to before, I think initially I'd hoped to do something with an innovation and entrepreneurship within academia. And I did some of that. I did create and implement some electives, for example, in the school of medicine. Getting doctors to be exposed a little earlier and teaching them the basic principles again of translating clinical insight into products and processes that are marketable. But really during ... Like you described, during that year where I finished business school and was working full time and trying to teach and ... We were actually renovating our house around the same time. It was just that year was total chaos.

Dr. Fusaro: 13:06 I realized that innovation or starting a company or ... It was always going to be a hobby. It was always going to take a backseat to my other "real job" if I continued to try to sustain them both. And there just came a point where I really had to prioritize one over the other. So compounded by the fact that academic medicine isn't always the easiest to innovate within, I just realized that when I weighed the options that it was time to make a change. And that if I wanted the outcome ... If I wanted my professional accomplishment outcome to be different than what I had previously, I had to do something different. So I left and I had met ... Yeah. So I left and then we can talk about more about the company.

Shane Tenny: 13:53 Oh sure. Actually, why don't you tell me more about the company right after this quick break?

Dr. Fusaro: 13:56 Okay.

Will Koster: 14:02 I'm Will Koster, and on today's White Coat Wisdom, I'm going to help you simplify your money life. Let me ask you a question. How many banks do you have accounts with? How many accounts do you have? Too often we encounter households with countless checking and savings accounts spread across multiple banks. Each spouse is responsible for different bills each month out of different accounts and no one is really tasked with the function of saving. It's like rowing a boat with a friend without any rhythm or coordination. You may eventually end up where you wanted to go or you could end up rowing in circles forever.

Will Koster: 14:39 My point here is simplify your cash flow. I'm not saying you can't have more than one bank account or you can't have accounts with more than one bank, but what I am saying is that you should have one central account where all the money flows in and all your expenses flow out. While budgeting is important, simplifying your cashflow is one of the easiest ways to take control of your money life. With today's White Coat Wisdom, I'm Will Koster.

Shane Tenny: 15:10 All right. So tell me about the company.

Dr. Fusaro: 15:14 So Physician 360 essentially is ... Our mission is really about empowering patients. I think if you asked the average person if they enjoy going to the doctor, or how easy is it for them to go to the doctor, they would probably tell you that it stinks. And so, our mission essentially is to bring the doctor to them. We are building essentially a virtual urgent care, and we're doing that by placing test kits for low acuity medical conditions in patients' homes. And then we pair it with a telemedicine service so that they can truly avoid in-person visits when they don't need them.

Dr. Fusaro: 15:49 With me, I had two other co-founders. It's been wild. We've launched our products in August of 2018, so we're still quite young in our company's life cycle, but we have grown exponentially. We're now in hundreds of pharmacies throughout the country. We're in just under 40 states. Every day is a series of highs and lows. I say that having a startup is like living in dog years. I feel like what happens to me in a week is the equivalent of what happens to a "regular person" in a year. So there's lots of highs and lows, but it's been really exciting.

Dr. Fusaro: 16:28 And I get a lot of physicians who ask me about how it feels, and what I try ... Or, for example, younger students or residents who ask me about finding their ideal job. And what I always try to tell them is that every job in some ways is a grind. It's just about finding the grind that fits you best. And so, I do feel like I have found the grind that fits me best. Although, like I said, it's wild. It's a wild ride.

Shane Tenny: 16:54 And so, does Physician 360 ... Help me understand. Does the company both manufacture or source the manufacturing of some of the test kits and provide the telemedicine review and diagnostic capability? Maybe go a step deeper on how the business is set up.

Dr. Fusaro: 17:15 Yes, we have a clinical arm, which is, as you described, doing the diagnostic portion and powering the telemedicine consults. Because the kits are not to be ... They're not over-the-counter products. They are products that have to be used in conjunction with a clinical provider, so we do power that part of it. And then, yes, we are instrumental in distributing the tests, but we work with manufacturers. So we are not ourselves direct manufacturers.

Shane Tenny: 17:44 Okay. And so, a patient would ... Describe the patient experience. If there's somebody listening to this and says, "Yeah, I feel like I might want to go to the urgent care," or, "I have some kids and maybe I'm always in the urgent care or the pediatrician's office at least once a year. Maybe I should plan ahead." How would they engage or how would they ... What would their experience and their journey look like with Physician 360?

Dr. Fusaro: 18:06 Sure. So I mean, ideally for them, we're trying to get to the point where people see our company and see our test kits as something that they would want to keep on hand like you just described preemptively. So the same way you would never ... Everyone keeps Tylenol or a thermometer in the medicine cabinet. Ideally this would be something where you'd say to yourself, "Hey, I know that the chance of my 5-year-old or my 10-year-old or my 20-year-old getting 1 of these things is ... Strep or flu or a UTI this year is really high. I'm going to keep one in my house."

Dr. Fusaro: 18:37 However, if you haven't thought ahead about it and you're like, "Okay, I've just got a sore throat and I think I might have strep," you can purchase the products through one of the pharmacies that carry our retail products, or you can essentially buy it direct from our website. And once you have engaged with us, you become a patient of our practice. We can send you the kit, and then there's a provider who essentially is there to help oversee the entire process of using the test, and then engaging with you if you need a prescription. It's all done electronically, so it's all app-based and web-based and ... Yeah. You can do it from the comfort of your couch in less than 30 minutes.

Shane Tenny: 19:17 And so, you're needing to really market to both ... Some providers you need clearly some contingent of providers that can review the tests and provide the diagnosis and things, but you also need to be marketing to the public to get the brand awareness out there. Right?

Dr. Fusaro: 19:32 Yeah. It's interesting. I would love to always say that the things that have worked we knew from the beginning, but that's not usually how it goes. You happen in to them. But pharmacists, and especially independent pharmacy owners, have been really great partners in collaboration with us. Pharmacists see patients probably more than any other healthcare stakeholder, and so they have been really big brand ambassadors and making people aware that this concept even exists and that this can be a great alternative that can help, one, save them time, and it's more convenient but also can save them money. We try to really keep our cost very competitive to what you'd end up spending if you went to an urgent care or minute clinic. So yes, we are educating providers, but we are educating the public at large, and a lot of that comes through the pharmacists.

Shane Tenny: 20:22 And so, what have been ... There's clearly a lot of ... I love your example about the entrepreneur years are like dog years. There's so much learning that happens so rapidly. I guess you're 10 months in, or more than that if you count all the planning that's gone into it. What have been the parts that have gone well? What have been some of the highs you've experienced? And then, where have been the frustrations or the learnings so far?

Dr. Fusaro: 20:47 Sure. I mean, I think there's a lot of ... At least for me, there's a lot of pride to be felt for just getting a product to market. I had no idea how challenging that would be, especially when you are in a space that is highly regulated and there's a lot of different stakeholders with different opinions about the benefits of products and services like these. So I do feel a huge sense of pride of just having been to this space. And even at this point, I do feel like we have been part of a movement or of a legacy.

Dr. Fusaro: 21:21 There was an article written about that were included in a couple of weeks ago, and I looked at the other companies that were being profiled in this article and it was ... Again, I felt a sense of pride that they would even associate us with companies that are much larger than us. And it made me realize that there is this whole transition that's happening right now in healthcare where the consumer or the patient is being focused on and empowered, and we're part of that story. And so, everything that happens after this ... Obviously, I have certain expectations and further milestones that I want to meet. But even if those things weren't to come to be, it's awesome to have been part of the story to this point.

Dr. Fusaro: 21:59 I think as far as challenges, it's ... I would probably highlight a couple. I think one, the journey has been a lot more lonely than I would have imagined. I think when I'm working in the ER even, there is just a certain sense of understanding. You're seeing similar faces every day. You have peers who you can be maybe a little bit more honest with. In my role now, it's like with a lot of stuff. I am the figurehead of a company, so to share exactly how I'm feeling with my employees, it's not appropriate. To share it with investors, it's not appropriate. And so, I didn't really understand how, I think, overwhelming it would feel to have all of that on just me.

Dr. Fusaro: 22:45 And I think, we talked about this a little bit before, but we started our company and there was three of us as co-founders. We now have two co-founders. And I think that has definitely been a steep learning curve. I think I learned a lot about myself within the context of team dynamics. I have a really high ... I guess what they call a high loyalty score. So for me, I want to keep the team intact almost to a fault sometimes because I think if you're actively keeping a toxic team together, that's really just doing more harm than good. So I think that was helpful for me to just realize in your personal life and your professional life and your startup life, no team is going to last forever. And if you go into it understanding that, truly understanding that and truly believing that, then you take it less personally when things come to an end. Because everything will for some reason or the other.

Shane Tenny: 23:42 Yeah. I was just thinking as you were describing, I guess, both elements of where you've experienced challenges. The phrase I heard years ago. Leadership is lonely at times. It sounds like that's what you realized, is a lot of the work happens between your own ears or happens with your team, but you need to maintain the face and the vision and the message is what I hear you saying.

Dr. Fusaro: 24:04 Yeah. And even within your peer group. I mean, I have maybe one or two friends that have tried something of this nature, and so it's just difficult. Because again, my peers in my physician community, most of them are, again, not going to be able to directly relate. Even my friends or my spouse, they're not going to inherently understand. And they are supportive. I know they love me, they're there for me if they ... But there's only so many times you can tell them the same story. So I just think ...

Dr. Fusaro: 24:37 And I will say, medical school and residency were like that too. I knew that my community was there to support me, but at the end of the day, that was just my journey to survive. And I think, I guess I just ... Same thing with entrepreneurship. At the end of the day, this is the path I've chosen and it's on me. And there's something, again, very empowering and powerful and also incredibly overwhelming about that.

Shane Tenny: 25:00 Yeah. No, I'm thinking we've ... You and I both know there's probably some people listening to this that have ideas floating around their head just like you have had over the last decade, and take some encouragement from your story and think, "Okay. Yeah, this is ... I need to bite the bullet. I need to chase the vision that is in me." What tips or advice or what learnings do you have that you can pass along to your brethren, your entrepreneurial minded brethren listening here?

Dr. Fusaro: 25:30 Well, I would start by saying one thing I have come to truly believe is that there is no secret sauce. I think sometimes people try to make predictions about what's going to make a successful company or a successful idea or a successful even individual. Do you have the "skills you need"? And obviously, there are ways to be better prepared than not, but I don't think that there is one silver bullet quality that predicts whether or not you're going to win. I think it's all about getting up each day and believing that you have just as much ability as anybody else to figure it out because it's all about just figuring it out day in and day out and being able to enjoy that.

Dr. Fusaro: 26:14 And so, I would say that's the first thing, is that there's no secret sauce. And so, if what's preventing you from taking the leap is some belief that you don't have something you need, well, none of us have everything we need. And so, again, just really reflecting on ... As long as you have the mindset of, "I can figure it out," I think you increase your likelihood of success exponentially.

Dr. Fusaro: 26:37 And it's not ... Like I said, for me, I came to the point where I knew I couldn't be fulfilled without this next step. I don't think that ... There's no formula for figuring that out, I don't think, and there's no obvious right answer for everyone. But I think most people have a great sense in their own heart if they actually would give into it about what they want to do, and the earlier you acknowledge it and try to put the building blocks in place so you can take that risk in a more mitigated way, I think the better.

Dr. Fusaro: 27:13 And the other thing too is I would say leave a person ... I try to leave this personal mission statement for everything I do. And so, if you've gotten to the point ... Especially if you're a position where you're like, "My clinical practice isn't doing that for me anymore. I can't find personal mission in what I'm doing in my job," then maybe just figure out a way to modify your "job obligations" that you can bring in as other things. And for everyone that's not starting a company. Maybe it's getting on the board of a nonprofit, maybe it's building a tiny home. I don't know. But it's figuring out how to modify your "job obligations" that you can leave room for that personal mission.

Shane Tenny: 27:55 And you alluded to the challenge ... Well, both the joy and the challenge of working with others. It helps fight loneliness and give you courage, but it can also lead to different personalities and outlooks and temperaments. Any tips on, I guess, just double checking the team that you're thinking over, the colleague that you're brainstorming with, and seeing how compatible you are? Or outlooks or things like that? What would you do differently?

Dr. Fusaro: 28:18 I think part of it is so hard because again, it depends on where you're at in your life. People always talk about you should find your co-founders in a very organic way. Everyone should be individually working on these passion projects, and then somehow there's a spontaneous moment where you just find each other in the universe and you form this amazing company. And I think that's very beautiful, that story, and probably more likely to happen if you are, again, hanging out in your college dorm room.

Dr. Fusaro: 28:44 But for those of us ... And there's so many of us now who are "mid-career", right? That's not the same as middle age. But if you've made any progress down one path on your career and then you're pivoting, it's much less likely that you're going to find people in that way. And so, while I'd like to say that's probably more likely to lead to a good pairing, it's just less likely. So I think it's like anything. I mean, I think there is ... You have to do your due diligence and definitely speak with ... If you're thinking about getting into business with someone and they've had previous business ventures, I would speak with their previous investors. I'd speak with their previous colleagues, their employees. Obviously have to trust your instincts.

Dr. Fusaro: 29:24 And I think that's the bottom line too. That there no decision made without risk, and sometimes things will not work out the way that you want them to. And I think as long as you feel like you've done the due diligence that was all the due diligence you could, I think that at least absolves you of some guilt you feel if things don't end up being how you want them to be.

Shane Tenny: 29:45 Right. Right. Yeah. And in terms of risk, certainly you also alluded earlier, just there's often financial risk in decisions. Since our podcast here touches on financial wellness, any tips around ... That you've experienced or learned, whether the hard way or the good way? Any tips around financial wellness that you have for folks listening?

Dr. Fusaro: 30:10 Well, again, for me ... And again, this won't be the same for everyone, especially if they didn't go to medical school. But the student debt piece was huge. And so, I think having you guys help early on in a stage, again, in my life where I could be more flexible, I could be more creative with how to pay down my student debt, that was huge. I think, again, if you have student debt, that really would be a priority just to get your hands around that. So meet with someone who's an expert or at least can present you with all the options.

Dr. Fusaro: 30:43 I think that the student debt piece, and the other thing is too ... And this is just ... I don't know if this is more of a ... It's not really financial advice, but it's just the psychology of being human. You're always going to find other things to do with money if you have access to it. And so, again, working with a firm like yours who says, "Listen. Yes, you have willpower, but probably not an extraordinary amount to overcome all of human tendency. So let's do these planning pieces before you even have access to X amount of capital." I think that's been huge too, because life happens, and when it happens and you have access to, like you said, your savings, the outcomes will be different. So I think putting that infrastructure in place so that our savings was happening almost without us even thinking about it, that was huge.

Shane Tenny: 31:33 Yep. Yeah, I think the root of any good financial plan is just implicit behavior management in whatever fashion works for you. Angela, if anyone wants to get in touch with you or track you down to learn more about Physician 360 or your story or connect with you, what's the best way they could find you?

Dr. Fusaro: 31:52 Absolutely. So the company's website is Physician360.co. I also have a personal website, which is DrAngelaFusaro.com. And I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so if you want to connect with me there, that's probably the best social media avenue. And I am very open to hearing from individuals who either want to offer feedback on what we're doing or want advice on what they're doing, so please connect with me.

Shane Tenny: 32:19 Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being with us today and sharing your story. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Fusaro: 32:23 Thank you.

Will Koster: 32:27 On this episode of White Coat Achievements, a segment that highlights noteworthy achievements by your friends and colleagues, we wanted to give a shout out to a particularly humanitarian physician who recently served on a medical missions trip to Nicaragua. Dr. Rita Sterrett, an internist with over 20 years of private practice experience serving some of the most disenfranchised patients in both Colorado and California, who also helped establish Lifeline Hospice in Los Angeles, served on a medical team through Bless Back Worldwide that saw over 270 Nicaraguan patients throughout their week there.

Will Koster: 32:59 Dr. Starritt said, "The education we provided to those patients suffering from chronic diseases will help them take care of their own health issues and have less complications from diabetes and hypertension." Dr. Sterrett was sponsored by Spaugh Dameron Tenny's Go To Grow campaign, which sponsors residents, fellows, attendings, physicians, and dentists alike who are interested in using their skills to help patients around the world. We applaud Dr. Starritt for using her skills to help patients in the United States as well as globally.

Will Koster: 33:27 Now, if you'd like to learn more about Dr. Starritt and her practice, or Spaugh Dameron Tenny's Go To Grow campaign, we'll put some links in the show notes. As always, if you know someone who wears a white coat and is achieving something noteworthy, please drop us a line and we'd love to hear about it. We might even highlight them in a future episode. But again, this week's White Coat Achievement goes to Dr. Rita Starritt.

Shane Tenny: 33:50 Well, thanks so much for listening to this episode of White Coat Wellness. You can stay in touch with other colleagues interested in financial wellness through our White Coat Wellness Facebook group. The link is in the show notes. You can also find the spelling for Angela Fusaro's name and website in the show notes as well. If you have ideas, questions, suggestions for future topics or guests, please drop me an email directly at Shane@WhiteCoatWell.com. Thanks so much. We'll see you here next time.

Outro: 34:18 This episode of White Coat Wellness is over, but you're not alone on your journey towards financial wellness. Spaugh Dameron Tenny has been helping physicians and dentists with their financial planning for over 60 years, and we'd love to answer any questions that would be of help to you. Visit SDTPlanning.com today and take your financial wellness to new levels. Once again, that's SDTPlanning.com, and we'll see you on the next episode of White Coat Wellness.