Steven Schwartz (00:26)
Hello and welcome to the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast. I’m your host, Steve Schwartz, and it’s truly my pleasure to have you along on our discussion today. My guest is Enpo Tu. He is the Chief Operating Officer from myfinancialcoach.com. He is a certified financial planner and has a master’s of science in financial services.

Enpo, thank you for being with me on the podcast today.

Enpo Tu (00:50)
Thank you very much, Steve.

Steven Schwartz (00:52)
Awesome. We met a few weeks ago at the Concierge Medical Forum in Cumming, Georgia. And I think we hit it off right away. It was great getting to know you and having the chance to chat with you there. And had a good barbecue dinner on our last night there. So I enjoy getting to know you a little bit personally as well.

Enpo Tu (01:13)
Absolutely, Steve. Thank you very much. I will say that when we went there, I did not realize that was a chain restaurant.

Steven Schwartz (01:22)
Yeah, it-

Enpo Tu (01:22)
little slice of Georgia and.

Steven Schwartz (01:26)
Yeah, no, it was great. I just picked something off off the menu and it was delicious. And I think I had leftovers because the portions were huge. anyways, people didn’t want to hear about barbecue. They’re here to talk about concierge medical issues, direct primary care, and your company, myfinancialcoach.com. You guys bring a different take to this. mean, a lot of times we’re interviewing

physicians on this program or those that are doing amazing things with research or medical tests or medical devices and things your space is helping high net worth individuals in many cases physicians and Chief medical officers medical directors helping these folks not only Generate and increase their wealth but also to hold on to it and make it grow to protect it

you know, sort of the stories of when physicians hang out with each other, you know, are they talking about medical clinical issues or are they talking about things like, you know, Hey, I just got this tax bill and it’s way more than I expected. Or, you know, I’m thinking about buying a rental property and have you done that before? And, you know, the, these questions related to finances. so I’m really glad to have you on the podcast today, just so we can, you know, kind of get to know a little bit more about what you can.

do with your company to help folks navigate some of these significant financial issues and questions and situations for high net worth individuals. Does that sound like a good plan for today?

Enpo Tu (03:07)
Absolutely, and by way of background, okay, I would say that 90 % of our clients that we work with are in that highly compensated medical professional space. And a lot of our physicians that we work with have had experiences in the past where they’ve worked with financial professionals. Sometimes they knew they were financial professionals and sometimes they didn’t. I’ll give you an example.

You graduate from medical school, everyone says go buy disability insurance. So you go buy disability insurance through an agent and they turn around and hey, actually, I’m going to be your financial advisor now. And sure, they might be able to help you get good insurances, but how do you know that they’re going to help you when it comes to tax mitigation? How do you know that they’re going to be good when it comes to investment management? These are all things.

that a lot of doctors, even if they’re working with a financial professional, they may not be working with a financial professional that understands the medical profession and what pitfalls are very common in the highly compensated medical professional space. Now, generally speaking, I will say that there are a lot of differences and also a lot of similarities between high net worth individuals.

But for the medical space, there are things that are very unique.

Steven Schwartz (04:37)
I think it would be helpful for our discussion, Empoh, if you could share a couple of stories. Obviously, not giving any names or details so people know who you’re talking about, of course. But share a couple of stories where you what the issue was and how you helped that physician navigate that situation to a positive outcome. you have a couple of stories like that that you might be able to share?

Enpo Tu (05:06)
Sure, and for the audience out there, chances are you’re either a 1099 individual or you’re a W-2 or you’re a business owner, so you’re both, or perhaps you’re a W-2 that also does locum’s work. I’m gonna give an example that is going to mostly address the W-2 first, and then I’ll give an example of if you’re a 1099, and then I’ll give you an example if you have a little bit more maneuverability.

So let’s take the W-2 for example. So a number of your listeners, they may or may not work for the state. it’s very, from what I hear whenever I’m speaking with my clients, there’s a lot less burnout when you work for the state. If you’re a medical professional that works for one of the various state entities, not talking of course about the VA, I’ve heard that’s a different beast altogether. But if you work,

in advocacy or if you work for a university system, you’re going to be a W-2 employee. And there’s a lot of benefits to it. I mean, there’s some student loan forgiveness. There’s the ability to max out your 403B457. There’s a lot of interesting things that really makes it enticing. But one of the things that people, whenever they’re working in the state, they don’t realize is that what they’ve been promised

may or may not be what’s in the contract. So there’s a client that I work with, works in the UC system, University of California, I won’t say which university, but they work in the UC system, and they have a contract, and their understanding of this contract was, hey, when I retire, they’re not paying me as much as I’m,

Steven Schwartz (06:46)
University of California.

All right.

Enpo Tu (07:04)
worth right now but when I retire they’re gonna pay out a portion of my current income.

Forever.

And because I work for the state, they’re also going to pay for my medical. That’s great. Okay. Okay. So you got it. You got it. So when I take a look at the contract, what is considered their compensation is actually their salary, their covered compensation. So their total amount that they’re making gross that they tell all their friends is, I’m making

Steven Schwartz (07:23)
Yes, as part of the pension package. Right.

Enpo Tu (07:46)
$400,000 and that’s great. When they retire and they take from their pension, the salary portion of it is only about $150,000.

Steven Schwartz (08:01)
surprise.

Enpo Tu (08:03)
So that’s very significant. If you’re a W-2 individual and you have not had someone take a look at your contract and understand it, not as a lawyer would, because lawyers are looking for different things. They’re looking to see if there’s a very egregious non-compete. They’re sometimes looking to see exactly what sort of ways they can keep you against your will, what clawbacks they have. But for us, mean, your benefits, those are gonna be the things that are super important to you.

So if you’re a physician that has a W-2 role that you’re comfortable with and you want to continue working in that system, if no one has looked at your employee benefits and looked at your contract, you might be potentially in for a very rude awakening when a lot of what you were promised just doesn’t line up perfectly with what’s in the fine print.

Steven Schwartz (08:56)
interesting and after working for a system for many years you just sort of have it set in your mind this is how it’s going to be and then as you said a rude awakening.

Enpo Tu (09:06)
Absolutely. So I would say that the most significant thing for a W-2 individual is if you’re getting employed by someone, I mean, you have a client, the client is your employer. And there’s always going to be a bit of a quid pro quo where potentially you might have room to negotiate on certain things. And it’s not always on just increasing the amount of dollars they pay you.

There’s a lot of room where you can ask for things that will have a more significant impact on your future than just that top line growth. And sometimes it helps out everyone when you are able to look through that contract, look through the employee benefits, and essentially not just make more, but keep more and have more in the future. So that’s for the W-2 people.

Before I move on, Steve, I mean, did any of that make sense or kind of…

Steven Schwartz (10:05)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think for our listeners, it’s going to make a lot of sense. Those that are in those government sponsored state-based institutions, many of our listeners are business owners. A doctor says, Hey, I want to start my own practice. I want to do concierge. I want to do DPC. I don’t want to take insurance. And they’re literally running a business, the medical clinical side, plus they’re a small business owner. They get to deal with all that as well.

Enpo Tu (10:19)
Okay.

Sure.

Sure.

Steven Schwartz (10:34)
And that may involve W2 as well as 1099, depends on their structure, of course.

Enpo Tu (10:41)
Sure. So we’ve helped a number of concierge medicine doctors who are now business owners because they are in concierge medicine. Some of them have gone the route where they have a bigger umbrella organization. For example, my financial coach, we work with a lot of physicians from MD, VIP. In fact, that’s one of our national accounts. We also work with SignatureMD, their competition.

and many, many others that are direct cash, et cetera. And I can tell you that as a business owner, you are in it for yourself in a way, but of course to the betterment of all of your patients. And so as you’re taking care of your patients and growing your business, it’s very exciting. But I think a lot of physicians, they don’t think with the end in mind when it comes to why they’re in business.

Oftentimes when we work with our physicians and don’t get me wrong, it’s very noble that we will ask So why are you in business? And so well, you know, I want to see better patient outcomes. You want to see better I guess patient Coverage we want to be able to give them more time and I say no no no no the reason why you are in business is to make a good livelihood for yourself and your family and That’s the point of business

Now why you became a doctor, that’s between you and the medical professional community. But why you are in business is to make money.

And so who’s on your side to try to figure that out for you? So I’ll tell you, most doctors that we work

own a business. number one go-to person is their CPA.

whether it is, hey, how do I pay less taxes? Hey, how do I save more money? Hey, I’m thinking about selling my business. Hey, I’m thinking about maybe putting together some employee benefits. All of this falls on the CPA most of the time. That’s what we see. And if you have a good CPA, and everyone thinks they have a okay or good CPA at first, if you have a good CPA, maybe. But here’s how to figure out whether or not you have a good CPA.

Are you taking the standard deduction year over year as an individual? Or are you itemizing every year? Because if you’re itemizing, that means your CPA is going in there and they’re doing things to actively lower your taxes. But if you’re taking the standard deduction every time and you’re not having an honest discussion of why, you can go on TurboTax and file for yourself. And maybe they can just do the bookkeeping and handle your business.

But ultimately, your business is there to give you a payout at the very end of it. And if you are not actively thinking of ways to make sure that that payout is what you envision, then you are setting yourself up to create an asset that you are going to have to wind down at some

Because for all our concierge medicine listeners on the line right now, you have to think about how if you are the face and you’re the reason that people are coming, what happens when you want to retire or you want to spend more time with your family?

Steven Schwartz (14:19)
There’s always that business question of can I walk away from my business and have it still grow? Can have I developed systems within my business that’ll keep the business running even if I’m gone? Either for a two week vacation to wherever or if I died, right? Or if I sold, what happens? And I agree with you that so many people start a business

no matter what type of business, thinking that, hey, I’d like to make some money. Hey, I’d like to be my own boss. I’d like to call the shots. But they don’t start with the end in mind. And I’m so glad you brought that up. It’s such an important topic. And many people I’ve spoken to who are business owners have never thought of it. And if they have thought of it, they thought, yeah, well, I’ll deal with that sometime in the future. And then they don’t work their business toward that.

potential future exit. So I’m glad that your company can assist with that. With regards to the topic of do we have a good CPA, does my financial coach play nicely with their clients existing CPAs in the sandbox or do you end up taking over the clients so that they leave their CPA? How does that relationship look?

Enpo Tu (15:44)
Sure, and just to share with everyone, my financial coach, we are a membership fee based comprehensive financial planning company. And what that means is we are not here to try to sell you life insurance, to manage your assets, to go in and try to sell you real estate, do your taxes, or any of the above. We are here almost as your primary care.

financial planner. And our end goal is to help you reach better financial outcomes. In the medical community, there’s a lot of talk about better health outcomes. Here, we’re focused on better financial outcomes. And what we see as better financial outcomes is if you are able to maintain your current lifestyle as much as possible right now,

and throughout your life. Because everyone has a financial lifestyle. Whether it’s hey, this is how many times we eat out, this is how many things we buy, here’s how many vacations we take. That’s a financial lifestyle and we want to keep that indefinitely. The last thing we want to do is go and rip out the sidewalk and ruin someone’s already well laid plans. Unless it’s going to lead to bad financial outcomes. And that’s when we get to work. So,

Let’s take the example of a CPA. If we look through your CPA and look at their work and they’re doing a good job, then we will work with that CPA to find out if there’s anything else you can do to mitigate your taxes further. And internally, we do have what we call our advice strategy standards. That’s a standard.

where if our clients are at a certain tax bracket, we actually want to see them within a certain range. And if it’s the same range, good. If not, how do we have strategies to get them there? Alternatively, when it comes to investments and retirement, how much are they paying their financial advisor? Is that normal? These are all good questions. In fact, I was recently published in the American Association of Physician Leadership, their March edition.

where I wrote an article of seven questions to ask a financial advisor. You’d think that this is someone who you should be interviewing. This is probably the most important financial decision you’re gonna make because they’re going to be not just in charge of your current investments, but your future retirement throughout your life, those distributions. And yet, you’re not treating this like an interview. You’re treating it as if you’re hiring your buddy to do yard work for you.

do I like them? Do they seem nice? Do they remember my favorite candy? That’s not good. So we act as that professional interviewer. Where we’ll sit on our client side of the table and we will systematically interview their existing team. And if they’re good, we want to retain them. If they’re not good, but there’s still some reason that they’re retaining them. For example, it’s my brother-in-law. They work at

Edward Jones, I have a cousin who works at Morgan Stanley. I don’t feel good. I know I’m overpaying them, but hey, I just want to make nice during Thanksgiving. Okay, that’s understandable, but we need to know how much you’re overpaying them by so at least you’re aware of it.

Steven Schwartz (19:22)
So it sounds like you give a very high level overview or you take a high level overview over your client’s entire financial situation and then from there drill deep on different things that you see to make sure that everything’s optimized the best it can be. And if not, here’s some things that we recommend in order to optimize it for the best long-term financial outcome. Is that about right?

Awesome. Cool. Any, any final thoughts that you’d like to share with our listeners? Let’s say a practice that has one to five concierge doctors, staff of maybe up to 10 people. What, what value would you bring to the physician, the medical director, maybe even the staff? What, what do you recommend? Any, any stories to share or anecdotes?

Enpo Tu (20:25)
I think that the good news is there’s a growing awareness amongst physicians that their number one expense is not their wife going to Marshalls, it’s not their husband taking on expensive hobbies. That’s actually not their biggest expense. Their single biggest expense is the taxes they pay today.

and it’s very high. And it’s probably gonna get higher at some point in the future. But their effective tax rate, by and large, probably 35, 40%. Okay, so the question is, how much can you save on taxes as yourself and the people around you, how much can you save together? And if that pain of what you’re paying in taxes can outweigh

pain of making changes, then you could potentially make a lot of changes. And a lot of people are growing aware, hey, I can do more than just a 401k. I can do a cash balance pension. I can do potentially an executive bonus plan of some sort or deferred compensation. These are all things you can do. But how do you know if it’s right for you versus right for your partners in your practice versus doing right by maybe some

employees that you want to retain, how do you have someone who you can talk to about all this, but not also trying to sell it to you?

Good question, right?

Steven Schwartz (22:01)
Yeah, absolutely.

Enpo Tu (22:03)
I mean, you go to someone, anyone, and you know that it hurts. It hurts paying taxes and you want to build well. But if you go to that person that’s a specialist in cash balance, pensions, tax mitigation strategy, what are they going to ultimately want you to do every single time?

Steven Schwartz (22:25)
buy that service, buy that product.

Enpo Tu (22:25)
Buy more of it and buy it yesterday. And not, hey, let’s think about it. Hey, does this make sense for just you? Does it make sense for everyone? And sure, they may do a good job and be disinterested. And that’s great, but they’re always gonna have a conflict of interest.

So that’s why Mife.

Steven Schwartz (22:44)
And so in your company, it’s literally, here’s the advice. Here’s why we’re suggesting it. We’re not here to sell you anything. This is the advice that we recommend. And if the client says, yes, let’s do it, then you help that process to get it done.

Enpo Tu (23:01)
So what we will do is two things, right? The first thing is we will make sure that if there is someone in their orbit that can effectively do this for them, we can explore if they have the tools for that already. If not, hey, can the client do it themselves? Cash balance pension, probably not. You’re have to find a TPA for that. But for example, if you’re a business owner just starting, you wanna put together a 401k for yourself and a spouse,

that’s probably something you can do by yourself. So it’s varied. But if you do know that you want that, the good news about working with 90 % of our clients being highly compensated medical professionals is they all seem to have the same issues. Can I get financing for my office? Hey, how do I buy a rental property? How do I put together a, what is it, private partnership to go buy office buildings?

All of these issues, they’re so common that rather than tell our clients to Google it, we’ve gone out there and we found individuals in the marketplace that we vetted out. We’ve asked these questions and all of them have shared their responses. And we have created a list of what we call our subject matter experts that we have full faith will actually carry out the duties. The good news is the financial coach is never compensated by them. So they don’t have any reason.

to go and push you towards them, but at the very least, we know that we can help people get to better financial outcomes by getting them, call it, to the experts when needed. Just like how a primary care physician, they may not go in and do the surgery for you, but they’ll recognize the need for when you need to go to surgery versus when you need to go and make some lifestyle changes.

Steven Schwartz (25:00)
love the structure of your company and having these folks available as subject matter experts based on the situation that your client’s experiencing. We here at Concierge Medical Marketing are doing the same thing by putting together a list of truly smart, talented, capable, friendly people who are experts in their fields so that as a physician,

is in touch with me and they have an issue on XYZ, I can say, you need to talk to so and so, or you need to talk to Enpo over here for that financial issue, or you need to talk to so and so. I love that we’re building a coalition of our own through this podcast and through my company in order to provide great people and great solutions for those that are trying to elevate healthcare for all Americans. So it’s great working with you.

and getting to know you better and your team and what you do. As we wrap up here, do you have any final suggestions, ideas, anecdotes, stories that you’d like to share with our audience?

Enpo Tu (26:06)
Yeah, so I that one of the things that people ask me all the time is, they always think I’m an investment advisor. Whenever I tell people what I do, they always say, what’s the best thing I can invest in right now? Usually, some variation of that. like, hey, what do you think about Bitcoin? Or whatever. Or hey, I’m thinking about buying rental properties.

And so I always use this anecdote, right? So if you are, let’s say, a athlete and you go in for a checkup and they run all your blood work, EKGs, et cetera.

going to go and and come back and say wow your resting heart rate is super low but the fact that you’re an athlete and you train all the time makes sense why your resting heart rate might be low but if you were just looking at it in abstract just that one little data point that doctor might feel man this is this is not good you need you need to make some lifestyle changes right now and we need to make some diet changes right now

And so I think that’s what ends up happening for a lot of medical professionals, right? They tell their best friend, they tell their life insurance agent, they tell people who are well-intentioned one or two data points about themselves. And from there, someone who is or is not a professional will give them advice. And the problem is, whatever you are gonna self-report to people,

you’re kind of inviting that sort of advice. So if you go to a real estate seminar and you say, hey, what’s the best investment I can make? You’re probably gonna be told to buy real estate. Or you go to your investment advisor and you say, hey, what’s the best investment? Well, it’s probably a bunch of ETFs and mutual funds, well diversified, et cetera. And never are you actually getting the, well, what’s the best thing for me? Because the truth of the matter is depending on how you receive income, when you wanna retire,

what exactly you’re currently paying in taxes, all of that has more of a bearing than what’s the best investment at that very second for you. Because that’s a roulette wheel, it goes around and around. The best asset class changes from year to year. So what is the best for you? You always want to get that for you, and in order to get the for you, you can’t just ask random people on the streets or go Google things. No one’s gonna know you.

You’re just someone that’s being marketed to.

Steven Schwartz (28:56)
I’m really glad you shared the analogy of a physician analyzing a patient with this low resting heart rate. One of the things I love about Concierge Medical Practices and Direct Primary Care is that they have the ability to spend the time to really get to know their patients, to really dig into the medical history, and in doing so,

Maybe put their finger on some items that may not have been recognized if it was a five minute typical visit to an insurance-based physician office. And I love what you’re doing with my financial coach that you can really take the time, dig into everything that your client is doing, where are they currently, what makes sense, what’s working well, what do they have that’s not working and

provide some great advice and it’s a trust, people can trust you to give them good advice because you’re not trying to sell them on something.

So as we wrap up here, Enpo, if somebody who’s listening to this recording would like to get in touch with you and your company, what is their next step?

Enpo Tu (30:23)
So what I always say is we’re not trying to hide anything about our costs or fees. In fact, we try to be very transparent with our clients and everything that we do. So if you go to www.myfinancialcoach.com, you click on that pricing tab and you will see exactly how much we cost. There is an onboarding fee and that is fully refundable within 30 days if you do not get any value fully refundable.

And then it is a monthly fee, monthly membership fee, and it is canceled anytime. You stop getting value from what we do at My Financial Coach, we give you your money back, no questions asked for the first 30 days. And if you cancel, cancel anytime, I’m not getting financially healthier, I want to cancel. And that is our promise, is that we want to move you towards better financial outcomes. And if we’re not doing a good job,

and we’re not constantly proving our value and worth, you should be able to walk away.

Steven Schwartz (31:29)
I love it. And there’s no risk. that if they don’t get any value, they can get their money back.

Steven Schwartz (31:36)
Enpo Tu, this has been a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge and experience and some great stories with me and our audience. really appreciate you. Speaking of adding value through my company, Concierge Medical Marketing, we offer a free book available to anybody listening to the podcast. It’s called The Definitive Guide to Winning with Digital Marketing for Concierge Medical Practices. And again, the book is entirely free.

To access it, visit our website, conciergemd.marketing. Again, conciergemd.marketing. And on the home page, just scroll down toward the bottom, see a picture of the book, enter your email address there, click the Submit button, and then the system will send you an email with a link where you can download the book, read it with my, what’s the word? Yeah, read the book with my compliments. Enjoy it.

And if you have any questions whatsoever about how to help your medical practice grow to get more phone calls, to get more submissions, more meet and greet appointments, please reach out to me. My personal phone number is 772-304-2420. Again, 772-304-2420. Again, this is Steve Schwartz with the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast and my guest, Enpo Tu from my financial coach.

Folks have a great day and we’ll see you on the next podcast. Have a great day.

Enpo Tu (33:06)
Thank you.