Freedom Founders – My Personal Experience

Freedom Founders – My Personal Experience

Years ago, I realized that I needed more streams of income, specifically passive income. I’ll discuss that shortly.

After some research, I learned about Dr. David Phelps, who ran a mastermind group called Freedom Founders.

His group focused mainly on dentists/physicians, and their motto was:

“Building Wealth Outside Wall Street“

This piqued my curiosity, so I decided to sign up and drive to Dallas to make a weekend of it.

Before I get into the details, let me revisit why I thought I needed to focus on growing additional streams of income.

Earned/Active Income

Most dentists, physicians and other high-income earners have only one stream of income which is active or earned income.

Want to guess how many streams of income the average millionaire has?

If you answered between 3 to 9, then you’d be correct!

Speaking of streams of income, Robert Kiyosaki discussed the Cashflow Quadrant in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Here’s a diagram of it:

Image Courtesy of Coach Carson

Kiyosaki claims that most people (including dentists/physicians) are on the left or the “poor side” of the quadrant.

It’s these folks that mainly are trading time for…you guessed it…money!

Which side are you on?

For instance, if a solo practicing dentist decides to take a couple of weeks off, then he’s NOT getting paid.

Also, for the docs in a group practice that think they’re in a better place; then think again. They’re also trading their time for money.

What’s In Your Wallet?

Active income is the only money coming in when most of us get started practicing.

There’s nothing wrong with initially only having active income. In fact, I routinely tell young doctors to focus on investing in themselves to grow their income so that later, they can invest in passive investments that can make their money work for them.

Earned income pays the bills but in order to reach financial independence, you can’t strictly rely on it.

You need to focus on creating passive income.

My Wake Up Call

If you’re reading this, more than likely you’re a high-income earner that has made sacrifices and knows what it takes to be successful.

Also, whether you realize it or not, you’ve always been striving towards goals.

For me, it was:

• do well in high school and the ACT to get a college scholarship
• make the grades in college with a decent DAT score to get accepted into dental school
• graduate in the top of the dental school class to to become a specialist
• get into a residency program
• start a specialist practice
• begin digging out of the student loan debt hole
• become debt-free
• reach a 7-figure net worth

Luckily, by the grace of God, I was able to reach these goals by the age of 40. This was great as I’d been spending the better part of my life accomplishing one goal after another.

The bad news was….the goals had run out. What was I to do!!

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New Goals

I realized that I’d reached a crucial point of my life and decided that it was time to make a new set of goals, both personally and financially.

Personal goals

Some of the personal goals had to do with being a better father/husband/friend and spiritual leader of my family.

I also set some new fitness goals as I wanted to be able to beat my boys in basketball as long as possible 🙂

Financial goals

Regarding finances, I was surprised to learn that Dave Ramsey’s goals were also changing at the same time that I was trying to make a list of new goals for myself.

You see, Dave has taught people how to “get out of debt” for 20+ years. But now that many of his listeners had been successful with their “WE’RE DEBT-FREE!!” screams, he’s noticed many were calling back asking, “Hey Dave, it’s great that we’re debt-free, NOW WHAT?”

It seems like I’m not the only one that needs new goals!

So Dave, being the smart business guy that he is, has now pivoted and teamed up with Chris Hogan to teach these new “debt-free” folks how to become millionaires.

I also had to pivot, so I sat down with a pen and paper and asked myself, “Hey, self, what do you want to accomplish within the next 5-7 years.”

If you’ve never done this before, it really opens your mind to give you clarity on exactly which road you should be taking in life.

My new direction

At about the same time, I read Gary Keller’s book The One Thing. I can honestly say that after reading it, I didn’t know what my ONE THING was.

Also, I knew that several areas of my life, especially the finance department, needed a “one thing” guide.

I realized that, yes, I was getting older as it seemed that some of my joints would hurt every morning when I got out of bed!

So, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to work forever as dentistry is very physically demanding. Why do you think so many dentists have to retire due to neck and back issues?

Another area I wanted to focus on was something that you can never get back…..time. That’s right, time.

I wanted to be able to take more time off practicing to travel with my family, especially before my boys moved out.

The book made me realize that I needed ONE THING, other income streams to free up my time plus help me to retire earlier if I wanted to.

Now that I had my new direction, it was time to start searching for passive income streams.

Real Estate

At this point in my career, the majority of our investments were in index funds. I was starting to realize just how important diversification was, especially if we were shooting for financial independence.

The same goes with my income. There was no diversification in it as there was only one source, my dental practice.

The search began and all roads led back to real estate. The wealthiest people I personally know have real estate in their portfolio so it was only natural to start there.

Freedom Founders

Sorry about being so long-winded, but I thought it was important for you to realize the process that I went through that led me to wanting to learn more about real estate investing.

And eventually, attend a Freedom Founders mastermind event with Dr. David Phelps.

You might be asking yourself, “What’s a mastermind?”

I first learned of the mastermind concept after reading Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich.

Hill stated that a mastermind is: “The coordination of knowledge and effort of two more more people who work toward a definite purpose, in the spirit of harmony.”

Occasionally we have issues or problems we want solved and many times we try to do it alone (typical dentist/periodontist). The cool thing about being in a mastermind setting is that you don’t have to go at it alone. You are able to have the group, “put their brains together” to help you in any way, shape or form.

I spoke at Dr. Tom Orent’s Gems mastermind dental meeting at Disney shortly before the coronavirus outbreak.

It still fascinates me how quickly a group of people can not only solve a problem someone in the mastermind is having but how many different perspectives come out of it. Truly amazing.

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Passive Investing

At that time, the Freedom Founders mastermind session focused on offering information to inspire dentists and physicians who wanted to “break free of the chains of practice” and begin creating a blueprint for becoming financially independent.

I went to the meeting thinking I would learn how to buy and manage single-family homes and apartments.

Instead, most of the information was from some of the vendors and “trusted advisors” David works with that focused on:

• Being the bank
• Turnkey real estate
• Hard money lending
• Mobile homes
• RV parks
• Fix and flip
• Wholesaling

Am I glad I attended it? Yes. It showed me many different ways to get into real estate investing.

I thought I wanted to be an active investor but quickly realized that going the passive route while still working full-time was the smarter thing for me to do.

Debt Free Dr

Freedom Founders proved to be the catalyst for me to taking a deep dive into passive real estate investing which eventually led me to start this blog teaching other dentists/physicians and high-income earners about the benefits to creating passive income.

UPDATE 2024

Recently, there has been some news that has come to light regarding the group. One thing that I didn’t mention in the original article written four years ago was that I did NOT join Freedom Founders.

The high annual fee (plus a few other things about the group) led me to begin investing in syndications on my own. 

BEFORE you invest with a real estate syndication group, make sure you perform your own due diligence. Don’t take other people’s word for it.

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